OPPOSE INDIAN NEO-COLONIAL EXPLOITATION OF NEPAL
The Indian ruling classes’ interest in Nepal is based on politico-strategic as well as economic considerations. The Indian bourgeoisie’s hegemonic interests in the sub-continent have become glaringly evident at the latest since the counter-revolutionary role played by it in the formation of Bangladesh and the annexation of Sikkim in 1975. Its neo-colonial policies in relation to smaller neighbouring countries, supported and abetted by the social-imperialistic Soviet Union in its own geo-political hegemonic interests, are a natural collar to the oppressive and exploitative policy towards various nations and nationalities already within the ambit of the Indian state.
Nepal, with its strategic location at India’s northern gateway plays the role of a buffer state against Chinese influence in South Asia. The Himalayan Mountains in Nepal are seen to be “our border.” The ‘Tripartite Delhi Agreement’ of 1950, concluded by the reactionary Nehru government, envisaged among other things a “common defence” for the two countries.
Since 1965, India has topped the list of major ‘aid’ givers to Nepal, the others being the US, China and the USSR. A major portion of the Indian ‘aid’, like that of the others, has been spent for building roadways and airports, which serve military and strategic interests. They also serve the ‘internal security’ interests of the Nepalese ruling classes enabling a swift transport of government troops to ‘trouble spots.’
Another chunk of ‘aid’ has been used to assist the fascist monarchy in power to create a better-equipped and better-trained army for internal repression. It has also been used to enlarge the ever inflating and non-productive bureaucracy and thus buy up a fairly large number of potentially restive young men by putting them on its payrolls. Indian ‘aid’ and investment have in this way helped to maintain ‘political stability’ in Nepal—earlier, to retain the corrupt government of the Nepalese Congress in 1960, a party of liberal feudal comprador and bureaucrat capitalists with a ‘parliamentary’ mask; today, to uphold the fascist dictatorial monarch of king Birendra with its partyless panchayati system.
The Indian bourgeoisie’s desire to dominate the Nepalese market was given its first concrete shape in the terms of the 1950 Treaty, whereby the Indian ruling classes got a monopoly right over the Nepalese market. In the terms of this treaty Indian goods are given tariff advantages as compared to the goods of other countries; export duties are charged on products of Nepal’s infant industry to render them non-competitive in relation to Indian goods; Nepal is denied the right to pursue her own trade policy and has had to form a common tariff policy, a kind of customs union with India vis-à-vis third countries. True to the framework of a neo-colonial exploitative order, labour and primary products from Nepal are exchanged for finished manufactured goods from India. Nepal’s trade deficit with India is on the increase.
India has been able to attain this monopoly position in Nepal’s markets via treaties because Nepal is a landlocked country and is virtually exclusively dependent on India for trade and transit, there being no competing access to the sea other than through India.
Nepal’s natural resources, like its forests and its rivers, with their tremendous hydro-electric potential, are exploited and monopolised by India. In the many river water projects undertaken, the major ones being the Kosi and the Gandak projects, where Nepal signed away the rights on these rivers, the larger share of the irrigation and power facilities has been usurped by India. The people displaced by these projects in Nepal have also not received their due share in terms of compensation and rehabilitation.
Nepalese labour is exploited and surplus value is extracted by means of both direct foreign investments by Indian industrialists as well as by entering into joint ventures in Nepal either with the native Nepalese bourgeoisie or with foreign bourgeoisie. As a ‘least developed country’ Nepal is not faced with quota restrictions in the Western markets in respect of a number of products. But, because of an almost non-existent internal bourgeoisie and small internal capital formation, Nepal is unable to utilize these quotas under the Generalised System of Preferences Scheme (GSP). The situation is taken advantage of by Indian industrialists to locate export-oriented units in Nepal and cater to the export markets in the USA, the EEC and in Japan. In this way, Nepal becomes part of India’s export promotion strategy providing both markets for its capital goods as well as for getting hold of much needed foreign exchange to service its own debts and imports from the imperialist countries.
India also maintains a strong foothold in the fields of education and culture. More than 90% of Nepal’s experts in different fields have been trained in India. Nepal’s only university, the Tribhuvan university has been set up with Indian ‘aid.’ Large numbers of advisors, trainers, demonstrators, planners, engineers, architects, teachers and professors from India are sent to the educational institutions in Nepal. There are thousands of students from Nepal staying in different institutions and universities of India. Hindi films, AIR’s regional language broadcasts and Indian newspapers, Hindi and English, dominate and contribute to cultural imperialism.
