A past foretold

Till about 200 years ago China and India were the world’s largest economies, and that helped Kathmandu prosper as an entrepôt between the two. We have now come full circle.

China and India are ascendant once more, and the two giant neighbours can be the locomotives to pull Nepal along if we play our cards right.

That is the message in former Kantipur editor Sudheer Sharma’s omnibus edition of two books that explore the historical and geopolitical dimensions of Nepal’s relations with China. 

The two Nepali language books, भिक्षु, व्यापार र बिद्रोह (Monks, Trade and Rebellion) and हिमालपारिको हुरी (Trans-Himalayan Hurricane) follow Sharma’s previous work प्रयोगशाला (Laboratory) which looked mainly at Nepal-India relations and was translated into English as The Nepal Nexus.

The first book is predominantly about Kathmandu’s historical links with Lhasa, and by extension Beijing. Vajrayana Buddhism played a significant role in bringing the two sides of the Himalaya together, allowing social and trade relations to thrive. 

Princess Bhrikuti, King Narendra Dev and Arniko were prominent historical figures, but thousands of lesser known monks, traders, and travellers also played their part in cementing Kathmandu-Lhasa ties. These connections were so strong that they endured three wars that the Gorkha Kingdom and Tibet fought against each other in which Chinese emperors sent military help to fight off the Nepalis.

Although Nepal’s historic connections with Tibet waned after the Chinese annexation of the plateau in the 1950s, it is on that foundation that present day Nepal-China relations are built. 

Till today, Nepal is the only country with a consulate in Lhasa, and the only international flights from Lhasa are to Kathmandu. But as Sharma notes, even back then, Nepal’s proximity with northern India figured importantly in its socio-economic and cultural connections with Tibet.

Nepal was the corridor for the exchange of trade and faith between the Ganga plains and the Tibetan plateau. The road between Patna and Potala, Banaras and Beijing passed through Kathmandu Valley. Sharma traces this socio-political landscape to explain how it went on to shape the country’s modern day relations with the neighbours. 

There were 2,000 Buddhist monks in Nepal during the reign of Lichhavi king Amshuverma, and Arniko established himself in the court of Kubulai Khan and took eight years to build the massive White Dagoba in Beijing.

Read also: The life and times of Arniko, Sewa Bhattarai

While Mahayana Buddhism spread from India, through Nepal to China and beyond, it was Communism that later came from China to Nepal.

King Mahendra had great geopolitical savvy and navigated the complicated geopolitics of the Cold War to cultivate relations with both Nehru and Mao, while keeping both at arms length.

Mahendra wrested aid to build infrastructure like the Kodari and Prithvi Highways from China, but also from India, the Soviet Union and the United States. In fact Nepal was only the eighth non-Communist country to receive foreign aid during Mao’s China. 

Read also: The new equaliser

But when Nepal’s Maoists launched an armed struggle against the monarchy, China’s official media never called them ‘Maoists’. As far as Beijing was concerned, Mao was dead in his mausoleum. It was only later under Xi Jinping that China warmed up to Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s ‘Maoist’ label. 

The first book takes us to the point when the Constituent Assembly abolished Nepal’s monarchy in 2008, and the second book, as the name suggests, looks at how the whirlwind rise of China has buffeted Nepal. 

Sharma encourages readers to abandon Prithvi Narayan Shah’s famous metaphor of Nepal being ‘yam between two boulders’ to it being more like a ‘narrow canyon’ between two big mountains, emphasising the challenges of maintaining sovereignty amid geopolitical pressures not just between India and China, but increasingly, with the United States.

We have to see how the new Sino-US Cold War will evolve under the second Donald Trump presidency. The suspension of the MCC this week will be an opening for China to push its own BRI infrastructure projects in Nepal.

It is not very helpful to see Nepal as being ‘squeezed’ between its giant neighbours, but leverage the country’s geostrategic location by being a connector between India and China. Both neighbours, naturally, have their own interests in Nepal as a buffer state, but both want stability. Kathmandu’s strategy should be to take advantage of the economic growth of its neighbours.

Read also: Poor cash-rich Nepal, Sonia Awale  

Both books look at the arrival of Tibetan refugees into Nepal from the late 1950s, and how this resulted in geopolitical push and pull. Although American support for Khampa guerrillas was cut off after Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to Beijing in 1971, US and western support for Tibetans in exile resumed after that. 

Nepal allowed the refugees to stay and work here, but under Chinese pressure Kathmandu adopted stricter measures — including deporting Tibetans entering Nepal.

The Tibetan exile community remains one of Beijing’s biggest concerns in Nepal. Successive Kathmandu governments have been pressured to curb ‘anti-Chinese activities’ like celebrating the Dalai Lama’s birthday and other anniversaries. 

Sharma notes that so far Nepal has deftly balanced its support for refugees while keeping relations with Beijing on an even keel. It is significant that China has been surprisingly understanding of the presence of Gorkha soldiers from Nepal in the Indian Army along the disputed border where India and China fought a war in 1962, and after which there have been frequent skirmishes. 

The two books should be read chronologically so as to track the trajectory of historical Nepal-Tibet ties right up to present-day Nepal-China relations. The most relevant concern for bilateral relations today, as Sharma points out, is Nepal’s economic independence, sovereignty, and role in a transformed world order.