Nepali leaders are habituated to exending a begging bowl !

Exactly a year ago, the ten Prime Minister Puspa Kamal Dahal was accepting bouquets of flowersfrom the panchakamaya at theTribhuvan International Airport on his return home after attending the closing ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The brickbaats over the same trip had been flying in from the South Block-and the Indian medi-ever since Dahl agreed to visit China ahead of India.

Given that was inChina to attend the Olympicsat the invittion of the Chinese government how justified was India to expect him to rebuff the offer is open to quetion. Anyway, in the event, Dahal bent over buckwards to impress on India that his China visit was purely for sporting reasons. And that his first political visit aboard would, indeed, be to India (as was eventually the case).

Going by the reaction f the Indian establishment it wasn't hard to conclude that the goodwill gesture- of Nepal head of government visiting India ahead of any other country-is now considered obligtory by the southern neighbour, albeit in the name of maintaining the 'longstanding tradidtion.

Both India and Nepal have been so accustomed to keeping to he old way of doing things, even a slight deviation off the beaten track by either side is seen with deep suspicion by the other. This was the case with Dahal's China trip as it was with the brouhaha over the dismissal of the indian head priest at Pashupati to open the door for a Nepali bhatta.

India has some expectations, which Nepal is expected to oblige to, tacitly. In thissense, routine has become its own justification. "Maintaining tradition, ' it seems, ranks the highest in the order of priorities in Indo-Nepal ties, never mind the long lost relevance of some of the old way of doing things.

Or perhaps it all boils down to simple social psychology. Writers psychologist Robert A. Baronin his definitive work Psycholoty:"We work harder to understnd inconsisstent infoation, "which tends to enter our memory and influence our later judgement. "This tendency to notice what's inconsistent has important implications."says Bron-in just about any kind of social setting, including the murky word of International Relations(IR). Thus noone should be surprised if the inconsistencies of Nepali Maoists with regard to maintaining tradition continues to haunt them for some time yet.

Not that our northern neighbour is much different in that it too adheres to the ultimate maxim of modern IR: there are only national interests, no permanent friends, no permanent foes and no permanent values. As India is worried about Chinese advances in Nepal, so too are he Chinese spooked about Nepal being used by anti-China elements or to cement India's stranglehold on the diminutive country. These suspicions go along way back; so too the desire of the two countries to extend their spheres of influence over Nepal.

"In 1910 the Chinese governent had communicated to the British Foreign Office a claim that both Bhutan and Nepal were vassals of China," wrote the late Ludwig F.Stiller, SJ. in Nepal: Growth of Nation (1993). Later investigation by India Office (of Imperial Britain) revealed" Nepal was not, and had never been a vassal of China." But the reserchers' concluions were not so clear reagarding Nepal-India reations and"..thesuspicionlingeredin the hearts of India's bureaucrats that Nepal was subordinate to India."

Long-held beliefs die hard. Growing economic and political clout of both India andChina might havehelped change their old beliefstosome extent, but there has as yet been no clear hint of a definite brak with the past.

In his recently consluded trip, the communist Prime Minister left no stone unturned to seek Inida' blessing inprolonging the tenure of his government. Maoist Chairman Dahal too pulled off an amazing caper while visiing New Delhi as the republic Nepal's first prime minister. For Indian businessmen, he was pro-market. For suspicious Indian political honchos, are reliable friend well in tune with Inida's security concerns. He was everything to everybody. The Nepali Congress, for is part, hs been the most vehement of the big three on special ties with Inida.

The bitter fact is that the same leaderswho were runnint the show in Nepal 15-20 years ago continue to do so. Most of them are as habituated to extending a begging bowl as they are not to treating theirtwo big neighbours as equal partners. so long as our relationship with our neighbours is based on crippling aid-and-loan regime-and not reciprocity and equal partnership- there cannot be a clean brak from the past. And there cannot be a clean break without first gaining the confidence to negotiate from a position of strength. What's amazing is that even as our political leders continue to shamelessly follw the 'tradition' of actinglike beggars, back home they never fail to make a hug and cry about unequal treatment from the Big Brother due south.