Our Crippled Himalayan Policy Is in Dire Need of Resurrection

For the British colonial regime, threats and vulnerabilities emanated largely from Russia and later from China on its northern border. Tibet remained the central theatre with invasions including that of the Mongols in 1640, Gorkhas in 1792 and 1854, the army of Zorawar Singh from Jammu in 1841 and Younghusband Mission through Sikkim in 1904.

The Himalayas then was recognised as a spaciously costless buffer zone. This thinking evolved into viewing the Himalayas as the precincts of national security and countries within it largely came into its protection zone. While keeping national security as the core and centripetal force, the colonial regime stealthily unfurled its Himalayan policy with five far-reaching interventions.

Firstly, it politically engaged the ruling regimes in the neighbouring countries through various agreements and laid down security, intelligence and military networks. Secondly, primary physical and social infrastructures including roads, railways, airports, communications, education and health facilities were built. Thirdly, institutions of trade, pilgrimage and cultural exchanges among the borderland communities were further strengthened.

Fourthly, basic scientific studies, research and exploration related to nature, society, resources, bio-diversity, climate and livelihood were kick-started. And finally initiated a range of transborder institutions including Survey of India, Geological and Zoological Survey, Forest Research Institute, Indian Military Academy and even paramilitary force like Assam Rifles, thereby triggering a new set of institutional networking and knowledge generation.

It engaged a plethora of means to make the Himalayan policy inclusive, abiding and durably integrated. The Surveyor General trained hill folks for exploratory surveys of all kinds across the Himalayas. Who can forget brilliantly tough expeditioners like Nain Singh, Ala Mohammad, Ugen Gyatso, Kinthup Lama and Hari Ram who along with others actually helped in carving rugged routes to the mountains from Kabul to Kashgar, Leh to Khotan and Pithoragrah to Lhasa and Sichuan in China.

Military expeditions, botanists to travellers, trade agents to music artistes, monastic orders and missionaries to the introduction of geomagnetic surveys, fountain pen and cars were all a part of Himalayan diplomacy. This is how football, Christianity and ham radios entered Tibet and concepts of ‘excluded areas’ and ‘innerline and restricted area permits’ pervaded the North East region.

Myanmar emerged as a vibrant entrepot. Cinchona and tea plantation founded in Darjeeling and education in London among Nepalese Rana oligarchy and Sikkimese aristocrats and annual royalty to Bhutan later became models of confidence building, friendship and conflict resolutions extended through soft power instruments.

Also read: How Zhou Enlai’s Ghost Still Haunts the India-China Border Dispute in Ladakh

In the immediate post-independence period, India’s Himalayan policy remained within the premise of continuity amidst change. The 1923 Nepal-British India Treaty of Friendship was replaced by Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1950; the 1914 Convention between Great Britain, China and Tibet by 1954 Agreement on Trade and Intercourse with Tibet Region and Sinchula Treaty of Friendship with Bhutan of 1965 was replaced by the 1949 Treaty of Perpetual Peace and Friendship.

Big Push

These frameworks that continued to keep the borders open and vibrant with reciprocal exchanges delivered some effective results. Nepal confined the Chinese north of Kathmandu. Bhutanese foreign policy remained within the broader contours of India. Sikkim merged with India to become a constituent state. Asylum to Dalai Lama and formation of the Tibetan Government in Exile ensured that Tibet remained connected and influenced.

The debacle in the Sino-India War in 1962 largely damaged India’s vibrant and effective Himalayan policy. This is what the Chinese wanted. However, India while apparently demonstrating its inward looking postures, made significant dents into some critical sectors of its engagement with the partners in the Himalayas. From the Indian Aid Mission in Nepal, Indian Military Training Team (IMTRAT) in Bhutan and large scale absorption and settlement of Tibetan refugees and massive consolidation in its North East Frontier Agency and Ladakh region, India’s reach in the Himalayas recorded a new set of diverse engagements.

The open door policy of educating, training and capacity building for a staggering number of young people from the neighbourhood actually generated a new flush of Indian constituencies and goodwill in all these countries. Internally, bringing the entire hill and mountain states in the innovative basket of special category states and launching specific targeted projects like the Border Area Development Programme provided more depth to development in borderlands. Specific institutions like North Eastern Council (NEC), mountaineering and geological research, Border Road Organization, Indo-Tibetan Border Police and National Hydro Power Cooperation provided a national platform to the Indian Himalayan region.

Lost orientation

In the last few decades, India’s Himalayan policy has, however, gradually lost orientation, sheen and efficacy. The old policy in many ways cannot withstand and match the dynamics and challenges to changing national interest. This is again attributed to five critical factors. Firstly, the countries in the neighbourhood have undergone metamorphic changes in terms of their political affiliation and security alignments, presence of a multiplicity of development partners, aspiration of youth population and access to newer technology and development alternatives. For instance, the number of I/NGOs has increased from 393 in 1992 to 39759 in 2017 with varied longitudinal characters and the foreign remittances alone constitute over 29% of its GDP in Nepal.

Also read: Sonam Wangyal: From Surviving a Chinese Ambush to Standing on Mt. Everest

Secondly, institutions that were built in India to address the issues of the Himalayas and the neighbourhood have witnessed sharp erosion in areas of networking, quality of inputs, techniques of operations, strategic thinking and even in terms of institutional memories. Many of these institutions which were directly under the Union government are now either taken over by the state government or remain dilapidated. For instance, All India Radio that remained the dominant core in communication in the border areas is either badly run down or has closed down most of its neighbourhood services. So the propaganda broadcast from the alien countries has started overwhelming the borderlands.

