‘Encroached territory’: Why India-Nepal border dispute is heating up again

In using British help, Shah “is not seeking the UK’s mediation on this issue – rather assistance with regards to various original survey maps as early as 1827 and 1834, which would strengthen our position when negotiating with India”, Nishchal Pandey, the director of the Kathmandu-based Centre for South Asian Studies, told Al Jazeera.

Lok Raj Baral, a former Nepali diplomat, told Al Jazeera back in 2020 that the country had historically lacked maps of its own, and so “depended on maps published by British India”.

What is the Kalapani-Lipulekh conflict about?

India and Nepal share a 1,800km (1,118-mile) open border – Indians and Nepalis do not need visas to cross over. One stretch of that border, in the far west, is disputed: the area spanning Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh and Kalapani.

The conflict dates back to the 1816 Sugauli Treaty, which Nepal entered with British colonial rulers to define its western border with India.

“Nepal is the oldest sovereign nation state of South Asia and never had any war with India, rather with the British,” Pandey said.

“The Treaty of Sugauli of 1816, which was signed after the Anglo-Nepalese War, depicts that Nepal cedes territory ‘west of the Kali river’ but does not define where the river Kali originates from. The treaty also did not have any map attached,” Pandey said.

He explained that this cartographic omission has led to various arguments in favour and against the territory of Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh and Kalapani belonging to Nepal.

India pushes back against Nepali claims over the territory, citing revenue records dating back to the 1830s from India’s Uttarakhand state that suggest that the region was historically administered by what is today India.

Indian troops have been deployed in Kalapani since New Delhi fought a war with Beijing in 1962. Sandwiched between India and China, Nepal chose to stay silent back then and remain neutral during the conflict between its giant neighbours.

But it has since claimed that the Kali river – the demarcation line for the boundary between India and Nepal – originates in Limpiyadhura, while New Delhi asserts that the river, which acts as the boundary, emerged from Lipulekh. Nepal says the river that India considers to be the border is a tributary of the main river mentioned in the 1816 treaty.

The disputed land falls between the two rivers.

(Al Jazeera)

When else has the conflict come to the forefront recently?

Last month, New Delhi announced the resumption of a religious pilgrimage through the contested Lipulekh Pass. It was suspended in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stressed that the territories of Limpiyadhura, Lipulekh and Kalapani are part of Nepal, “a position on which the government remains clear and firm”.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs responded by asserting that Lipulekh has been used by Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Bon followers for the pilgrimage to Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar in Tibet since 1954.

“This is not a new development,” a spokesman said. “India has consistently maintained that such claims are neither justified nor based on historical facts and evidence. Such unilateral artificial enlargement of territorial claims is untenable.”

In May 2020, India inaugurated an 80km (50-mile) Lipulekh road to serve as the shortest route between the capital New Delhi and Kailash-Mansarovar, a revered pilgrimage site in the Tibetan Plateau. Nepal protested against India’s inauguration of the Himalayan link road.

“The Government of Nepal has learnt with regret about the ‘inauguration’ yesterday by India of ‘Link Road’ connecting to Lipulekh (Nepal), which passes through Nepali territory,” Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement back then.

Is this the same Shah who unveiled a ‘Greater Nepal’ map?

Nepal’s PM Balendra Shah has, in the past, backed the idea of a “Greater Nepal” – with parts of present-day India included.

In 2023, after India installed a mural of “Akhand Bharat” (a Greater India) in the Parliament of India – encompassing many of its neighbours – Shah hung a “Greater Nepal” map in his office, including territories that once belonged to Nepal but now lie within India’s borders.

Neither map is a political map with clearly demarcated present‑day borders and labels like Lipulekh or Kalapani. Instead, both the Akhand Bharat mural and the Greater Nepal map appeal to maximalist historical visions of territory. It is unclear where Lipulekh and Kalpani were on these two maps.

In June 2023, as mayor of Kathmandu, Shah ordered cinemas in the capital to stop screening Hindi films. Screenings resumed later that month after a high court, acting on a petition from the Nepal Motion Picture Association, issued an interim order telling authorities not to halt Hindi movie screenings.

What are the reactions to Shah’s comments?

Basana Thapa, a parliamentarian representing the opposition Nepali Congress party, demanded clarification on Shah’s comments, the Nepali leading daily, Kantipur, reported on Sunday.

According to the report, Thapa said: “If the prime minister’s statement about the border of the two countries without facts is not correct, I would like to demand that it be removed from the record.”

Ramesh Kumar Malla, a parliamentarian representing the Nepali Communist Party (NCP) – also in opposition – described Shah’s comments as “a derogatory statement about the country’s national integrity”, Kantipur reported.

Nepal’s former ambassador to India, Nilambar Acharya, told Kantipur that Nepal has not encroached on Indian land, contrary to what Shah had claimed.

“No land of India has been encroached on by the Nepali state. It is not as the prime minister said,” Acharya was quoted as saying.

On Sunday, Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a response to Shah’s comments.

The ministry statement said that both Nepal and India “have expressed their commitment to resolving border‑related disputes through diplomatic channels and mutual dialogue” pertaining to the Lipulekh Pass.

“The government’s willingness to engage with India on the boundary dispute is neither new nor surprising,” Anurag Acharya, a former journalist and Kathmandu-based political analyst, told Al Jazeera.

Acharya explained that previous governments in Nepal have also attempted it, with the Oli government and India agreeing to establish a joint Eminent Persons Group (EPG) in 2016 to comprehensively review Nepal-India relations and suggest ways to resolve all outstanding bilateral issues.

“However, the exercise was haunted by the same trust deficit that it set out to address,” Acharya said.

Nepal’s Foreign Ministry said that Shah had meant that there might be technical, local mismatches between legal borders and actual land usage or “cross‑border occupation”. For example, Nepali citizens could be farming or living on land that, legally, is on the Indian side of the old boundary line, and vice versa.

“To manage the long border between Nepal and India in an orderly and scientific manner, the boundary‑related mechanisms and technical teams of the two countries are active in areas where mapping has been completed,” the ministry’s statement said.

What does this mean for Nepal?

“The prime minister’s ‘off-the-cuff’ remarks on a diplomatically sensitive issue, inside the parliament, will have serious consequences for Nepal in its bilateral negotiations with India as we negotiate on contentious border disputes,” Acharya, the Kathmandu-based political analyst, said.

“I think it will be a baggage that Nepali negotiators will have to carry, if and when they sit to discuss this tricky issue.”