By Harmeet K. D. Singh
A new raj is being built on the subcontinent, but his time the sahibs are Indian and the latest victims is the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Nepal. Without help from abroad, Nepal, like its neighbors Bhutan and Sikkim, may be gobbled up by the expansionist regime in New Delhi.
Until March 23, relations between Nepal and India had been cordial, and goods and people crossed the border freely. Then, after suddenly refusing to sign an agreement that had been initialed by both sides last October, India instituted an economic blockade of Nepal. India’s pretext was that it wanted a joint treaty tying trade to rights of transit for landlocked Nepal, but the Nepalese pointed out that while trade agreements are necessarily short term and re negotiable as economic and political relations between countries evolve, transit is a permanent need for any landlocked country. International law guarantees rights of transit, and India and Nepal had been treating trade and transit as separate issues since 1978.
Nevertheless, India shut down all but two of the border’s 21 trade and 15 transit points. Baby food, insulin, Kerosene and many other essential commodities rapidly became scarce in Nepal medicines had to be imported from Bangladesh. India’s embargo on petroleum products shut down Nepa lese factories and brought virtually, all vehicular traffic to an end, although China provided some fuel and more was flown in from Singapore at great expense so that the tourist industry could continue to function. “Ostentatious” entertaining has been forbidden, and social gatherings are monitored to enforce rationing.
The fuel shortage has caused many Nepalese to turn to the forest for firewood, wiping out years of effort to stop deforestation. Ne pal’s gross domestic product growth, which had managed to reach 5% last year, is likely to fall below 2% this year.
Why would India do such a thing? Commerce between the two countries has worked to the advantage of India: Nepal’s trade deficit with India last year was more than $200 million and growing. Nepal exports mainly raw resources such as jute, rice, sugar, timber and animal hides to India. From India, it receives fuel, medicines, machinery and manufactured goods.
India’s motives are imperial, not economic. Nearly all of India’s neighbors have, at one time or another in the past 20 years, learned some kind of lesson at the hands of their large and powerful neigh bor. In 1974, India annexed the sovereign nation of Sikkim. India now exercises significant control over the military and foreign pol icy of Bhutan, India invaded East Pakistan in 1972, achieving the partition of Pakistan and creating the state of Bangladesh. Last year 50,000 Indian troops occupied Sri Lanka to suppress a separatist movement, which had been launched by the Tamil ethnic minority with Indian connivance. Nor has India been gentler with its own people: Minority groups such as the aboriginal Nagas, Sikhs and Christians have suffered oppression at the hands of New Delhi.
India took action against Nepal because it feared that the Himalayan state was moving out of New Delhi’s orbit. India received 60% of Nepal’s trade 10 years ago; today the figure has fallen to about 40%. The Nepalese have expressed an interest in obtaining weapons for their 25,000man army from China, rather than India.
Shortly before the blockade, according to the Washington Post, India vetoed a Chinese bid to build a highway in Nepal. (Rather than see China do it, India insisted on constructing the road itself in fair ness, at no charge to Nepal.) Perhaps most irksome of all, Nepal has floated a proposal to declare itself a “Zone of Peace” in which nuclear arms and foreign military forces would be banned. Since the only nuclear arms or foreign forces likely to be stationed in Nepal are Indian, the self-congratulatory ne ultraists in New Delhi have re acted to this proposal with a see~ thing fury worthy of John Foster Dulles.
India’s actions came at a time when the Nepalese were trying to liberalize their economy. Earlier in the year, they had even started their own stock market, “We have been trying to diversify our economy lately, with the stock market and some other ventures,” ex plains a Nepalese Embassy official in Washington. “You see, Nepal does not want to be dependent on India, or on any other country, for that matter. We want to have friendly relations and trade with many countries. Of course, the blockade has destroyed all those plans. We are in a desperate situation now.”
India’s military budget is currently nearly $10 billion, or 12.1% of total government spending. It
was the first nation outside the Warsaw Pact to receive MIG29 fighter bombers, MIG26 Halo heavy lift helicopters and nuclear submarines from the Soviet Union, which supplies India with more than 80% of its weapons. India has provided economic assistance both to Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and to the Afehan puppet regime. India was one of the only counties in the world not to condemn the Soviet Union’s down of Korean Airlines 7. In the United Nations, the Soviet Union vote with the U.S. more frequently than does India. and yet, in the past fiscal year, US assistance to India amounted to nearly $140 million.
In June, Rep. Wally Herger Jr. (R.,Calif.) introduced an amendment to the 1990 foreign aid bill that would deny India $25 million in development assistance because of its human rights abuses against Sikhs in Punjab and its economic blockade of Nepal. Although a bipartisan coalition of congress men supported the amendment, it was narrowly defeated (216204) thanks largely to the efforts of Rep. Steven J. Solarz (D.N.Y.), who has frequently leaped to India’s defense.
Nepalese officials try to put a good face on the situation. Without even the fuel to fill their supply trucks, they are unable to get their goods to the border stations, let alone pay the 150% tariff that is now applied on the Indian side.
Meanwhile, U.S. aid to Nepal has been cut from $20 million in 1985 to only $12 million this year. Perhaps the U.S. should reassess its priorities in the region and deter mine whether its $140 million in aid to India might to be better spent on India’s neighbors and victims instead.
(Mrs. Singh is the assistant di tor of Policy Review magazine.).
Article extracted from this publication >> December 1, 1989
