Article:

A pass to tradeOpening of Nathu la can be a new beginningby Parshotam Mehra

IN the course of his two-day visit to Beijing early this month, which the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao hailed as ‘successful’, the Indian defence minister reached an agreement with his Chinese counter-part on a number of security matters. Among these is the prospective re-opening of the Nathu la (in Tibetan ‘la’ stand for pass) on the Sikkim-Tibet border for trade.
The re-opening of the 4,310 metre-high pass, which remains snow-bound during winter months, marks an important landmark in relations between the two countries and holds out the prospect of reviving a mutually beneficial overland trade and commercial link.
The Lhasa-Kalimpong trade route via the Nathu la, about one-third shorter than the Lhasa-Kathmandu road, offers the best possible linkage between Tibet and the world outside. It promises enormous potential benefits for both the Himalayan border regions and the local economies in what the Chinese now call the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), as well as northeast India. For more than a hundred years since the early 1890s, if not indeed farther back in time, the trade route has been a major axis of Asian trade. Together with its linkages north and eastwards towards China and Central Asia and its extension towards Kolkata, it has historically promoted considerable commercial activity in central Tibet as well as northeast India.
Thanks to this route and the rich variety of goods it carried, travellers to Tibet until the mid-20th century were able to find en-route, and in Lhasa itself, almost all they needed for their every day needs. Again, once the Nathu la is open, it would be incongruous to keep the neighbouring Jelap la closed; its re-opening would directly help Darjeeling revive its stagnant economy. Unlike Sikkim, it receives no central largesse; and for lack of trade avenues, the district’s health and prosperity have long been on the decline.
Understandably, the re-opening of Nathu la has been a key demand of the local authorities in Sikkim, the adjoining Darjeeling Autonomous Hill region and the TAR since the 1980s, in the wake of a modicum of normalcy returning to New Delhi-Beijing relations. A major obstacle was the political status of Sikkim. Long a tributary state of Tibet, it had in the 1890s become a British protectorate, a position independent India, the Raj’s political legatees, inherited in 1947. The status quo continued until 1974 when following some local disturbances New Delhi formally annexed the state. Beijing was not amused, and took another thirty long years to accept the ground reality.
Negotiations over border trade and other details were not a cakewalk and the actual re-opening of the pass, often times promised, was repeatedly postponed. Three earlier deadlines may be of interest. First mentioned in the wake of Prime Minister Vajpayee’s visit to Beijing in June 2003, at least two other dates were later officially announced October 2005 and as late as April 2006. Even as of date, the actual re-opening is scheduled in ‘about’ a month time!
Sadly the March 1959 Tibetan rebellion followed by the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict converted the Himalayan region into a super-sensitive border area replete with travel restrictions, road-building and the presence of large numbers of security forces. The closure of the border created dead-ends on both sides and ushered in a period of economic atrophy in Tibet and the whole Himalayan region. Another consequence was militarisation of the region and its societies, especially in the northeast, which further complicated their internecine conflicts and disputes with New Delhi. One would hope that with local tensions dissipating with the re-opening of a number of other passes in this Tibetan-speaking Himalayan rim of south Asia, the long-standing antipathy in New Delhi for Kathmandu’s desire for north-south roads within Nepal may also be finally overcome. The re-opening of Nathu la may thus herald the cementing of economic and human relationships across the northern frontiers of South Asia.
A word of caution though may not be out of place. The nature of the traffic in goods and services that the re-opening of Nathu la generates remains a moot point. All along, before its ‘liberation’ in October 1950, Tibet’s staple export was wool, which it traded for all kinds of consumer goods, for most part textiles. Not long after, by the mid-1950s for sure, the traffic in wool nearly dried up for the Indian monopoly quietly yielded place to a Chinese stranglehold.
What China’s Tibet needs today is access to the sea promised by Highway 31 which leads towards Siliguri and on to Calcutta. More, there is its desperate need for such hardware as steel, kerosene and other petroleum products, above all for rice and other food grains in which Tibet is abysmally deficit. And all of which Beijing brings into TAR at enormous expense — thanks to the intervening distance and the lie of the land. What we will get in return for our hardware will be a glut of cheap Chinese goods hitherto confined to the grey market in these hilly and inaccessible regions. A fair exchange that could only multiply with more avenues of ingress and egress!
The writer is a former chairman of the Departments of History and Central Asian Studies at Panjab University.