Thirdly, the very nature of threats and vulnerabilities in the Himalayan region has undergone drastic changes. The non-traditional threats like climate change impact on livelihood, glacial lake outburst flood, transborder environmental and health injuries, gene pool piracy, hydrological flows in the rivers like Indus, Brahmaputra, Kosi and Gandak, illegal migration and trafficking, terrorism and drug peddling and wildlife trade are now as serious as orthodox military threats. In the wet market of Wuhan from where the coronavirus originated, pangolin to salamander and toads to red panda had been mostly smuggled from the sub-Himalayan regions. These are used by neighbouring countries to control and leverage on altogether new set of creatively imposed vulnerabilities.

China’s latest fascination is to harness and achieve ownership of Buddhism as a soft power and Himalayas as the abode of natural resources. Both these have been the core determinants of India’s Himalayan policy. China while being cautious of ‘resource sub-nationalism’ that traditionally exist in the mountain areas, is resorting to influence and capture all that drive these two significant processes. Buddhism promotion in Lumbini in Nepal and China Study Centres in the borderlands and homogenisation of Tibet with the guided settlement of Han Chinese and desperate attempts to establish a Chinese diplomatic mission in Bhutan is just a manifestation.

Internally usurping the monastic management in Tibet, setting up Nanhai Buddhist College in its Hainan province and Himalayan Studies Centres in some premier universities, and planned actions of National Development and Reform Commission under Belt and Road Initiative are just the tip of the iceberg. The high dams in Brahmaputra, river diversion projects like in Yangtze, mining in Tibet, wild life-caterpillar fungus-gene pools hunt in eastern and western Himalayas are aimed at hitting at the bottom of ‘resource nationalism’ through non-military means.

Fourthly, the cost of India’s self-imposed embargo on developing modern infrastructures in the borderlands in the name of stopping and confining the intruders and invaders to their own borders has been astronomical. No one is held responsible for the protracted delays and casualness with which crucial connectivity projects in borderlands like bridges, alternative highways, railways and greenfield airfields are handled?

For instance, the strategic 4.94 km long Bogibeel rail/road bridge on the Brahmaputra connecting Dibrugarh with Pashighat in Arunachal took almost two decades to be completed incurring a huge cost overrun and patience fatigue. The breach in the Hill Cart road in Tindharia-Darjeeling, a national highway, remains unattended to since 2010. The crucial 45 Sevoke-Rangpoo rail line in Sikkim initiated in 2009 is still hanging fire. On the other hand, the sophisticated modern physical infrastructures from roads to fibre optics and railways to scientific research centres have been laid on the other side of India’s borders. Systematic attempts are being made to extend them further to the central geography of the Indian Ocean.

Also read: The Kalapani Imbroglio: Has India Pushed Nepal Too Far?

And fifthly, even the research institutes and universities in the Himalayan region lack focus on mountain dynamics as the employability of their graduates is relatively low. Why should the University in Kashmir have the same curriculum as that of Bombay University? Universities in the hills have so much to offer to the global world in terms of knowledge, heritage and experimentations. Sikkim University tried this with its schools on sustainable development, disaster management, ethnobotany and social medicines, and peace and conflict programmes and a China studies centre. The then state political leadership tried to unsuccessfully thwart all these innovations and interdisciplinary courses. Why explains this myopic vision of political leadership?

While the entire highway from Shigtashe-Saga-Kailash-Ngari located above 15000 feet altitude in Tibet dances in 4G connection, most of the hill and mountains in India hardly get even a 2G connection with 10mbps bandwidth. In the Indian borderlands China Mobile, Bangladesh Grameenphone, Bhutanese B-Mobile and Nepalese N cell have more dominant signals. This kind of institutional laxity seen across the hills and mountains has led to disastrous consequences.

Migration from highland to low land in search of better living conditions, livelihood and human security has been massive. Hills that once thrived on unique indigenousness are now euphemistically called ‘money order’ economies. Since the mountain inhabitants are the first line of national security during the peace period, this human exodus has triggered huge erosion in defence layout including intelligence accumulation. Acute shortage of naturally and ethnically acclimatised manpower in building borderland infrastructure has been a serious concern. Flying workers from plain land Jharkhand to build border roads is not a sustainable solution. Such inadequate infrastructure has severely affected scientific research in areas like glaciology, water towers, biodiversity, climate, defence technology and geological and cultural ecology. All these amount to a monumental national loss.

New Himalayan policy

What is needed is a central authority where the entire gamut of issues that cater to new and resurgent Himalayan policy is discussed, planned and implemented. There is no single platform that coordinates and manages the needs and strategies of various ministries on Himalayan affairs.

There have been several studies undertaken under the aegis of Planning Commission, NITI Aayog and several regional institutions like GB Pant, NEC and universities and research institutes with far-reaching recommendations. Altogether these reports provide a substantive basis for redesigning and relocating India’s Himalayan Policy which is at the moment too scattered and bereft of any long term thinking and accountability.

Also read: Why is India Eager to Talk Borders With China but Not Nepal?

Exactly a year ago, the chief ministers of all the hill states gathered in Mussoorie to place their unique demands and grievances before the Fifteenth Finance Commission, Finance Minister and the NITI Aayog. This meeting organised by the chief minister of Uttarakhand Trivendra Rawat unequivocally demanded an exclusive Ministry of Himalayan Affairs. The ongoing skirmishes in the northern borderlands and sharply visible disconnection with mountain communities have once again drawn our attention to the need to imperatively put in place a sound, resilient and well visioned Himalayan policy.

Mahendra P. Lama teaches in JNU, New Delhi and has served on various national committees on hill and mountain regions of India.