The Nepal crisis & Indian diplomacy

By C. Raja Mohan

THE TRAGIC developments in Nepal over the last week represent one of the gravest challenges to Indian foreign policy in recent times. While striving to cope with the imperatives of the moment, the managers of India's external relations need to sit up and rethink the basics of the policy towards its immediate neighbourhood. If India is to respond more effectively to challenges in the region, it is important to understand the huge dimensions of the problem. The mayhem in Nepal must be seen as symptomatic of a deeper malaise in the Subcontinent, of collapsing institutions, the failure of the political classes to govern purposefully, the growing economic gap between the region and the rest of the world, and the inability to find ways to broaden the basis for regional cooperation.

The massacre of the royal family in Nepal last Friday has come on top of a deepening political crisis in the mountain kingdom over the last few months. An insurgency led by the Maoist groups has begun to challenge state authority in large parts of the country. In many districts of the impoverished countryside, the Maoists have established parallel administration, collecting taxes and dispensing quick justice. The ruling Nepali Congress is a divided house and no crisis appears big enough to push the warring factions to get their act together and begin to address the multiple challenges facing the nation. The opposition parties there have believed their only job is to oppose the Government and paralyse the political process. During its last session, Nepal's Parliament could not sit even for a day.

Pervasive economic deprivation and rising levels of political frustration among its youth have shortened the fuse of the tinderbox that Nepal has become. Nepal is not alone in pointing to a grim political future in the Indian Subcontinent. The democratic experiment has failed one more time in Pakistan, which has returned to military rule. Pakistan is finding it impossible to cope with the challenges from the rising forces of political extremism and economic underdevelopment. In Bangladesh, politics has been reduced to a permanent `bandh' that shuts down all normal economic activity in the name of irreconcilable differences among the governing classes. Similarly in Sri Lanka, the two-decade-old civil war has prevented the island nation from becoming the first economy to escape from bondage of underdevelopment in the Subcontinent. Colombo and the leadership of the Tamil minority have found it impossible to end the bitterness between them and create a political framework that allows the two communities to live together in peace.

India itself has not been immune from the malaise, with large parts of the nation showing the symptoms of collapsing state structures. At a time when the nation should be focussed on rapid economic development, its ruling party is pushing the nation into divisive debates on religion and identity. Yet for all its own internal difficulties, the task of leading the region towards economic modernisation, political moderation, and social development inevitably falls on New Delhi. For India to play that role it needs to shed one of the great myths its strategic establishment has generated. For more than a decade, India's strategic discourse has been dominated by one single proposition, that India must `rise above' the South Asian framework and play a wider role in Asia and the world. But the latest crisis in Nepal has pointed, as did the recent border stand-off with Bangladesh, one more time to the simple reality that India cannot cut itself off from the region, however attractive that proposition might seem.

There is no way India can fulfill its aspirations for a larger international profile without addressing its problems in the neighbourhood. The real tensions in India's relations with all its neighbours will act as a huge fetter on its attempts to become a major power on the global scene. India cannot run away from its neighbourhood. However frustrating it might be, there is no alternative available for Indian diplomacy other than a substantive and patient engagement of its neighbours. Despite repeated warning signals in recent years, the Government has not been able to sustain a serious diplomatic focus on the Subcontinent. There is no question that the Government has been largely successful in reworking India's relations with the major powers in the aftermath of its nuclear tests in May 1998. It has also taken important diplomatic initiatives in the so-called `extended neighbourhood', the Gulf and South East Asia.

Tending and nurturing the Subcontinent, for all its Sisyphean problems, needs to get a much higher rating in India's list of diplomatic tasks. Demonstrating the capability to defuse the multiple crises of the Subcontinent, and displaying the political imagination to lead the region to peace and prosperity must be placed at the top of India's national security objectives. As it renews its diplomatic focus on the challenges in the neighbourhood, India needs to discard much of its traditional baggage. Shedding the past suspicion of the major powers has become an urgent imperative.

In the past, New Delhi had sought to keep the other powers out of the region, claiming some kind of an exclusive mandate as a regional power to manage the affairs of the Subcontinent. That approach has been neither credible nor effective. New Delhi does not have the luxury of pursuing a kind of Monroe doctrine for the region. Instead of trying to keep other powers out of the region, India must work with the Western powers and China to nudge the region towards economic integration and a peaceful resolution of inter-state and intra-state problems. India needs to define a set of regional objectives - economic modernisation, social harmony, political moderation, and preservation of the current territorial status quo - on which it is prepared to work with the other great powers.

India does not have the power or capability to unilaterally impose solutions - even if they are sensible - on its neighbours. If India is prepared to work with the West on the basis of universally acceptable principles, it can at once enhance its own international standing as well as nudge the region in a positive direction. India must signal its readiness to cooperate with the United States, the European Union and China in assisting the people of Nepal to overcome one of their most difficult national crises. India must initiate consultations with all these key powers, sharing its own assessments with them, and exploring the possibilities for a common international endeavour to salvage the situation in Nepal. The past efforts by New Delhi to keep other powers out of the Subcontinent have had a disastrous consequence. They have deepened fears of Indian hegemony among its neighbours and driven them closer to each other in limiting New Delhi's capabilities. Nowhere has India's claim for an exclusive relationship in dealing with smaller neighbours been challenged in the public domain more than in Nepal.

The present crisis in Nepal as well as a series of events in the recent months have demonstrated the intensity of popular, even if irrational, fears about Indian dominance. There is no question that the geography of the Subcontinent gives India a very special place in regional affairs - a fact which demands that India go the extra distance in demonstrating sensitivity to its neighbours' concerns and avoiding actions that smack of hegemony. Relations between India and Nepal are very unique, given the nature of historic ties between the two peoples and the complex interdependence and interpenetration of the two societies on the ground. And precisely for that reason, New Delhi needs to signal its understanding of the Nepalese quest for a relationship with India based on equality.

As it grieves with the people of Nepal in their moment of national sorrow, India must begin to conceive of an approach that discards past symbols of hegemony and modernises bilateral relations to suit the new political realities on the ground.

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