The recent earthquake has struck Nepal a mortal blow, flattening many areas of Kathmandu and its adjoining heartland, and also, as the world is gradually discovering, much of the mountainous regions which had initially remained outside the focus of international media. The death toll stands at 7,500 and climbing, the exact figures will perhaps never be known. Road communications, critical to a mountainous, laterally disposed country like Nepal, especially major east-west trunk axes like the Mahendra Rajmarg have been severely affected over long stretches. As a result, it has affected the bulk movement of goods, relief materials and personnel from one part of the country to another, leaving heli-borne relief as the only alternative for many villages in the interior.
India has been the first and the most massive responder to the SOS from its stricken neighbour. India launched “Operation Maitri” to dispatch relief to Nepal, which included specialist rescue teams of the National Disaster Relief Force, supplies, medical facilities, transport aircraft, helicopters, road transport, backed up by engineer regiments of the Indian Army to open up road communications and rebuild the bridges, Nepal’s lifeline.
India’s spontaneous response generated a strong feeling of warmth in Nepal where this country is often regarded as a domineering “big brother”. Nevertheless, with all the faults ascribed to it, India still remains the one country in the world which the vast majority of Nepalese consider a home away from home. However, no country likes to be eternally beholden, particularly to an overwhelmingly larger neighbour, no matter how dedicated, well intentioned, or friendly the ties. Nepal is no exception. A sentiment is unmistakably emerging there “Thanks for your help — but we’ll take it from here”.
Paradoxically, too, a latent hostility towards India exists. It is based on perceptions of alleged Indian hegemony, which can resurface with a single misstep because wildfire propagation of political disinformation has been facilitated as never before by the mushrooming of the all-pervading social media — that strange and totally faceless new medium —and its ritual jargon of Facebook, Twitter etc.
By contrast, government efforts at post-disaster relief always appear to be pedestrian, “too little too late”, whether with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans or the Kedarnath tragedy in India. The Nepal earthquake is another such catastrophe. Its trauma is susceptible to manipulation by various political forces within Nepal, especially those who have long nursed “hate’s eye view” of India, such as Pushpa Kamal Dahal also known as Prachanda and the Maoists, the ultra-volatile student community in Kathmandu, or dispossessed Nepalese royals. The countdown to that process seems to have commenced already.
Meanwhile, India has to maintain a low profile, but while so doing, the Indian Army must also remain totally focused on its role in “Operation Maitri,” specifically the provision of relief to the over two lakh serving and retired soldiers of the Indian Army and other paramilitary forces and their families in Nepal who continue to enrich India with their valour, fortitude and service, and are now themselves in need of succour.
The extensive support system for their welfare built up inside Nepal by the government of India has to be fully and quickly activated, incorporating within it the Gorkha Regimental Centres of the Indian Army and their close linkages with their regimental personnel and pensioners, who are caught in the trauma of the earthquake in the “pahad des”. If properly integrated into the overall relief effort, these regimental centres can play a hugely effective role as relief coordinators, extending the outreach of “Operation Maitri” manifold to the farthest flung mountain hamlets in the shattered interiors of Nepal where these hardy fighting men dwell.
India’s bank of goodwill will be further enhanced if the government extends this disaster relief network to encompass the fraternal armed forces and police of Nepal, who steadfastly remained at their posts throughout the crisis at a time when many were severely affected personally. Meanwhile, India must brace itself on another front from which attention was diverted by the earthquake — to Nepal’s problems, which have a direct spillover into India. These problems are likely to re-surface as the initial shock of the calamitous natural tragedy wears off.
Chief amongst them are the contentious “plains versus hills” politics between the Hindi speaking “Madhesia” citizens of Nepal’s Terai region and the “Khas Kura” Gurkhali speakers of the Kathmandu Valley and the “pahad des” rimlands. Another cause for concern remains the creeping menace of Islamic proselytation in the Nepal Terai, funded by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence, and propagated through the Ahl-e-Hadith, as a long-term attempt to destabilise the communal situation in Bihar and UP and foster Jihad inside India’s heartland.
In this context the Pakistan Embassy in Kathmandu, besides its formal diplomatic functions, is also a safe house and forward ISI command post in that city, for covert operations against India in the Indo-Nepal border zone, which have in the past, included the 1999 hijack of Indian Airlines’ Kathmandu-Delhi flight IC 814, an event which hurt India badly. The “Islamisation” of the Nepal Terai, will certainly contribute to India’s internal security problems.
India must be extra careful not to overstay its welcome in Nepal, and follow its own example, when it exited Bangladesh in 1971, almost immediately after the epic victory over Pakistan in the War of Liberation. India’s commitment in Nepal was a crash-action response to a very special neighbour, but now that the worst is over, and the country painfully rises back to its feet, the time may have come for India to dispassionately reassess the situation. “Ayo Gorkhali”, the Gorkhas are coming!
The writer is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament
