Always good to talk

Sunday’s meeting between Prime Minister KP Oli and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi is loaded with symbolism.

On Sunday, Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli met his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Although there was little in terms of outcomes, it was nonetheless an important meeting. Top Indian leaders and bureaucrats have been reluctant to engage with Oli following his 2020 initiative to insert into the Nepali national charter a map of Nepal incorporating Kalapani. The Indians were also upset, unsurprisingly, when Oli, during his previous stint as prime minister, mocked the official Indian emblem, saying it represented the adage ‘Singhamev Jayate’ (power alone triumphs) rather than ‘Satyamev Jayate’ (truth alone triumphs). Separately, the CPN-UML chief riled the BJP establishment when he baselessly claimed that Lord Ram was born in Nepal’s Thori rather than India’s Ayodhya. So India has good reasons not to trust Oli. Yet the way it was consistently rebuffing Oli’s recent overtures for a bilateral meeting with Modi was unbecoming too. The Indians may not particularly like Oli, ‘China’s man’ in the reckoning of many Indian analysts. Yet they also cannot refuse to engage with the elected leader of a traditionally close partner country.