By N. P. Upadhyaya (Aryal)

“A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait”.
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Kathmandu: Indian policy towards Nepal is likely to see a paradigm shift shortly.
It is speculated that India is determined for a course correction of its previous Nepal Himalayan blunders that distanced India from Nepal amongst the nationalists who consider India as the real villain for multiple reasons.
In fact, a section of a highly informed citizenry in Nepal loves to hate India for having uninterruptedly twisted the arms of Nepal after the removal of the Nepali monarchy.
But how and why the course correction has become imperative for the Hindu fundamentalist regime shall be discussed in the article hereafter.
Some political events back in Nepal have expectedly drawn the serious attention of the Indian regime.
India’s Hindu fanatics are more interested in Nepal than it is otherwise.
We will come to it later.
Indications to that effect have begun surfacing much to the askance of the Nepali leaders who were, let’s be clear, elevated by the regime across the border for a special cause and that being the removal of Nepal’s Royal Institution.
Some Nepali leaders have been serving the Indian regime much similar to what and how the Sikkimi national, a political personality indeed, used to serve Madame Indira Gandhi who ultimately allowed India to gulp sovereign and independent Sikkim in the mid-seventies.
He was Kazi Lendhup Dorje, taken as a traitor after he died an unsung death.
The Lendhups Nepali version in Nepal is in abundance and very much alive and kicking and there is seemingly some sort of rivalry among the Nepali turncoats as to who is to serve India better comparatively.
The Nepali Royalty was unceremoniously ousted, let’s recall, only for the reason that India felt or even concluded that “it is the Nepali Royalty that has been impeding India to “control” Nepal’s entire administrative and foreign policy structure and thus the institution as such needs to be dissolved.
And for the dissolution of the said foundation India manufactured Prachanda and his so-called People’s War with the sole objective of capturing entire Nepali politics through the sheltered turncoats.
Highly placed sources say that Pushpa Kamal Dahal was awarded the nickname “Prachanda” by India provided the coward Maoists lodging in Delhi’s outskirts with the sole objective of “damaging Nepal” through Nepali nationals whose loyalty was not for Nepal but India.
India succeeded in its mission by smartly using and overusing Nepal’s paid and posted agents who sometime later did away with Nepal’s Royal institution for all time to come.
It was this ejection of Monarchy that made sovereign and independent Nepal guardians less and threw Nepal to the mercy of the enemy regime-India.
Since 2005/6, Nepal is in effect parentless.
Nepali politics swings to the whims and the dictates, sorry to say, of the enemy regime in the South.
And India began ruling Nepal’s whole politics, both internal and external, through the implicit support of those who were and are still taken as the “stooges” of the Indian establishment.
After the exclusion of the Monarchy, India had free play in Nepal. India reigned Nepal through the paid idiots and by this time has almost captured Nepal’s entire natural resources without facing a problem.
A fresh example is the candidacy of Ram Chandra Paudel to the post of Nepal President was unquestionably finalized by the Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra who had landed in Kathmandu on February 13, 2023, only to elevate R. C. Paudel to the Nepal President post.
Paudel is the new Nepal President and is taken as a political man of India’s choice.
India needs President Paudel only with the hope that “an India elevated President will approve the pending citizenship bill” soon in the Parliament.
The Indian idea and plan is to Sikkimise Nepal by early 2030 and for that illegal immigrants need to swell the Nepali population at the time of the Referendum to choose a sovereign Nepal or dissolution of Nepal into the vast Indian Ocean.
It is not that India loves President Paudel. No, it is not.
President Paudel is likely to approve the citizenship bill in haste as India has begun pressing him to act for what he was elevated to the present rank.
Some even say that President Paudel has been awarded by India for his key role in steering the Parliament in the mid-nineties at the time of the Mahakali River Treaty ratification.
Similarly, the current Speaker of the Nepal parliament honorable Dev Raj Ghimire too has been valued for his “key” role in finalizing the Mahakali River Treaty in India’s favor at a dirt-cheap price on behalf of the United Marxists Leninists (UML) party now headed by K. P. Oli.
To recall, it was this anti-national act of UML Chairman K. P. Oli which compelled the Indian regime to award free kidney transplantation to K. P. Oli at Medanta Hospital in Delhi. India repaired two damaged kidneys of K. P. Oli for free.
It was this life-saving Indian gesture that Oli as prime minister closed the issue of the pointed map of Nepal captured by India.
