No-man’s land

The two sides of Punjab in India and Pakistan may be 2,000km away, but the war between two South Asian neighbours sent aftershocks here to the India-Nepal border. 

Among the 26 tourists killed by terrorists in Pahalgam on 22 April was a Nepali from Butwal on a holiday with his family, and Nepali nationals enlisted in the Indian Army could be see action in case of conflict between India and Pakistan. 

The open border between India and Nepal is usually relaxed with people going back and forth without much checking, but after hostilities broke out last week, controls by India’s Border Security Force of documents and inspections of vehicles has been stepped up.

About 15km east of Birganj is the frontier village of Ghodasahan. On the Nepal side, the settlement is under the Bisrampur Rural Municipality in Bara District and on the other side it is in East Champaran of India’s Bihar state.

There are Hindus and Muslims on both sides of the national boundary that slices through the village. The increased security on both sides of the border is starting to affect the daily life of villagers who had been used to going back and forth without any hindrance.

“We know who the locals are, but if there are people who we don’t know and they look different, we interrogate them,” one Nepali security official said, adding that local people also inform the police if they see any strangers.

Right along the 1,700km Nepal-India border, there are many townships like Ghodasahan which have the same name on both sides of the border. In some places, the border divides homes and households, in others one side of the road is in Nepal and the other side is in India. 

In most of these villages, the local people have come to accept the presence of security forces on both sides. Some farms are divided by the border, and villagers are used to border guards inspecting harvests being brought across.

The India-Nepal border is also a hotbed of smuggling, so police inspections are normal, but the heightened tension between India and Pakistan have made such checks stricter.

Also in Bara district is the village of Gulariya which also stretches on both sides of the border. Seventy-year-old Satan Bhagat’s house is on the other side of no-man’s land in India but his livestock shed is in Nepal. 

With new requirements for citizenship on both sides, and stricter enforcement of those with dual citizenship, families are having to decide whether they are Nepali or Indian.

“We don’t want war, we want peace,” said one villager, apprehensive of the spillover effect of the India-Pakistan conflict. “In the 1971 war we followed what was happening on the radio, but now we know minute-by-minute what is happening on our mobiles.” 

The open Nepal-India border is a model for other parts of the world, where frontier controls are getting tighter and populist anti-migration parties are winning elections. The rhyming slogan in Hindi here has been ‘बोर्डर बनेंगे अमन के निशान, दोनों  मित्र नेपाल - हिंदुस्तान’ (Nepal-India Border: A Symbol of Peace).

But slogans only go far when policies about these borderlands are made in faraway national capitals in New Delhi and Kathmandu. The media also has a role in making border controls only about security and crime, and not about how much it helps local people on both sides.

The reason there are calls for stricter border control is due to geopolitics, and this concern has been enhanced by the India-Pakistan conflict. But this is not just about safeguarding India’s security interests, but also about Nepal being vigilant and taking advantage of its open border.

Terrorism cannot be defined as ‘moderate’ or ‘radical’. Terror has no morals. It cannot be justified by arguments for or against. Terrorism has no respect for innocent human life — whether it is structural violence of the state, or militant counter-violence.

Pahalgam was proof that terrorism is not an accident. It does not happen in a vacuum. When geopolitical rivalry is involved, it complicates matters further as a tit-for-tat in which innocent civilians are cruelly caught in the crossfire. 

As Naser Ahmed on the Nepal side of the border village of Ghodasahan says: “The open border may not be open forever, we have to work to safeguard peace on both sides of no-man’s land.”