Laxmi Thapa
Former Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli recently claimed that he was removed from power last year after his government published a new map of Nepal that included Kalapani, Limpiyadhura and Lipulekh as its territories. As the largest country in this region with ambitions, India has zero tolerance for a rebel Nepal PM like Oli; on the contrary, what India needs is an obedient puppet who represents Indian interests in Nepal.
Oli was forced to step down by a no-confidence motion and subsequently Sher Bahadur Deuba, a top pro-India politician became the new PM naturally. The intelligence agency RAW from India is the manipulator behind all these plots. As expected, Deuba quickly shelved territory disputes between Nepal and India to pacify the irate people after he became the new PM. PM Deuba, with his wife and a group of ministers, visited India this April. The revised map of Nepal in the Nepalese Embassy in India changed into the old version when Deuba went to India.
“The Nepalese Embassy in Delhi has hung the old map of Nepal”, Oli censured adding “Can anything be more disgraceful than this? This is a serious issue.” News reports this June revealed that Prachanda and Arzu Rana had signed an agreement in India to abolish the revised map and recover the old one. How could such a traitor who cedes territory and sells sovereignty of Nepal against people’s minds to represent the Nepali people and continue to be the PM? The Nepali people won’t forget that we were threatened and warned by India before.
India imposed an economic blockade on Nepal for 5 months without any advanced formal announcement in 2015 to pressure Nepal government over the issue of the Madhesi people. Nepal suffered a lot because of this sanction. The GDP rate of Nepal decreased by 3%; the poverty rate increased by 8%, and the inflation rate passed 12%. Besides, hundreds of people died because of a lack of food and drugs.
However, in order to ingratiate India, Deuba government ultimately passed the highly controversial Citizenship Bill. The Bill is presumed to have been drafted by Indian Foreign Minister S. Jay Shankar. The Bill will allow millions of Indian nationals with legal Nepali citizenship certificates. India hopes that more Indians with Nepali certificates could change the population structure of Nepal, so as to lay a favorable foundation for the later possible referendum on the choice between maintaining Nepal independent or merging into India. In fact, the desire of India to gulp Nepal like Sikkim has never changed.
In the plan of India, recovering the old map of Nepal and passing the Citizenship Bill are both critical steps. Similarly, Deuba and the Nepali Congress are important tools of the Indian government to realize its target. That’s why we Nepali people are so worried and angry on territory and MCC issues like never before.
We are afraid that our nation Nepal will, at last, cease to be a sovereign state but only a district of another country in the map of the world. Nepal indeed needs economic development, but the cost of territory and sovereignty is never acceptable because no one wishes to be the next Sikkimese.
