Trickle-down Effect

Nepal–India tensions have advanced from the diplomatic level to the public sphere

- SHUBHANGA PANDEY

On 9 July, Nepal’s cable operators suddenly announced that they would stop airing all private news channels operating from India. The decision had come in response to a Zee News show that claimed the Chinese ambassador in Kathmandu, Hou Yanqi, had enticed—or, as they put it, “honey-trapped”—Nepal’s prime minister, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, into acting at China’s behest. The story was one in a series of unsubstantiated, and often absurd, reports that have emerged from a section of Indian media following the territorial disputes of May.

Less than a week later, cross-border tensions between the two countries flared up once again, when Oli remarked that the real Ayodhya lies near Birgunj making Nepal, and not India, the birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram. More recently, only days after India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, laid the foundation stone for a new Ram temple, Oli suggested erecting large statues of Ram, Sita and Laxman near the area he claims to be the true Ayodhya. The furore that followed Oli’s jab at one of Hindutva’s most cherished beliefs was an indication that the longer the ties between the two countries stay strained, the more likely old conflicts will be reinvented on new terms. And like the temporary restriction on television news—not a government ban but a decision among private cable operators— the Nepal–India chill is at the risk of advancing from diplomatic stand-offs to popular discontent.