Russia Scales the Himalayas
FIELD, A. R.
By A. R. Field RUSSIA SCALES THE HIMALAYAS Soviet policy is aimed at reducing Indian Influence in Nepal, Sikkin and Bhutan A NEW POLITICAL factor has been introduced into the sub-Himalayan region...
...Ever since Prithvi Narayan Shah captured Katmandu Valley in 1769, there has been a steady eastward flow of sub-Himalayan peoples...
...This was construed as an attempt to allay Indian concern regarding Soviet Russia's entry into the Himalayas...
...Prime Minister Nehru is trapped in a dilemma—how to secure India's frontiers without giving up his policy of "neutrality" and actively entering into a defensive alliance with the West...
...The Soviet Union may be acting for Communist China, which desires direct representation in Nepal but has hesitated to alarm India by such a move...
...An Indian policy of this kind could very well be made contingent upon the withdrawal of the Chinese Communists from Tibet...
...A strong ally, rather than a resentful satellite, would be to India's advantage...
...Soviet technicians will execute this program and a series of road survevs are to be undertaken...
...They are the tea plantation workers in Assam, and compose the great majority of troops which the Indian Government is using to hold the MacMahon Line across Upper Assam...
...India returned Dewangiri to Bhutan in 1949...
...No immediate date was set for the visit...
...On February 10, 1958 King Ma-hendra of Nepal accepted an invitaA. R. FIELD teaches at American University in Washington and has written for Orbis and Modern Review...
...The British stimulated the migration of Nepalese eastward, and have on several past occasions used them for Imperial Himalayan activities...
...Such an arrangement would even contain an element of security for the Soviet Union, for a large neutral buffer would be created between the southern marches of the Soviet Union and the Chinese People's Republic...
...How might Soviet policy unfold...
...The one thing that has held anti-Indian feelings in check in the general Himalayan area has been the growing fear of Communist China...
...There is a partial answer to this dilemma, by which the Indian Government could blunt Sino-Soviet moves in the Himalayas...
...Bhutan and Tibet...
...Russia would not lightly ignore Indian feelings in an area of vital strategic concern to New Delhi unless there were such a policy in existence...
...spent 10 days in the Nepalese capital conferring with the King and his Council of Ministers...
...Hitherto all countries except Britain and India maintained dual diplomatic representation through New Delhi, supplemented by occasional visits to Katmandu, the Nepalese capital...
...Sino-Soviet foreign policy appears to be synchronized in the general Himalaya region toward detaching or wooing this area away from India, and secondarily, from contact with the West...
...This is an eventuality that Western military planners cannot afford to overlook...
...Relations between the Soviet Union and India have become increasingly strained...
...Such a move by India would place a stronger, viable state between India and China...
...The Indians have faced violent outbursts of antagonism from the Nepalese...
...Nepalese farmers have had to relocate as far east as Burma rather than southward into the adjoining plains of India, sections of which in the past were cultivated by Nepalese peasantry...
...During the Soviet Ambassador's visit to Nepal in 1958, the Chinese sent a note to New Delhi suggesting the "redrawing of the two countries' boundaries after surveys and talks with neighboring countries.'" India's reaction was given publicly on December 2, 1958: India's international border is well known...
...No doubt Soviet planners are aware of this fact...
...The following May Katmandu announced that the King and Queen would visit New Delhi on June 2, and after a two-day stopover there they left by Soviet jet airliner for Moscow...
...A Chinese Emperor was forced to organize an army and send it over the Himalayas to check Gurkha expansion in 1792...
...Nehru informed the Indian Parliament on August 31st that "we hope this will be settled by discussions and conferences, and we do not propose to go to war...
...On December 11, 1958...
...Lay education is carried on in the Nepali language in Bhutan...
...Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, during his June visit to Nepal, was said to have told the King, "Make new friends, but for God's sake do not forget your old ones...
...Nepal is to receive an outright gift of 30 million rubles ($3 million...
...China's acceptance of such an Indian proposal would leave India free to devote her efforts to the economic betterment of her people...
...Moscow then replaced its ambassador to New Delhi...
...The Soviet Union hoped to sign a treaty of economic aid and cooperation with Nepal before the first all-Nepal general elections, which were scheduled to begin on February 18 and be completed on April 3. It was actually signed on April 24...
...The estimated annual rate of increase is 2.5 per cent...
...Bhutan and Ladakh...
...On August 13...
...Since the Tibetan uprising in March 1959...
...The stage would then be set for the establishment of a Himalayan Confederacy (as suggested by China) composed of Greater Nepal...
