The Dragon’s Shadow

The Dragon’s Shadow

Dilip Ghosh

Since China considers India as its only challenger in Asia towards realizing its dream of becoming a global power, such conduct of Pakistan is in its interest. In Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, it already has sizeable presence. Now it is spreading its tentacles around Nepal also so as to restrict India to operate within its geographical limits.
Today, China is not only making massive investments in infrastructural projects in Nepal and supplying arms to Kathmandu, it is also providing direct aid to Nepalese educational and cultural organizations matching Indian grants. One may recall that during the pro-democracy movement in Nepal when all countries stopped arms supply to the beleaguered monarch, China alone continued its arms supply to him and the monarch used those arms against the Maoists who looked forward to it for help.
While China has been engaged in strengthening ties with India’s other neighbours for a long time, Sino-Nepali ties began to consolidate much later. This is because Nepal has a special relation with India which extends beyond the Indo-Nepal Treaty of Friendship of 1950, and secondly, Nepal is not easily accessible from any place in China.
The exercise of image building by China in the Nepali mind through execution of different projects is of great concern to India. China’s latest move is to match India in providing direct help for building schools and study centres in Nepal. According to a recent report, soon after India provided development assistance of Rs 100 million for the remote Nepali hill village of Mustang, China responded with grant worth Rs 10 million for construction of a school building with computers in Chhosur village adjoining Jhongwsen district of Tibet in the same region.
Another great concern for India is the shift in Chinese policy of non-interference to interference in Nepal’s domestic politics. It reportedly attempted to buy 50 Nepali legislators to influence the prime ministerial voting in favour of UCPN-Maoist candidate Prachanda.
The Nepal media which criticized India for sending Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s special envoy Shyam Saran to Kathmandu on the eve of the sixth round of Nepalese prime ministerial election alleging interference in Nepal’s domestic politics, was taken by surprise by the Chinese move. One wonders if China can interfere in the domestic affairs of Nepal, what prevents it from poking its nose into the domestic affairs of India! It is already harbouring Paresh Baruah of ULFA and other northeastern militant leaders. There is no reason why it will not try to arm the Maoists in India who constitute the biggest internal security threat to the country, given the porous nature of Indo-Nepal and India-Myanmar border.
(ADNI)