A few weeks ago, I wrote in an entry that our friendly General has been sending feelers to King Gyanendra to add to the anti-India fuel to which he must give currency to maintain the status quo in the “subcontinent (sic).” And as The Acorn rightly pointed out,

India’s gambit is to starve the King of political and military oxygen until he becomes more amenable to first restoring civil liberties and eventually, democracy itself. But if Pakistan and China step in to fill the gap, this gambit can go awfully wrong. For its policy to succeed, India must ensure that both Pakistan and China keep a studied distance away from Nepal. India would do well to adopt a more neurotic line on this front.

So far China has not publicly done anything that projects it in a partisan light vis a vis Nepal, but the General is too eager to help the King in his fight against the Maoists. So he has promised the King the following:

1. 300 rocket launchers
2. 2000 automatic grenade launchers (AGLs) from “its (Pakistan’s) own army stocks”

The deal comes at very lenient terms: 40% downpayment, with the balance repayable when convenient to the King. Oh! And like some items ordered on Amazon.com come with free shipping, the kind General has assured that Pakistan “will fly in the weapons free.” In doing this, the General has proved that he is genuinely worried about Nepal’s Maoist problem rogue states rush in where peace loving countries fear to tread.

Not content with just helping Nepal militarily, the friendly General also wants to “invest” in Nepal.

Aziz (Pakistan’s PM) said, expressing Pakistan’s willingness to invest in Nepal to expand economic cooperation.

All I can say is King Gyanendra is on a suicidal mission. From another perspective, Nepal is the only country in the world which declares itself officially as a Hindu nation. And the most important point here is that Nepal was never on the agenda of Pakistan in the way India is. Pakistan as I read somewhere harbours the perpetuation, and the fulfilment of the Grand Mughal Dream. In this context, cozying up to Pakistan can only prove suicidal to Nepal in the long run. It shouldn’t be forgotten that of all rulers, Zia ul Haq was instrumental in steering Pakistan’s political course on the road to knavery. He specifically had the kafir-jihad concept in mind. Nepal is as much a Kafir land as India is. Musharaff is merely continuing what Haq started: for example, history text books have been revised so that Islamic terrorist training can be conducted in school and college classrooms instead of in Madrassas. This project of rewriting history was started by Zia ul Haq.

The sooner Gyanendra realizes that accepting any form of help from Pakistan is dangerous, the safer will Nepal–and the subcontinent–be. And India has again displayed its legendary inertia. It had ample time and resources to prevent this from occurring. The reasons? Easy. Sample these:

• People like Nutwar Singh who sing praises of the rogue state are invested with power to shape policy.
• A totally incompetent foreigner is an extra Constitutional Prime Minister
• The ruling class today is engaged in enacting a grand drama of the Rape of Democracy (Goa, Jharkhand, and Bihar).

They have no time for trivial issues like this.