New Delhi
29 July 2007
India's neighbourhood policy is on test in Bhutan and Nepal, which
do not share identical views on how best to rehabilitate the Bhutanese refugees of
Nepalese origin. The contentious issue is threatening to snowball into a diplomatic row
in India's backyard with Kathmandu directing its displeasure at New Delhi and Thimphu
for not doing enough.
As Minister of External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee returned home on Sunday after
spending three days in Bhutan, Nepal Foreign Minister Sahana Pradhan has told
reporters in Kathmandu that she was not "hopeful" of obtaining India's cooperation. Mr
Mukherjee's visit to the Himalayan kingdom, which ostensibly was undertaken to sign an
agreement for setting up the largest-ever 1,095 mega watt Punatsangchhu hydel project,
barely received media attention in India but it did not go unnoticed in Nepal.
Ms Pradhan said, "When thousands of refugees tried to cross Indo-Nepal border at
Panitanki to enter Bhutan from Mechi Bridge in east Nepal crossing the Indian border a
couple of months ago, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee had said India would
talk to both Bhutan and Nepal for early resolution of the problem and also maintained
that it has become an international issue. At that time, we were very hopeful to receive
India's cooperation in the repatriation of the Bhutanese refugees issue but now we are
not much hopeful about that."
Sikkim University Vice Chancellor Prof Mahendra P Lama told this newspaper that the
refugee issue could potentially upset the delicately crafted balance in New Delhi's ties
with her two neighbours. He also said that the organised attempts to cross the India-
Nepal border by the refugees could become a serious law and order problem in a locality
which only recently witnessed violence in a nearby village of Nandigram.
Prof Lama, who is formerly of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, said that the
arrival of refugees in the early 1990s created stirs among the local authorities in West
Bengal and pressure from the Government of West Bengal today could change the
"entire matrix of India's consciously chalked out indifferent approach to this protracted
problem." He cautioned that the coming to power of the Communist Party of Nepal
(Maoist) could also change the entire parameters of Nepal-India and Nepal-Bhutan
relations.
Prof Lama has contributed a paper for the volume on "The Politics, Human Rights and
Security Implications of Protracted Refugee Situations", brought out by Oxford
University, United Nations University (Tokyo) and the Center for International Studies at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. In that he has said that
discussions with various senior Indian officials has revealed that Bhutan offered to part
with one of the districts in southern Bhutan and handing it over to India for resettlement
of the refugees and other Nepali-speaking Bhutanese citizens. "Given its serious
international ramifications, this was apparently discarded by India as a desperate
proposal from Bhutan," read his paper on the "Bhutanese Refugees in Nepal: State
Behaviour, Management Intervention and Repatriation Dilemma".
Prof Lama is certain that India has to play a role in the resolution of the refugee problem
and there is no escaping it. He said that all the people and agencies that are concerned
with the refugee situation call for India's effective participation.
Compounding matters for New Delhi is the ultimatum issued by the National Front for
Democracy in Bhutan to launch a mass awareness campaign in Bhutan and to stage a
second long march to Bhutan soon. At least one refugee was killed in the clash with
Indian security personnel on the Mechi bridge across the India-Nepal border when the
refugees sought to move through the Indian territory into Bhutan in May this year.
The National Front for Democracy in Bhutan is a coalition of three major political parties,
the Bhutan Peoples Party, Druk National Congress (T), and Bhutan Gorkha National
Liberation Front (Sampang). About 1.07 lakh Bhutanese refugees of Nepalese origin are
living in camps in eastern Nepal since the late 1980s, when Bhutan forced its nationals
to move out of the country.
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