Indian role in Nepal in spotlight as president visits

Deepak Adhikari

KATHMANDU (AA) - By visiting Nepal 18 years after the last of his predecessors made the trip Indian President Pranab Mukherjee broke a long drought, but the jaunt comes in the wake of frosty relations between the neighbors.

Relations between the two countries soured during a five-month border blockade last year, prompted by disagreements over Nepal's post-war constitution.

Nepal accused New Delhi of imposing the embargo. India, for its part, denied the act, saying that the cargo trucks carrying supplies were halted due to unrest along the border.

In summer last year, Nepal’s minority Madhesis, who live across the southern plains and have extensive ties across the border, staged protests, seeking an amendment to the post-war constitution, which they claimed was discriminatory.

In August, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a former Maoist guerrilla who led a 10-year-insurgency until 2006, came to power, succeeding a prime minister who had opposed the "objectionable" border blockade.

Nepal’s tensions with India and its recent history — the country went from a Hindu monarchy to a federal republic in 2008 — are familiar terrain for Mukherjee, who is credited with playing an instrumental role in brokering an agreement between the Maoist rebels and parliamentary parties in New Delhi in 2005.

The deal paved the way for popular protests in Nepal, which led to the downfall of the 240-year old Shah monarchy that had ruled Nepal throughout its modern era.

A vast majority of Nepalis have slammed India for last year’s border blockade, which crippled the landlocked country dependent on India for supplies of essential goods.

On Wednesday, as Mukherjee received a red carpet welcome from Nepal’s President Bidya Devi Bhandari at the Kathmandu airport, hundreds of Nepalis took to Twitter with slogans declaring him unwelcome and demanding an apology.

Such sentiment has found an echo across Nepal’s vibrant news media.

“Some kind of atonement for New Delhi’s ill-thought out action last year would be in order and would go a long way in assuring the Nepali public that New Delhi is a well-meaning neighbor,” Nepal’s leading English newspaper The Kathmandu Post said in an editorial on Thursday.

“The blockade in fact not only antagonized a very large section of the Nepali population, it also failed to effect any major solution to the political crisis in Nepal or to secure anything in the Indian interest,” the daily said.

Indian newspaper columnists have also been critical of New Delhi’s dealings with Nepal.

C. Raja Mohan, a prominent Indian strategic analyst, said India’s involvement in Nepal was “a problem.”

“Delhi must learn to resist temptation to meddle in Nepal’s political processes. Frequent interventions in pursuit of tactical goals damage India’s strategic interest in Nepal,” he wrote in The Indian Express newspaper on Tuesday.

Mukherjee, whose trip is billed as a goodwill visit, has held talks with Nepal’s Prime Minister Dahal and leaders of various political parties.

He is scheduled to return to India on Friday after visiting Janakpur, a historic town near the Indian border and Pokhara, a resort town popular among Indian and Chinese tourists.