The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : Arms supply to Nepal will be gross folly

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Wednesday, Apr 27, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Arms supply to Nepal will be gross folly

The United Progressive Alliance Government's decision to resume the supply of arms "in the pipeline" to the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) is a betrayal of the Nepalese political parties struggling for the restoration of democracy. It is a shot in the arm for King Gyanendra, whose reactionary putsch of February 1 prompted the suspension of military aid in the first place. In resolving not to send the RNA weapons, New Delhi signalled that it was unacceptable to use the war against the Maoists as a pretext for banishing democratic politics and imposing an emergency. India's principled and progressive decision helped set the international terms for dealing with the return of the ancien regime in Nepal. The reasons being advanced now, in hushed tones and behind closed doors, to justify the U-turn are the need to maintain India's `leverage' with Nepal and keep alternative arms suppliers out; as well as fuzzy strategic affairs and security considerations. The rationalisation does not wash. There is simply no way landlocked Nepal can escape economic, logistic, and strategic dependence on India.

By changing course in less than three months, in return for vague, non-binding commitments to the eventual restoration of political processes, India has, in effect, accepted the awful logic that democracy and the protection of civil liberties and human rights cannot go hand in hand with counter-insurgency. Spurred on by New Delhi's benediction, the Nepalese security forces are likely to go all out to find a bloody `military solution' to the Maoist question, and intimidate democratic opponents and critics in the bargain. India's decision to go back to playing ball with King Gyanendra could increase disarray in the democratic camp. That is why the King was so eager to go public about the Indian U-turn immediately after his Jakarta meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The arms matter less to him than the legitimacy India has bestowed on him and his not-so-secret project to turn the clock back to the bad old days of the Panchayat system.

The Government has compounded its foreign policy blunder by failing to be straightforward about it. There has not even been a formal acknowledgment from the Indian side of the decision to release the first consignment of arms for the RNA. This official silence — coupled with Prime Minister Singh's opaque statement that his Government would look at the issue of arms supplies "in the proper perspective" — exposes the lack of anchor and coherence in New Delhi's Nepal policy. The Government must immediately revoke its decision to send arms "in the pipeline" if it is to carry any credibility with democratic forces in Nepal and elsewhere. After all, since the monarch-dictator broke the understanding that neither side would go public, India is well within its formal rights to scrap the bargain struck in Jakarta. New Delhi must demand that King Gyanendra end press censorship, release all political prisoners, lift the state of emergency, and set a date for free general elections — as conditions precedent for any return to arms supply. It would be a breach of democratic faith and gross folly to settle for anything less.

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