How India will treat China’s friend Prachanda who arrives tomorrow

It will be interesting to see what kind of treatment the UPA government hands out to former Prime Minister of Nepal, Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, currently Chairman of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) who is arriving in India tomorrow (27 April) on a four-day visit. New Delhi has been rather cold towards Prachanda over the years and sees him as somebody who is keen on pushing Nepal closer to China at the expense of India. He had rubbed India the wrong way when he chose China as the first destination of his foreign visit after taking over as Nepal’s Prime Minister and attended the Beijing Olympics 2008. He broke the unwritten Nepalese protocol of newly elected Nepalese leaders making India their first destination for their foreign visits. Since then the trust deficit between India and Prachanda has been widening.[caption id=“attachment_732147” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Prachanda. AFP[/caption] Prachanda has just returned from a weeklong visit to China where he was given a red carpet welcome by the new Chinese government and was able to meet virtually the entire top brass, including President Xi Jinping. During his China visit, he strongly batted for China and even stressed the need for roping in China in South Asian affairs in a big way though China is not a South Asian power. At a programme at Sichuan University, he underpinned the inability of the South Asian Free Trade Area (Safta) to spur trade in the region and suggested a solution by saying that “China’s involvement may energise Safta”. Such conduct of Prachanda has been a red rag for India as the Indians believe, not unjustifiably, that he is trying to push China’s case in south Asia and Saarc to counter balance India and he is doing so at China’s behest. It will be interesting to see who all from the Indian leadership meet Prachanda. The most likely and appropriate minister in the UPA government to have met him would have been External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid. But this is not possible as Khurshid is currently in Kazakhstan to attend a meeting of the Istanbul Process. On 28 April, Khurshid will be in Moscow to attend the India Russia Intergovernmental Commission meeting, scheduled in Moscow on 29 April. Khurshid’s return home is scheduled for late 30 April by when Prachanda would have left India. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to meet Prachanda and senior ministers like Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Defence Minister AK Antony too should be available to him. But an important political barometer for Prachanda’s credentials from New Delhi’s perspective would be if he is able to meet UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. In case Prachanda is able to meet both Sonia and Manmohan Singh, then the obvious signal would be that New Delhi has let the bygones be bygones and is once again willing to do business with him. Prachanda is an important politician of Nepal which is technically supposed to hold fresh Constituent Assembly (CA) elections by 21 June but this deadline is unlikely to be met and India is hoping that the Nepal elections would be held by this year end at least. There are sharp divisions within Prachanda’s UCPN-M party over his dalliances towards China at the cost of traditionally close relationship between India and Nepal. For example, his senior colleague Pradeep Gyawali voiced a note of caution at a press conference in Kathmandu today and was quoted as saying that Nepal’s well being lies in nationalism and opposing India cannot be termed as nationalism. Gyawali, a former minister for culture, tourism and civil aviation, said Prachanda’s visit to Nepal’s southern neighbour was centered mainly on improving the steady relationship with India. However, Gyawali warned that problems with regard to drafting of Nepal’s constitution had arisen because of “cold relationship between UCPN-M and India” and that continuance of this cold relationship between the two would be “unsafe” for Nepal. The agenda of Prachanda’s talks with his Indian interlocutors is expected to be heavy on the domestic politics side. The Indians would be keen to know firsthand from Prachanda about the latest political situation in Nepal that has lurched from political and constitutional crises from time to time in the past six years as the deeply fractious Nepalese polity has failed to write a constitution all this while. Prachanda is also likely to visit some of Indian projects in areas of power, IT and tourism to explore possibilities of expanding India-Nepal trade and economic cooperation, and India-Nepal bilateral development partnership. The upcoming Prachanda visit throws up a valuable opportunity to both India and Nepal to bolster their bilateral ties. The Indians will do well to ensure that he meets the entire political leadership of the country cutting across party lines to reassure him that India is a true and reliable friend of Nepal. Prachanda will do well by making the right noises about India-Nepal relationship and clearing the air about his China card strategy at the various forums where he will be speaking publicly during his four-day visit. After all, India and Nepal have a 1,751-km-long open border, a privilege that Nepal does not enjoy with China. The writer is a Firstpost columnist and a strategic affairs analyst who can be reached at bhootnath004@yahoo.com.