India-Nepal Relations: Continuity and Change

Abstract

It is natural that a quest for a more mature and friendly relationship between Nepal and India is underway in official and intellectual circles of both countries. The spectacular developments taking place in Nepal, South Asia, and the world at large should provide the basis, among others, for invigorating the relationship. Nepal's 30-year-old partyless regime collapsed in 1990, paving the way for a consensual multiparty system. For the first time in the country's history, the theory and practice of popular sovereignty has been accepted through the proclamation of a constitution into which four cardinal principles of modem democracy have been incorporated: the sovereignty of the people, constitutional monarchy, multiparty system, and basic human freedoms. Such a fundamental law of the land is the product of a long struggle for democracy that eventually succeeded. But the sudden mass upsurge witnessed in Nepal in 1990 was also greatly fueled by the international changes taking place across the world, particularly in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union following the ascendancy of Mikhail S. Gorbachev. His two-pronged strategies underlined by glasnost and perestroika helped produce a dramatically different world situation, spanning relations among states large and small. What is more significant is that the course of international politics is reversing itself as elements of discord have been transformed into those of cooperation and friendship. Thus, in the midst of such unexpected developments, many countries with a high degree of sophistication in their decision-making processes were caught unawares or were pushed to the wrong side of developments.