IMAGE VIA RONB/X
THE 1816 TREATY of Sugauli is a relic of a vanishing world, when the East India Company drew lines across South Asia with the confidence of men who would never have to live with the consequences. Nepal has spent two centuries resenting those consequences, particularly the loss of territory west of the Kali River. So when prime minister Balendra Shah stood before parliament this week and declared that Nepal had itself encroached on Indian land, and that Britain and China should help sort the whole mess out, he did something remarkable. He made a bad border dispute worse in a single speech.
Mr Shah’s two claims belong to different universes of sense. The first—that Nepali encroachment on Indian territory occurs—is probably true in a narrow, technical sense. The India-Nepal border is long, porous, and in places poorly marked. Farmers stray across invisible lines. Local officials build drains a few feet into no-man’s land. The second claim is self-immolation. Inviting Britain, a former colonial power whose last substantial role in the subcontinent ended with partition, and China, India’s primary strategic rival, into a bilateral territorial dispute is not diplomacy. It is a cry for attention from a prime minister who appears to have mistaken provocation for statecraft.
India’s response was swift. The foreign ministry in New Delhi noted that 98% of the border has been demarcated; that the remaining disputes involve shifting river courses; and that no third party has any business in the room. This was the defensive efficiency of a regional hegemon that has spent seven decades patiently managing its neighbours’ grievances. India has its own talents for miscalculation, particularly in Kashmir and along the Line of Control with Pakistan. But on the Nepal border, where the two countries share family ties, open trade and deep security interdependence, New Delhi has largely played a straight bat.
The real damage from Mr Shah’s outburst is not in New Delhi. It is in Kathmandu. Nepal’s opposition parties have united in fury. Parliament has ground to a halt. The prime minister’s own foreign ministry has scrambled to clarify that he meant only the trivial encroachments on no-man’s land, not the big disputed prizes of Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura. The clarification fooled nobody. A prime minister who cannot control his own tongue on the most sensitive issue in national politics is a prime minister who will soon face a no-confidence motion.
The bigger truth here is ugly for both countries. Nepal’s political class has long played the border dispute as a nationalist card, waving revised maps and demanding territory back from India. But the dispute is manageable because both sides have treated it as a technical problem for surveyors, and not a casus belli for politicians. Mr Shah broke that understanding. He invited external powers into a bilateral house. He handed New Delhi the moral high ground. And he demonstrated that Nepal’s democracy, for all its resilience, remains vulnerable to leaders who mistake noise for strength.
The remedy is boring yet effective. India and Nepal should return to their bilateral boundary mechanism, finish mapping the remaining 2% of the frontier, and accept that the shifting Gandak river will require periodic adjustments. Britain should stay in London. China should mind its own Himalayan business. And Mr Shah should learn a lesson that prime ministers in small countries ignore at their peril: when you live next to a giant, you do not invite other giants to the doorstep. The Treaty of Sugauli will not be rewritten by tweets and tantrums. It will be managed by people who understand that the alternative is a fire nobody wants. ■