And K. P. Oli’s secret ties with the RAW Chief Samant Kumar Goyal remain no longer a secret.
So, all India’s men are ruling Nepali in some way or the other.
While the power centre of Nepal in the past remained inside the Royal Palace, the same power center now has shifted to the former British colony and for this shift, India did all it can to oust one of the strongest pillars (that was the monarchy definitely and unquestionably) of Nepal that had kept this nation equally close to China in the North.
Needless to say, with monarchy gone from the political scene, China has been pushed to the wall.
China is alone in Nepal and is paying a heavy price for having ousted the monarchy with the consent of India.
China is thus advised to inch closer to Pakistan and the US on some key issues that may deter India’s overwhelming penetration in Nepal.
A stronger Pakistan could be a political deterrent in South Asia which has to endure India’s increasing hooliganism.
However, Pakistan is weaker from within as the political and social sector appears hell-bent on insulting and humiliating its own political men seated in the upper echelons of the political corridor.
Pakistan thus is a splintered society which has allowed India to deeply penetrate into its social fabric.
The RAW penetration which is seemingly present in the Pakistani media, is not included.
Thanks, the US is now active in that some influential and educated personalities have entered into Nepali politics who presumably were somewhat close to the US.
However, we are yet not sure but rumors suggest that the US too has been flexing its muscles of late.
Back to the main point:
India is about to change its Nepal policy not for the benefit of Nepal, but instead, for its political and electoral advantage.
The idea is to benefit from a Hindu Nepal at the time of the approaching Indian election next year.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, believes that a Hindu Nepal will have a considerable impact on the Hindu voters to unconditionally vote for Narendra Bhai Modi once again.
And for this purpose, the Indian Prime Minister has deputed Chief Minister Aditya Nath Yogi to do whatever for Nepal that benefits and is to the advantage of the BJP in the approaching election.
In a way, Chief Minister Yogi is to determine the fate of Nepal as to whether Nepal should exist with a Hindu monarch or remain secular. Notably, Nepal is primarily a Hindu-dominated country.
Yogi has been entrusted with how to deal with the deposed Nepal King and PM Modi has also commanded CM Yogi that whatever CM Yogi decides on Nepal shall be binding and final to the entire Indian regime.
CM Yogi, the likely heir apparent of PM Modi, is a Nepali-speaking Indian national with deep love and respect for the Hindu identity of Nepal with a Hindu monarch on top.
Interestingly and most strikingly, King Gyanendra is on a ten-day visit to India, (Uttar Pradesh) which adds weight to the popular gossip that India is soon to restore the Nepali monarchy.
King Gyanendra’s Nepalgunj speech dated 03 May 2023, too contained his earnest desire to stage a comeback to the Nepali throne.
The King must not have almost threatened the Nepali leaders that enough had been enough and that the nation needs his active presence to correct the piled-up political aberrations.
The King’s warning-loaded speech from Nepalgunj too has meaning in that his august father King Mahendra had scrapped the democratic system led by PM B. P. Koirala in 1960 December. Has this any meaning or political connotations?
The brazen acts of Himalayan corruption since the advent of Shyam Saran’s imposed Republican order in Nepal too need to be arrested sooner the better.
The fake export of Bhutanese-Nepalese refugees to the USA scandal too demands that someone as a powerful political personality jumps into the scene and sends the entire corrupt leaders to jail summarily.
Nepali leaders nursed and indoctrinated by former Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran have been found engaged in this billion-dollar scandal of “state-sponsored” human trafficking.
The top hats from the Nepali Congress, the Maoists, and the UML have been found engaged/involved in human trafficking.
King Gyanendra’s fresh trip to India could be associated with the regime change in Nepal.
But one pertinent question shall confront the Nepali people as to how India elevated King Gyanendra to be taken as the custodian of Nepali sovereignty.
Will not the king have some soft corner for the enemy regime of India for his restoration?
King Gyanendra must analyze these probable eventualities. How will he convince the Nepali population if and when he is restored?
The Goa SCO conference and Pakistan:
Bluntly speaking, neighboring country Pakistan is seemingly the victim of the “enemy from within” phenomenon. It is at its weakest state perhaps in its history.
This is what I felt and now conclude that Pakistan will be even more fatigued in the days ahead if the way its media veterans, intellectuals, social networks and foreign policy veterans took their own Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto’s performance at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization held in Goa, India, May 4-5, 2023.
