Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and the ruling Nepal Communist Party have been acting as Beijing’s stooges ever since the Chinese Ambassador to Nepal intervened to avert a split in the ruling party, and put all its weight behind KP Sharma Oli. The Oli government recently released an objectionable political map that shows India’s territory in Nepal and Prime Minister Oli has himself been making distasteful remarks against India, including blaming India for spreading Coronavirus.
However, the Nepal Communist Party got an embarrassing reality check in Nepal’s Dumling village on Thursday. Eight Nepalese Communists (Maoists) were headed towards India in a bid to hoist the Nepalese flag in the Indian territory, but they were restrained and thrashed by Nepalese citizens themselves. They were arrested by the Nepal police after this incident.
The eight Nepalese youths were headed towards Kalapani in India, which is near the Lipulekh pass. At issue is the Dharchula-Lipulekh road link recently inaugurated by India. It gives New Delhi a vantage point at a high altitude of 17,060 feet above sea level on the tri-junction between India, China, and Nepal, merely 4 kilometres away from the Line of Actual Control (LAC)- the effective Sino-India border. Beijing has been using the Nepal Communist Party to rake up minor border disputes with India, in order to hamper India’s strategic interests in the region.
In this backdrop, the eight Nepalese Communists had started this journey towards Kalapni on foot from the Lekam village of Nepal’s Darchula district and covered a distance of 60 kilometres in three days. On Thursday, they reached Dumling, which is around 50 kilometres away from India.
But here is the real deal- the Nepalese Communists might have sold themselves out to the Communist Party of China (CCP), but the ordinary Nepalese citizens continue to value their time-tested relationship with India. Nepalese citizens share a strong cultural bond with India, and they really don’t have anything to do with China.
The Nepalese Communists met stiff resistance from the Dumling locals. The Nepalese citizens know that the actions of the Nepal Communist Party can permanently jeopardise the bilateral ties between India and Nepal. The ordinary Nepalese will be hit hard in case New Delhi decides to shut the open border between two countries. After all, millions of Nepalese migrant workers find employment in India, and some Nepalese, especially in the Terai region, share even ethnic and familial relations with India.
The Dumling locals thus were not ready to allow the eight Communist youths to create unnecessary tensions between India and Nepal. But the Nepalese Communists insisted on going ahead towards India and this led to a scuffle between the locals and the eight youths. The leader of the Communist group- Jeewan Bisht has alleged that the locals thrashed them.
Bisht says that he and his accomplices were beaten black and blue with lathis (batons) by the Dumling locals. Eventually, the Nepalese Communists were arrested by the police on charges of lockdown violations.
The Nepalese Communists have either sold off their fickle loyalties to Beijing or are plainly deracinated to the point that they don’t value Nepal’s civilizational ties that they share with India. In any case, they do not have the popular support of Nepalese citizens over this issue, and they came to know this the hard way, that is, by getting thrashed by the locals.