By P.R. Pradhan

The Zone of Peace (ZoP) proposal was abruptly dropped from the 1990 constitution of the country. Since then, people have stopped talking about the ZoP proposal put forward by King Birendra to the world leaders present at his coronation ceremony in Kathmandu on February 25, 1975. King Birendra’s proposal was strategic and meaningful. A total of 116 friendly nations, including immediate neighbor China and South Asian countries, except another immediate neighbor, India, had recognized Nepal’s proposal. It was thus a great achievement for Nepal.

Today, different nations have increased their defence budget and spending a huge budget for developing sophisticated arms. China is in a race to overcome the USA in the arms race. Russia is at war and developing new and powerful arms so that it can overcome NATO in case of war. Nepal’s southern neighbor India, although a large number of its population are living below the poverty line, is investing a huge budget for procuring and developing sophisticated arms in a race to become a military power in the globe.

Nepal, a tiny nation sandwiched between the two giant nations, India and China, lacks the necessary budget even to manage its general sector expenditure. Nepal has less than one hundred thousand army personnel and a small number of arms, they too, are virtually outdated. Under the present political system and expenditure modality, we cannot imagine the expansion of the military budget and procuring sophisticated arms needed for the Nepal Army. Therefore, Nepal, to safeguard its sovereignty and independence, should revive the ZoP proposal.

India has one-sidedly and forcefully occupied the Kalapani-Limpiyuadhara-Lippulek territory. Moreover, India is constructing a motorable road linking Uttarakhand, India, with the Chinese border via the Nepali territory. India doesn’t want to talk about resolving the border dispute. In many other districts bordered by India, we have border disputes. India has encroached on Nepali soil one-sidedly. Besides, migration of the Indian nationals into Nepal is very high due to the open border between Nepal and India. Both, Nepal and India, had constituted the eminent persons’ groups to resolve all bilateral issues. After many rounds of joint meetings between the Indian and Nepali EPG teams, a joint report was prepared. The report has been informally rejected by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying that he was unable to manage time to receive the EPG report. It has already been more than five years since the completion of the report, however, due to the reluctance of the Indian PM, it has become useless. We have been told that both the EPG teams had prescribed to regulate the Nepal-India open border, which has been objected to by the Indian “deep state”.

Moreover, the Indian deep state is putting pressure on the Nepali leaders to grant Nepali citizenship to the people who migrated from India to Nepal. Nepal’s India-puppet governments have already amended the citizenship law and India-confidant President Ramchandra Paudel has already approved the citizenship bill, which was rejected by then President Bidya Devi Bhandari.

The Indian intention is to increase the Indian population in Nepal with a long-term plan of annexing Nepal or bringing Nepal under its security umbrella. As the first move, India wants to bring Nepal under its security umbrella. The Indian “deep state” efforts since 1990 political change and also the 2006 April uprising and declaring Nepal a secular, federal republic were for keeping Nepal at the Bhutani status.

All the “revolutionary” Nepali people worked under the Indian design and were solely sponsored by the Indians.

Those so-called revolutionary leaders are not hesitant in saying that they were sheltered and protected by the Indians during the “people’s war” era. Even a retired RAW officer, in an interview, claimed that the “revolutionary” leaders were the guests of the Indian intelligence agency in India. Observing all these activities of the so-called Nepali leaders, we have concluded that our leaders are performing the role of the Lhendup Dorje to remove Nepal’s map from the globe.   

Viewing all these activities, the Nepali patriotic leaders should think about the revival of the ZoP for Nepal’s survival.