Historical Background to Migration
Migration from Nepal, particularly from the hill regions, took the shape of being a more or less steady process from the beginning of the last century. The intensified extraction of revenues, taxes and forced labour from the peasantry in Nepal by the landed classes and the state in this period was directly correlated with the growing British economic and political expansion in the rest of the sub-continent. It was used to bear the military costs of expansion and of holding out against British expansionist efforts, as well as to fund the consumption of luxury goods introduced into the market by the British. Surpluses thus generated were by no means ploughed back into the development of agriculture—to improve irrigation facilities, farming techniques and tools, plant genetics etc. These feudal exploitative land and labour policies of the Rana regime in Nepal led to growing agrarian indebtedness and landlessness in the hill regions. And prompted outmigration to Sikkim, Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Darjeeling, Bhutan and Burma. Along with migrants from other regions like Orissa, Bengal and Bihar, these migrants from the hills of Nepal provided cheap labour for the tea industry in Bengal and Assam and the coal-mining industry in Bihar and Bengal, owned and developed by the British. In some regions they participated in land reclamation and resettlement.
After the 1814-16 Anglo-Nepal War, with the active help and connivance of the later Rana rulers Gorkha regiments were set up in the British imperial army. Nepal denuded her rice fields and maize terraces, her high villages and mountain pastures to send forth her best as cannon fodder for the imperial aims of the British bourgeoisie. The resultant labour shortage, already acute in the hill regions, hindered further the development of the agrarian economy. Today, due to all these policies, outmigration has become an economic necessity for the survival of the hill peoples.
Conditions of Nepali Migrant Workers in India
Today, eighty percent leave Nepal yearly in search of employment, mainly to India. This is encouraged by the open border policy as well as by the terms of the Indo-Nepal Treaty of 1950. The vast majority return to Nepal, after some months or a few years, and most pay regular visits home. This seasonal or semi-permanent migration is mainly comprised of male workers, who leave their families behind. Women left behind have to carry on the back-breaking task of eking out something from the difficult hill terrain, getting fuel wood from increasingly denuded forests. Women are also in another way victim of this underdevelopment of Nepal’s hill regions: increasing numbers starting from very tender ages are being sold to Indian brothels or even being sold on the international market by Indian brokers.
There are about 6 million people from Nepal in all parts of the country selling their sweat and blood for throwaway prices in low-skill menial jobs as watchmen, as dhaba and restaurant workers, domestic servants, construction and factory workers, in government service and as recruits in the army.
The 1950 Treaty of “Peace and Friendship” between the Governments of India and Nepal grants the nationals from Nepal in India “the same privileges in the matter of residence, ownership of property, participation in trade and commerce, movement and privileges of a similar nature.” (Art. 7, Treaty). The reality is often different from these guarantees on paper. The right to vote is not granted. Nepali workers in India have to face other forms of discrimination too: In terms of social status and standing they are often denigrated and not treated at par with workers from different parts of India. They are chosen to do any extra unpaid or personal work for the bosses and are humiliated in subtle ways.
They often have no job security, no fixed hours of work, are liable to be fired at a moment’s notice without maybe even getting their pay of many months. A recent example of this was the deportation of over 1,000 Nepali nations working as labourers in the coal mines of Jaintia hill district of Meghalaya. The ‘anti-foreigner’ sentiments whipped up there caused another 6,000 Nepali labourers to leave on their own. Of those employed in the Indian army or the government service few attain high ranks or posts that pay better salaries and a pension on retirement. The efforts of the Nepali workers to fight for their rights are often met with brutal police repression. A recent example was the lathi charge by the police on Nepalis demonstrating against the farce of the May 12 Panchayati election.
Just Demand for the Own State ‘Gorkhaland’
There are 6 to 8 million Nepalis settled since generations mainly in the north-eastern States of Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Darjeeling and Sikkim. The Indian government has granted only domicile status to these Nepalis. According to the 1950 Treaty between India and Nepal the status of these Nepalis is virtually that of statelessness, of being perpetual foreigners in this country.
These Nepalis have had to continually face a series of apartheid and genocide crimes at the hands of the central and State governments of this country: pogroms, deportations, police tortures, arrests, raids, killings as well as economic and cultural domination, exploitation and discrimination at the hands of other nationalities. For example, till date, the Nepali language has not been recognised in the 8th schedule despite long and protracted struggle. Voting rights have been denied to them in Assam and to some of them in Sikkim.
Darjeeling district, originally a territory of Sikkim, which came into the predatory hands of the British East India Company around the mid of the last century, was taken over by the Indian government after so-called ‘independence.’ It was also forcibly integrated into the State of West Bengal against the wishes of Nepalis who already for long had been agitating for a separate State within the Indian Union.
