Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Nepal this week was the first after relations between the two nations got seriously strained over a border row in 2020 and the fifth visit by Modi through his two terms as PM. All is not as rosy now as it had been with the India-Nepal relations when King Birendra ruled this Himalayan nation. The old bonhomie and fraternal relations between Kathmandu and New Delhi began showing strains from the very start of the ushering in of democracy – and end of the monarchy – there by 2008. After the palace coup that saw the assassination of benevolent King Birendra in 2001, his brother Gyanendra ascended the throne but he failed to enjoy the people’s trust. The Communists and others waiting in the wings took power and Nepal is passing through a period of internal political strife and frequent change of governments. In between, what hurt India was also the arrival of China there as a fly in the ointment. It might be more than a coincidence that the day of arrival of Prime Minister Modi there also saw his Nepalese counterpart, Sher Bahadur Deuba inaugurating the country’s second international airport, built by Nepal with Chinese help in Lumbini — the birthplace of Lord Buddha. It signified the changing times and the new geopolitical equations at work.
While Modi received a warm welcome in Nepal, the PM described it as a spiritual journey in the context of the Buddhist and Hindu religious links between the two nations. The reference was also to mythology, the marital linkage between Lord Ram and his consort Sita from Nepal. The Shilanyas done by the PM for the India International Centre for Buddhist Culture and Heritage at Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha came after a period of cooling off of the diplomatic relations between the two countries. Several bilateral agreements in the fields of power, education etc have been signed during the PM’s visit. All these must have their positive bearing for future relations. Yet, the bad blood created by the Modi government’s past responses vis-à-vis the change of the Constitution from Nepal being a Hindu nation to a secular one and of the economic blockade during the Madhesi agitation by Indian-origin people settled in the plains there had left a trail of bitterness. While Afghanistan is a different ball game in view of the Islamic influence, it will do well for India to care for Nepal in more positive ways because of the deeper religious, cultural and geographic links.
