Badge of Nationalism
"Kalapani"- waters – the term has an ominous ring to it in much of South Asia due to its association with the hellish colonial-era penitentiary in the Andamans. In Nepal, too, the term carried the same connotation despite the country´s having evaded British rule. But not any more. Today, emotions on Kathmandu´s streets run high the moment "Kalapani" comes up.
The place Kalapani lies at the junction where China, India and Nepal meet in Nepal´s northwestern corner (see map). A cursory glance at the map does not reveal anything remarkable about the area. Its only significance, but a strategically important one, is the location of that most valuable of mountain prizes high up on the border with Tibet/ China: a pass in an otherwise impenetrable Himalayan barrier. (This was the same pass that the star-crossed Kailash-Manasarovar pilgrims of India were headed for when they were killed in a landslide at the village of Malpa in Uttar Pradesh´s Pithoragarh district in mid-August this year.)
Since the 1962 India-China war, India has maintained a military presence at Kalapani some distance south of the pass, a position that the Nepal government claims falls within its territory and thus wants vacated. India does not accept Nepal´s claim.
The sticking point is the source of the Mahakali river. Under the 1816 treaty between Nepal and the East India Company, Kath mandu had to give up all its conquered lands west of the Mahakali river (also known as the Sharada in India), and that document is still the recognised basis for the frontier between western Nepal and the Indian region of Kumaon.
Around the area in question, there are three branches of the Mahakali, and the controversy rests on which one of these is the Mahakali proper and which are just tributaries. India claims that the eastern-most branch is the Mahakali, while Nepal claims it is the one which flows just west of the Indian military camp. There are also, those in Nepal who claim that the third branch, furthest west (and by all accounts with the largest flow), is the ´real´ one.
The issue of the Indian post at Kalapani suddenly burst upon Nepal´s national scene in 1996, following the two countries´ signing of the Integrated Mahakali Treaty, which envisaged the building of a massive 6500 MW high dam at Pancheswar. (The "integrated" in the treaty was meant to end the earlier controversy over construction on the Tanakpur Barrage, built downstream on the Mahakali, which had resulted in the inundation of some hectares of Nepali territory.)
Where the Mahakali Treaty hoped to make a fresh start leaving behind previous misunderstandings, it unleashed another, more powerful controversy. When the treaty came up for debate in the Nepali Parliament, the main communist opposition party came armed with 27 ´flaws´ in the agreement, one of which happened to be the existence of the Indian camp at Kalapani.
The affair immediately became highly charged. The Kathmandu government took the matter up with New Delhi, which although dismissive of the claim, agreed that a joint expert committee should meet to get to the bottom of the matter. Till now, the two sides have met formally three times, without agreement.
Successive governments in Nepal (the present one is the fourth since 1996) have had to play to the national galleries by maintaining, with varying degrees of stridency, that "Kalapani is ours". Parties in opposition, meanwhile, have lost no opportunity to use Kalapani as a battering ram against the government of the day. Going outside Parliament, bandhs and protest rallies have been organised. Newspaper write-ups have built up the frenzy.
It all reached fever pitch when the student wing of the Marxist-Leninists, recently split from the United Marxist-Leninists, went on a "Long March" to Kalapani to try an-d plant the Nepali national flag there. (They were prevented from doing so by the Indian police.) The Indian Embassy in Kathmandu did not help matters by issuing a statement, much in the style of Nepali politicians themselves, claiming that Kalapani was India´s. Forced into a corner, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala has, on more than one occasion, parroted the same refrain, "Kalapani is ours!"
The proper thing to do with Kalapani would be for both sides to let the expert committee carry through with its work away from the media glare. The issue´s politicisation in Kathmandu has little to do with the Nepali politician´s love of motherland, and everything to do with domestic factional politics. Those who issue the strident cry, "Kalapani is ours!" are more interested in cornering domestic opponents than resolving a bilateral border problem and ´reclaiming´ Nepali land.
Except for stray reports, the goings-on in Nepal and the anti-India rhetoric that has been spewing out have not been taken up by the national papers in India, busy as they have been with the travails of nuclear-dom and the shakiness of the BJP coalition at the Centre. Even when the Delhi media´s attention was on the Malpa landslide, there was no mention, even in passing, that Nepal has been claiming proprietory rights to the route the pilgrims would have taken up the pass.
If the high-decibel level of the Kalapani campaign continues in Nepal, it is only a matter of time before politicians in Lucknow and Delhi begin to pick up the opposing refrain. Should that happen Kalapani will cease to be a cut-and-dried matter of border delineation to be agreed upon by technocrats with the help of ancient documents and maps. It would then become a question of ´national honour´ in India as well, at which point, the Nepali hope of possibly reclaiming Kalapani would recede even further.
One would go so far as to ask whether the Nepali politicians, so cynically using Kalapani rhetoric for party-specific gains, are not themselves acting against the national interest. For, if Indian politicians too get engaged with Kalapani, then resolution of the problem would become remote. And the Indian military camp would continue to stay where it is.