Why Nepal’s PM Prachanda wants to make up with India

During Nepali Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s four-day visit to India in June, it was hard to tell that he was the same staunch communist leader of whom New Delhi has historically been wary.

On his first official foreign visit during this prime ministerial term, “Prachanda”, as Dahal is popularly known, avoided bringing up matters sensitive to India, clearly signifying his changed foreign policy calculus vis-à-vis Delhi.

Additionally, by taking certain steps to “mollify” Delhi, Prachanda wanted to convey his desire to improve ties, say observers of the bilateral relationship. Prachanda wants to reassure Delhi because he now realises the need to better navigate Nepal’s ties with India, they say.

Delhi and Prachanda

In the general election in November, the coalition that ruled Nepal at the time led by Sher Bahadur Deuba’s Nepali Congress party and supported by Prachanda’s Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) failed to win a majority. During negotiations to form a government, the alliance collapsed when Deuba rejected Prachanda’s demand for the prime minister’s position.

Prachanda then joined hands with rival KP Sharma Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) to form the government in December. Oli let Prachanda become the prime minister.

However, within two months, the Prachanda-Oli alliance collapsed over a dispute about their presidential election candidate. Deuba stepped back in to support Prachanda’s government, renewing their partnership that had fallen apart in December. Prachanda remained the prime minister.

Delhi has, for long, seen Nepali governments led by communist leaders such as Prachanda with caution. India’s concerns about a communist-led government in Kathmandu come amid its competition with China, a communist state, for geopolitical influence in Nepal. Delhi fears that a government in Kathmandu led by a communist will not be as sympathetic to India’s strategic interests as much as a government led by other parties such as the Nepali Congress, experts had told Scroll in January.

Delhi has had reasons to be wary of Prachanda. Between 2018 and 2021, a Prachanda-backed communist coalition government had frequent runs-in with Delhi that strained India-Nepal bilateral relations considerably.

Prachanda – who once led a long ultra-leftist insurgency in Nepal – is personally known to have close ties with the Chinese communist party. For example, when Prachanda became Nepal’s prime minister for the first time in 2008, he broke with Nepali foreign policy tradition by visiting Beijing instead of Delhi on the first official tour.

Prachanda is among Nepali leaders who have previously raked up a border dispute along the Nepal-Bihar border, over land that both countries claim as their own. During his earlier prime ministerial term, Prachanda demanded a revision of the 1950 Friendship Treaty, which underpins defence and foreign policy collaboration between the two neighbours. This demand, which he reiterated in July 2022, stems from a belief that the treaty is stacked against Kathmandu.

Prachanda’s India visit

However, these tensions were not evident during Prachanda’s four-day India tour earlier this month. In fact, Prachanda and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, signed a long-term power trade agreement, renewed a transit treaty, and announced extension of the Motihari-Amlekhgunj trans-border petroleum pipeline to Nepal’s Chitwan and construction of a new pipeline.

Just before arriving in Delhi, Prachanda had even bypassed parliament to ensure that Nepal’s president provides his assent to a contentious amendment to the country’s citizenship law that grants immediate citizenship and political rights to women foreigners married to Nepalis. The Modi government was in favour of this controversial amendment that had been blocked by Nepal’s previous president.

Similarly, Prachanda also avoided raising topics that are sensitive to Delhi such as concerns around Indian Army’s recruitment of Nepali Gurkha soldiers following the implementation of the Agnipath scheme and his long-standing demand for the revision of the 1950 Friendship Treaty.

Prachanda even downplayed a major controversy brewing at home about the supposed Akhand Bharat map, which includes parts of Nepal, placed inside India’s new parliament building.

Even on the long-standing border dispute, Prachanda made a standard statement that he had discussed the “boundary matter” with Modi, and did not provide any more details. “I urged Prime Minister Modiji to resolve the boundary matters through the established bilateral diplomatic mechanisms,” Prachanda said on June 1.

Prachanda did other things he never had.

At one point during the visit, he wore Nepal’s official and traditional dress – the first time on a foreign trip. He had previously avoided the outfit to maintain his “revolutionary image”, Nepali journalist and columnist Yubaraj Ghimire wrote.

Moreover, Prachanda, a communist leader, visited the Mahakaleshwar temple in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain.

‘Mollifying’ Delhi

Observers such as Ghimire say that Prachanda’s actions, such as the prompt clearing of the contentious citizenship law amendment, were to “mollify” Delhi.

Santosh Sharma Poudel, co-founder of the Nepal Institute for Policy Research, similarly said that not raising long-standing sensitive issues such as the revision of the 1950 Friendship Treaty was Prachanda’s “tactical decision” as “India wasn’t at all keen on it”. “At the very least, Prachanda wanted to convey that he wants Nepal-India relations to improve and prosper, and he’s ready to work with India in that regard,” Poudel told Scroll.

So, why is Prachanda trying to reassure Delhi? Harsh V Pant, Vice President of Studies and Foreign Policy at the Observer Research Foundation, said that Prachanda is now more aware of the larger geopolitical sensitivities about India involved in Nepal’s foreign policy. “[Prachanda is] finally able to comprehend that he’s more than just a communist leader,” Pant said.

“He’s a leader of a nation that has to navigate a difficult neighbourhood and navigate relations with India very deftly. I think he was able to convey that message during the visit that he’s sensitive to Indian concerns and to Nepalese concerns.”

Pant added that Prachanda now realises that his government in Kathmandu and Delhi can no longer have frosty ties. “[He wants to] reassure India that whatever difference between Delhi and Kathmandu might be, they aren’t worth damaging a relationship that perhaps is central to Nepal’s future as well as India’s aspirations to play a leading role in the neighbourhood,” Pant told Scroll.

In a similar vein, Ghimire wrote that Prachanda also realises that he needs to make compromises and “align with the BJP” – India’s ruling party. “Having to frequent temples and be seen as a Hindu leader is a part of this compulsion,” Ghimire said. “It will automatically lead him to drift away and minimise his dealings and interactions with China including discouraging investment in key sectors like hydro and security.”

To this end, Shyam Saran, India’s former foreign secretary and ambassador to Nepal, suggested that Prachanda’s temple visit would have helped change Delhi’s outlook about the communist leader. “This would have laid to rest any residual misgivings in the BJP government about having to deal with an unreformed, and possibly dangerous, communist,” Saran wrote.

However, Pant highlighted that Prachanda’s temple visit was not only about assuaging Delhi’s concerns, but also about domestic political messaging. “There is a very strong pro-religious sentiment in Nepal,” Pant said. “And a communist leader, howsoever popular he might be, cannot disavow that fact. So, it was more about domestic politics than assuaging Indian concerns.”

Also read: In Narendra Modi’s embrace, Nepal’s ‘Prachanda’ looks to bolster his position – and Indian interests