Defending Nepal

As some of you more alert readers may have surmised by now, we live in perilous times. Besides an impending climate catastrophe and more pandemics, there is also the threat of the National Census enumerators arriving at our doorstep this week to ask us embarrassing questions like whether we have a throne or squat loo, how many times a day we go, and whether we wash our hands with soap and water after.

There is limit to how much the grabberment can pry on our private parts. We need to censor the census. Why are we being asked to divulge such sensitive information at a time when this nation’s very survival is at stake?

Founding King Prithvi Naryan Shah the Great warned us about being wary of our two Big Brothers having us by our gonads. Indeed, the two big boulders are squeezing our yam. One Brother has occupied 363sq km of our turf, and the other Bro is up to some border hanky-panky in Humla.

As South Asia’s oldest nation state and youngest republic, we can never be too careful about our national security. Defending Nepal’s sovereignty and territorial integrity will be of paramount importance as we attain Middle Income Status, and get rich.

Luckily, we have terrain that protects us from the North. But the high mountains are not as impenetrable as they used to be. We must therefore get the tectonic forces that have been relentlessly pushing the Subcontinent against the Tibetan Plateau for the past 50 million years to work to our advantage, so that our border pillars surreptitiously move north at a velocity of 1cm/year.

Nepal’s southern border, on the other hand, was protected from invasions by our glorious mozzie army, which slayed aggressors by injecting them with the deadly malaria parasite. But since we foolishly eradicated malaria, that deterrent does not exist anymore.

Nepal’s military strategists therefore have to fall back on our second line of defence: the 1,500km East-West Moat. All we need to do is ask the Indians to construct more road embankments on their side to submerge the Tarai.

Future invading armies could use our highways, strategic bridges and other infrastructure to advance rapidly on Kathmandu. To thwart this, we are keeping our highways blocked by landslides, building such weak bridges that they collapse in the afternoon breeze, and ensuring the Nagdhunga incline and Daunne corridor are permanently gridlocked, to stop enemy tanks in their tracks.

But we cannot be complacent. The Mugling-Naryangad road and the Pokhara-Kusma highway have been unwisely widened to 6 lanes, allowing potential invaders rapid mobility.

If we are serious about defending Nepal, we need more roads like the one to Godavari which have such enormous craters that they will swallow armoured personnel carriers of our foes whole.

However, by far the greatest deterrent against any foreign invasion is our political leadership. Who in their right mind would ever want to conquer such an ungovernable country?