...the Chinese Communists have increased their pressure along India's northern frontiers...
...Sikkimese semi-independence was all but blotted out when India placed a protectorate over that country in 1950...
...A treaty guaranteeing the absolute neutrality of such a Himalayan Confederacy might well be negotiated between all interested parties...
...Nepal has obtained recognition from the United Arab Republic, Ceylon, France, Switzerland, Japan, Communist China, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union...
...It took the best the British had to prevent the Nepalese from taking the whole of the Terai...
...In the jargon of the Sino-Soviet world, "an area for peace" would thus be created...
...The Nepalese are the predominant population in Sikkim and very likely in Western Bhutan...
...The invitation was politely but firmly refused...
...An exploding Nepalese population has been locked in the mostly mountainous region of Nepal for over 140 years...
...Unfortunately, and perhaps unavoidably, the Indian Government, in its search for security, has on many occasions run roughshod over the growing nationalist feelings of the Nepalese and other Himalayan peoples...
...elite battalions of Gurkha Rifles are maintained by both the British and Indian armies...
...The first modern all-Nepal census report completed and released in 1955 places the population at roughly 8.43 million...
...King Mahendra is scheduled to make a state visit to the U.S...
...British respect for the fighting qualities of the Nepalese dates from this period...
...There is, however, another possibility...
...Colonies of Nepalese are found as far east as the Northwestern sector of the Kachin State of Burma...
...Donald Wise, a reporter for the London Daily Express, filed a dispatch from the Tibetan border stating that "a quarter of a million Chinese, working under the direction of Russian rocket experts, are carpeting the roof of the world in Tibet with the deadliest pattern of missile launching pads facing the free world...
...To this dav...
...The extermination of the Tibetan people and the attachment of the whole of the Himalayas to China would secure missile sites from sabotage by an unfriendly civil population and would control all southern approaches to such sites...
...On the other hand...
...Sikkim or Bhutan...
...But it is not just to the Chinese Communists, with their Tibetan slaughter and demands for boundary adjustments, that India must be alerted...
...The Soviet Union actually does not need subversion...
...It is possible that the Soviet Union plans to exploit these people, who are already south of the main Hima-lavan snowcrests and far beyond the borders of Nepal...
...Under the terms of this agreement...
...Bhutan's population is placed at about 600,000...
...It is becoming increasingly clear that Nepalese foreign policy decisions will be made less in New Delhi, as was done in the past, and more in Katmandu...
...Nepal is also to receive at no cost: a hvdro-electric power plant, a sugar mill, a cigarette factory and a hospital...
...The Gurkhas organized a military aristocracy and conquered Sikkim in the East, Kangra and Garhwal in the West, and moved against Tibet in the North...
...Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev tendered a personal invitation to Nehru to visit Moscow...
...Soviet diplomatic moves have been relatively rapid...
...Indian ire had precluded the usefulness of any diplomatic mission which continued to be led by Ponomarenko...
...India also returned a small parcel of land to West Tibetan jurisdiction in 1950...
...Shortly after the Russian's departure, Ellsworth Bunker, the U.S...
...At this juncture, Rishikesh Shah, Nepalese delegate at the United Nations, was accredited as ambassador to the U.S...
...There is both British and Indian precedent for such action...
...The only request the Soviet Union made in exchange for this "aid" was to seek permission to open an embassy in Katmandu...
...Sikkim's population is around 175,000—137,-700 immigrant Nepalese, 9,000 members of the Tibetan ruling class and 30,000 Lepchas who extend over into adjoining areas...
...the Soviet Ambassador in New Delhi, Panteleimon K. Ponomarenko...
...The Dalai Lama issued a statement from his refuge in India to the effect that there are now "more Chinese in Tibet" than there are Tibetans...
...By A. R. Field RUSSIA SCALES THE HIMALAYAS Soviet policy is aimed at reducing Indian Influence in Nepal, Sikkin and Bhutan A NEW POLITICAL factor has been introduced into the sub-Himalayan region which can have unforeseeable effects upon India's search for security...
...The recent uprising in Tibet might not be wholly unrelated to this "rumor...
...The eastward rotation of the earth on its axis would have the effect of shortening the trajectory of any Soviet missiles that might be launched westward, thus bringing potential European targets within closer range...
...Chinese failure to accept such a plan would turn the rising tide of nationalism in this area totally against her...
...Sino-Soviet cooperation on ICBM launching pads in Tibet could in time dominate all of Western Europe, North Africa, Western Asia, the Western Pacific area and most of China...