Rapacious exploitation of the resources of this region by the West Bengal government (whether Congress-I or ‘Left’ Front led), by the local Bengali and the all-India bourgeoisie in collusion with imperialist interests, gross discrimination of the Nepalis, Lepchas, Bhutiyas and Tibetans in terms of educational facilities and language, job opportunities in both Central and State government undertakings, rising unemployment due to the underdevelopment of the region etc. have all led to a renewed demand for a separate State of Gorkhaland.
Ruling Class Interest in Migration: Superexploitation and Preparation for Annexation
This kind of migration represents a transfer of productive labour power and its surplus value to the Indian economy at the cost of the domestic Nepalese economy which bears the cost of producing the migrant’s labour power through his least productive boyhood and sustaining him after his retirement back to the source community.
For the Nepalese ruling classes the outmigration acts as a safety value by solving temporarily and to some extent the employment problem of a potentially restive population. India, being an active initiator, benefitor and partner in the underdevelopment of the Nepalese economy is willing to use their human resources as a cheap source of labour power, as an ever-present and reserve source of cannon fodder in its wars of aggression against the neighbouring countries. The remittances made back home also serve to pay for the Indian goods on the Nepalese market. This is the modern day slave trade: human beings for manufactured goods. The migrants also have the potentiality of being used as a lever to maintain India’s hegemonic grip over the Nepalese economy by threatening to deport them whenever the Nepalese government and ruling classes show inclinations of trying to ‘diversify’ their dependence relations.
The immigration of ‘foreigners’ also serves ruling class interest in splitting the working peoples in this country along the lines of “sons of the soil” and “foreigners” and “outsiders’” who are supposedly taking away jobs or land from the “sons of the soil,” and must be driven away if the economic problems are to be solved.
On the other hand, the hegemonic ambitions of the Indian bourgeoisie towards Nepal also motivate it to spread an “assimilatory” attitude towards the “Nepalis” who are then not seen to be in any way culturally, racially or religiously “different” from the “Indians.” Indeed, they belong to the same ‘Indo-Aryan’, or ‘Indo-Chinese’ stock! This same propaganda is also being used by the ‘Marxist’ West Bengal government in the case of the demand for Gorkhaland.
Such an attitude considers Nepal to be almost the ‘23rd’ State of the Indian Union. It builds the ideological cornerstone for any future annexation of Nepalese territory if its present-day rulers do not play the game as India (and behind it in this case, the Soviet Union) wishes. There is a sizeable section of ‘Indian’ population in the Terai region that has migrated mainly from the adjacent States of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which though it faces some discrimination in Nepal, is sought to be used by the Indian government in its plans of ‘swallowing’ Nepal.
Attitude of the Working Class
The working class of India must consistently uphold the right of nations to self-determination and relentlessly expose the neo-colonial hold of the Indian ruling classes over the Nepalese economy and any attempt by them in the future to consolidate their hold by territorial annexation.
Nepalese and other nationalities living in the annexed hill territory of Darjeeling have the fundamental right to decide their own fate—whether they decide for a separate State within the Indian Union, or for separation. The reactionary attempts by the so-called ‘Marxist’ government of West Bengal to retain the region within West Bengal by the force of arms must be firmly opposed. Any such attempt to forcibly ‘assimilate’ the Nepalese and other nationalities, though it is being presented under ‘left’ and ‘democratic’ signboards must be exposed and denounced to be completely against the spirit and principles of Marxism-Leninism.
Till date, the specific problems of the Nepalese working peoples in India and the task of building a joint fighting front with them have been by and large ignored by all political parties, that is, even by the so-called ‘Communist’, ‘Marxist’ or ‘Marxist-Leninist’ varieties. Indeed, the Nepalese of Darjeeling area are being exploited and their just demand for a separate State is being ruthlessly crushed by the ‘Left’ Front government in West Bengal comprising the ‘C’PI and ‘C’PM.
It is high time that revolutionaries, progressive and democratic forces from both countries overcome the existing gap between the struggles of the working peoples from both countries against the common enemy, the Indian ruling classes and their State: that they foil the divisive machinations of the Indian ruling classes and work towards establishing a revolutionary unity of the working peoples from Nepal and India.
To establish this unity, the fight of our brothers and sisters from Nepal, their struggle for equality in all areas, all their just demands must become our own demands. Such a support is a necessary pre-condition for establishing revolutionary solidarity and unity in the respective people’s democratic revolution to be carried out in Nepal and India as the first step towards socialism and communism.
(PB, Under the Banner of Marxism-Leninism, Issue no. 4, July 1986)