Insensitivity has been a hallmark of Indian policy towards Nepal, highlighted once again by India’s insistence that Nepal’s Gorkhas be recruited under the scheme.
On one of his trips to New Delhi after the 2015 earthquake, the then Indian ambassador to Kathmandu, Ranjit Rae, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his official residence. The first question that Modi asked Rae was: “Why don’t they like us?” We have done so much for Nepal, and this is how they respond, he claimed.
Modi was speaking as the prime minister, but his anguish was also a reflection of the frustration within the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the organization in which he was ideologically baptized and trained as a pracharak before being sent to the Bharatiya Janata Party. …
Sushant Singh is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. He has taught at Yale University (Fall 2019 and Fall 2021) and was deputy editor of The Indian Express. A winner of the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards in 2017 and 2018, he had earlier served in the Indian Army for two decades. He is also the author of Mission Overseas and co-author of Note by Note: The India Story.
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