The Ugly Indian in Nepal

Narendra Modi is faced in Nepal with a failure of policy as Kathmandu looks increasingly to China and turns more and more resentful of India.

- MANI SHANKAR AIYAR

Indeed, the political mood in Nepal is such that it is the current state of India-Nepal relations that is the principal reason behind Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli’s return to office as prime minister in coalition with a party that had hitherto been regarded as our most reliable friend, the Nepali Congress led by the veteran Sher Bahadur Deuba.

Reports from Kathmandu indicate that this churning in Nepal is principally on account of the supine way in which Oli’s immediate predecessor, Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, had surrendered to the virtually imperial demands made by the Modi government on Prachanda’s official visit to Delhi in June 2023. On that visit, Prachanda eschewed the opportunity to pursue Nepal’s principal concerns with Modi saying that it would have “ruin(ed) the atmosphere”. His opponents, both within the alliance he had forged to become PM and among the commentariat and opposition in parliament, deplored such appeasement of a bullying ‘big brother’.