...This could not be accomplished without the active assistance of the Soviet Union...
...tion to visit the Soviet Union...
...China does not have enough trucks to maintain and supply an ever-increasing army in Tibet, and so must depend, at least in part, upon the assistance of Soviet transport...
...to 1816...
...In fact, Nepali is the lingua franca of a goodly part of the Himalayan region...
...It was directed against Indian-held territory...
...Adequate population statistics are not available for the whole of India's strategic northeast- outside of perhaps Nepal, and to a lesser degree Sikkim...
...By a high act of statecraft, India could return all irredentist territory, including Sikkim, to Nepalese jurisdiction...
...In spite of Indian attempts to have all foreign representation operate through New Delhi, the Soviet Union has been the first nation to by-pass the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and reach direct agreement with the Nepalese Government to establish an embassy in Nepal...
...1959, members of the Indian Parliament queried Prime Minister Nehru regarding a secret plan of China "to constitute a federation of the Himalayan border states of Sikkim...
...This is one of the reasons why Indian citizens are not permitted to travel beyond the Inner Line of Assam without a special permit...
...This seems to indicate that an overall Soviet policy has been prepared for the general Himalayan region...
...Ambassador to India and Nepal, spent six days in Katmandu...
...The Chinese Communists would be freed of any suspicion of "Western imperialist" counteraction in Tibet...
...When Nehru returned from his September 1958 visit to Bhutan, he admitted that the Bhutanese were not too happy about receiving Indian aid...
...In December 1958...
...Ever since Communist China moved into Tibet and transformed India's northern frontier from a static to a dynamic arena, observers have been aware of the possibility of subversion...
...All the Russians have to do is to stimulate and support Nepalese nationalism, raise the slogan of "The Greater Nepal Movement" and return the irredentist lands to Nepal which the British took away in 1816...
...it will not be subject to negotiations...
...West Berlin is closer to Lhasa than many people realize...
...Because of gravitational anomalies and poor flying conditions over the Himalayas, established missile-launching sites would be a very difficult target to obliterate...
...Nehru has frequently stated that any attack on Nepal, Sikkim or Bhutan would be considered an attack against India...
...The Kingdom of Nepal has gradually increased its diplomatic relations with a whole range of nations besides India...
...India was pledged to go to war if any of their territories were attacked, but India was not going to war when its own territory was captured...
...Any large-scale operations that the Indian Army might in the future have to undertake in the hill country, without the aid of these hill peoples, would be difficult indeed...
...The first border attack by the Chinese was not against Nepal...
...In 1860, the British Indian Government returned to Nepal the lowland between the Kali and the Rapti rivers, plus the land between the Rapti and the district of Goruckpore...
...Friendly contacts between related segments of populations on both sides of the frontier could be used as an instrument of state policy by whichever side managed to capture the imagination of these people...
...It would appear that the Soviet Union has developed a general Himalayan policy which could conceivably turn Nepalese nationalism totally against India...
...In terms of missile geopolitics...
...Even in the mountainous country of the North East Frontier Agency of Upper Assam, traditional ill-will is still manifested by tribes for past exploitation by the Indian traders of the Brahmaputra valley...
...There are at least 10,000 Nepalese in Tibet, including the offspring of mixed Tibeto-Nepalese marriages...
...Traditional Himalayan politics, which the British interdicted by maintaining Sikkim as a buffer between Nepal and Bhutan, would be revived...
...The social economy of the Himalayas with the rhythmic flow from North to South and back again appears to lend itself to such a purpose...
...Will it be necessary initially to stimulate the growth of the very small, and to date ineffective, Nepalese Communist partv...
...Then the British met the Nepalese head on in a southern war which lasted from 1814...
...The scarcity of agrarian lands and an outmoded sysi tern of land tenure have forced many hillmen to enter foreign service as mercenaries...
...next spring...
...On February 12, 1959, a team of 12 Soviet technicians arrived in Katmandu...
...A Greater Nepal Movement is perhaps the one factor that could unite every Nepalese—Hindu and Buddhist, Communist and non-Communist alike, whether he be Limbu, Magar, Gurung, Newar or Tamang—behind King Mahendra, the direct lineal descendant of Prithvi Narayan Shah...
...The meaning of this maneuver cannot have been overlooked by any of the political leaders of the associated Himalavan states...
...India had been influential in delaying a prior state visit by the King to the U.S...
...The majority of the population occupies the valleys of Ha, Pharo and Punakha, which constitute Western Bhutan...
Vol. 42 • September 1959 • No. 35
