Mahakali border tribes a role model for India-Nepal respect

Border disputes between nations often conceal the close, multi-layered ties which people living in border areas share with communities living on the other side.

A long-standing example is the Indo-Nepal tension over the Kalapani territory, which has flared up in recent years due to the construction of the Lipu Lekh road. In May 2020, this road caught attention globally, after the Indian government suddenly announced its near-completion by the Border Roads Organisation. The government promoted the road as a boon for pilgrims going on the annual Kailash-Mansarovar yatra to Tibet (China) via the Lipu Lekh pass.

Until then, the Kailash yatris selected by the Ministry of External Affairs had to undertake an arduous week-long trek through the Indian side of the Mahakali valley, from Tawaghat near Dharchula to the Lipu Lekh pass. Now, they could make the journey almost entirely by vehicles. Subsequently, the road was completed right up to Lipu Lekh.

But this news was taken with a pinch of salt in Nepal. Nepal argues that the Mahakali river, which is supposed to form the Indo-Nepal border as per the Treaty of Sugauli (1816), originates from Limpiyadhura, a source further west than the source claimed by India, which lies near the Lipu Lekh pass.

Thus, Nepal claims all the land east of the stream flowing from Limpiyadhura, which among other places includes Lipu Lekh and Kalapani. The dispute arises from the fact that the Treaty of Sugauli itself had no map attached, and did not clearly establish Mahakali’s origin.

General Sam Cowan, historian and former Gurkha Brigade commander, notes that 1879 onwards, British imperial maps showed the Lipu Lekh pass within British India, and that since Independence, India has continued to have effective control over this disputed territory.

In recent decades, however, Nepal has challenged India’s authority there based on a differing interpretation of historical evidence. When the Lipu Lekh road news came out in May 2020, Nepal reacted that a part of the road was built through the disputed region unilaterally by India, without Nepal’s consent.

Soon afterwards, Nepal released a new official map showing the disputed territory within Nepal, and later put this revised map on its currency. Since 2020, Indo-Nepal relations have been continuously strained over this territorial issue.

This geopolitical wrangling brackets out the ground reality of close cross-border relations shared by the people living on the two sides of the Mahakali valley. The spellbindingly beautiful upper Mahakali valley, where the whole of the Lipu Lekh road lies, is inhabited by closely-related Tibeto-Burman communities called ‘Rung’ in India and ‘Shauka’ in Nepal.

These communities comprise a Scheduled Tribe in India and a Janjati in Nepal respectively. I conducted some research among the Rungs and Shaukas of the Mahakali valley over 2014-16, while working at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). The research revealed intricate ties among these groups that seemed to diminish the border’s relevance in their everyday lives.

A unique example was the close bonds which India’s Garbyang village shared with the Nepali villages of Chhangru and Tinker. Garbyang was connected to the two Nepali villages by a footbridge over the Mahakali river. These three villages lay outside of, but very close to, the disputed Kalapani territory.

However, the Garbyals (locals of Garbyang) claimed that the Indo-Nepal border did not matter in the realm of their generations — old ties of religion, kinship, and natural resource sharing.

The Garbyals worshipped deities, shrines, and sacred natural sites around Garbyang as well as ones across the Mahakali. Garbyals regarded Nepal’s Chhangru-Api area as their ‘dev bhoomi’, the land of their gods. Besides, they claimed a ‘beti-roti ka rishta’ with Chhangru and Tinker, signifying deep cross-border ties through marriage and livelihood.

In addition, Garbyals claimed customary rights of grazing and herb collection in the meadows below Mt Api, including the right to extract the extremely valuable caterpillar fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis). Chhangru and Tinker did not extend such rights to the non-Rung/Shauka villages further south.

In August 2015, during a meeting with my research team at Khalanga (a Nepali town across the Mahakali), representatives from Chhangru and Tinker confirmed the above Garbyali claims of customary ties.

The Mahakali communities had more interesting cross border interdependence. Back then, the coverage from Indian mobile networks was nearly non-existent on the valley’s Indian side.

Indian villagers would therefore use Nepali SIMs, since the Nepali mobile network had good coverage on the Indian side too. Besides, Nepali villagers and occasionally even officials would use the Indian route between Dharchula and Garbyang. They took the Indian route to bypass the precipitous, narrow, and landslide-prone Nepali route.

Furthermore, Rung and Shauka traders warmly shared neighbouring shops at the transborder market in Purang, a Chinese town north of Lipu Lekh which was important both to the transborder trade and the Kailash yatra. One Garbyali school teacher whom we interviewed in Dharchula was married to a man from Nepal’s Chhangru who traded annually at Purang.

Living in borderlands thus requires local communities and individuals to negotiate the possibilities and constraints posed by tradition, international relations and infrastructural developments in their midst.

The Lipu Lekh road, again in news recently with the resumption of the Kailash yatra, can prove to be more of a boon than a bane only if its connectivity is matched by a statutory protection of, and respect for, their ownership over local lands and resources.

This is needed to protect these vulnerable communities from predatory land buyers and other harmful extractive activities.

The road can potentially be a harbinger of that mutual bonding and respect. On a broader canvas, the example of the Mahakali’s thick cross-border bonds should make policy makers pause and rethink border policy as a matter of facilitating healthy transborder connections, and dialogue as the primary means for resolving conflict.

Views are personal

Abhimanyu Pandey is a sociocultural anthropologist.

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