Watching various mushrooming Pakistani media channels/outlets, what was evident and distinctly clear was that the so-called informed citizenry of Pakistan enjoyed BB’s intended to insult and humiliate the Indian regime and its disciplined Godi media to the hilt and in doing so, the informed literati back in Pakistan some way or the other displayed their own political and intellectual bankruptcy of the highest order.
Nepal, my own country, suffered from his syndrome which allowed India to pounce on Nepal beginning early 1990s.
Some Pakistanis were even heard saying that FM Bilawal must not have landed in India. What a ridiculous comment!
The new entrant in the diplomatic domain, Bilawal Bhutto, did all he can to reiterate the issues which were and are important to Pakistan, for example I guess, Kashmir occupation by India, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the Islamophobic attitude of PM Modi’s Indian government.
FM Bilawal also demanded the restoration of statehood for the resumption of talks with India which meant that India should revert to August 5, 2019, unilateral actions on the breakup of Jammu and Kashmir.
One Tweeterati apparently from Pakistan says “It was the best interview he had watched from a Pak politician. His confidence, preparedness and depth of knowledge of international relations were simply superb.”
As an outsider and a keen watcher of South Asian Regional Politics, what I can say is that FM Bhutto gave his best while being on Indian soil attending the SCO meet.
Negative comments need to be brushed aside.
On the contrary, BB’s counterpart, the arrogant and short-tempered exhibited his erratic traits, posing with a visibly cold face which was keenly noted by the political commentators in South Asia including this scribe.
Back home from the Goa meet, FM Bilawal talking to the press said a “sense of insecurity’ was the main reason behind incensed remarks by FM Shankar on Pakistan.
“I succeeded in countering the false narrative “of Modi’s regime that every Muslim was a terror suspect and exposing Delhi’s history of defiance of bilateral and international agreements”, reports the Dawn newspaper dated May 06, 2023.
The fact is that BB attended the Foreign Ministers’ meeting of the SCO in India as a distinguished member of the SCO conglomerate.
He showed a Pakistani presence.
Yes! Indeed, comparatively speaking, Bilawal Bhutto is a new entrant in the FP domain junior and has less expertise in the foreign affairs domain as compared to India’s highly arrogant Foreign Minister Shankar who was best termed a “Waiter” by Professor S. Swamy. How Jay Shankar is a waiter in the eyes of Harvard Professor Swamy is not of our interest.
FM Shankar could be taken as what Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (August 28, 1749-March 22, 1832) the German author once said, “A man’s manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait”.
Perhaps FM Shankar’s actions at the SCO meet were very close to what the German author said when alive.
In Nepal, FM Shankar is taken as a political terrorist.
The debates and discussions that we watched through social media on Pakistani participation at the SCO meet in Goa gave an impression that Pakistan is completely a broken society, as stated earlier, and that the country’s nationals in many more ways than one speaking almost with the same pungent tone as was being “calculatedly and under a design” aired by Indian media.
Pakistani nationals pouncing upon Pakistan! A bizarre scene.
In sum, Pakistani nationals do not possess a common voice on foreign policy issues as Indian nationals exhibit their total and unconditional solidarity with the government’s stance on foreign policy issues.
This is what makes Pakistan weaker than India.
The feeling among some Pakistani nationals that “we are inferior to rival Indians” is what shall in all likelihood not allow its own government to stand tall in the comity of nations and more so in South Asia in the years ahead.
It is this inferiority complex that has got to be erased from the “brainwashed” brain.
Pakistani nationals perhaps expected Julfikar Ali Bhutto’s diplomatic stature in junior Bhutto as senior Bhutto had come out with flying colors when he had signed the Shimla agreement on 2nd July in Shimla with Madame Indira Gandhi.
Junior Bhutto over time shall attain the same height if and when he is not grilled by his own brethren in Pakistan.
And finally, Pakistan’s diplomats posted at least in South Asian capitals should have by now organized a brief press meet to blunt the flood of India’s talking nonsense against Pakistan and its FM Bilawal Bhutto.
Nepal is flooded with the erratic comments made by India and its tamed media on Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto’s Goa SCO meet.
India’s Godi media injects venom into Nepali minds which later becomes largely the opinions of the Nepali intellectuals, to put it bluntly. And what we hear from Godi media becomes final for the Nepali people. We rarely get the Pakistani version of Pakistani events. So sad. Is Islamabad listening? That’s all.

Published on: May 10, 2023. Courtesy of People's Review and the author