The Dharchula subdivision of Pithoragarh district in Uttarakhand’s Kumaon division and Darchula, one of the nine districts of Nepal’s Sudurpashchim province, were actually one common hamlet with the river Kali running through them.
After the two-year long Anglo-Nepalese war, or Gorkha war, of 1814-1816, the Sugauli Treaty was signed between the East India Company and the Kingdom of Nepal, which established the Kali river as the border between British India and Nepal.
In retrospect, it can be argued that this was indeed an arbitrary line over what was once the last outpost of the Chand Dynasty of Kumaon. The etymology, language, culture, marriage ceremonies, and ethnicity of the two adjacent ‘border towns’ has much in common. There is no restriction on the cross-border movement of citizens between India and Nepal, and matrimonial alliances are common between the two settlements.
Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism may not find a more succinct empirical evidence of how domestic and global politics impact communities with shared interests and common concerns.
When the Sugauli Treaty was drawn up, the area in question was a sparsely populated frontier in which traders and herders practiced transhumance. Over two centuries, the frontier has become a border with permanent settlements, and after the overthrow of the monarchy in Nepal in 2008, the new Republic has been pressing its claim on this territory. For the record, nearly 100 years after the treaty, the Almora District Gazetteer of 1911, drawing on decadal official surveys, described the Kali as flowing “from its source in the Lipulekh pass” and becoming the boundary with Nepal only “a little below the Kalapani encamping ground.”
In the crosshairs
Lipulekh in Dharchula is now making news as it finds itself in the crosshairs of the new-found congruence of interests between India and China in the aftermath of Trump’s 50 per cent tariffs on India. The announcement regarding the resumption of India-China trade included three Himalayan border passes — Lipulekh in Uttarakhand, Shipki La in Himachal Pradesh and Nathu La in Sikkim. But only Lipulekh made the headlines as Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli made a vociferous protest to China over this issue. However, China refused to get drawn into this and Nepal was told to resolve the matter bilaterally with India. For the record, the India-China trade agreement through the Lipulekh Pass dates back to 1954, but old timers insist that this only formalised the extant customary rights and privileges of the Rung, Khas, Kumaoni, Dotyali, and Bhutia communities who lived at this trijunction of India, Nepal, and Tibet.
Former Uttarakhand Chief Secretary NS Napalchyal recalls his forebears leading trade expeditions all the way up to Gartok in Tibet with hundreds of pack animals and scores of head-loaders. The terms of trade were extremely lucrative — for they would carry wheat, tea, shawls, blankets, woven cloth, tobacco, utensils from India to Tibet, exchange it for wool and rock salt, take the rock salt to Nepal and pick up rice, millets, honey, herbs, and dry fruits on their return route.
However, after the 1962 India-China war, trade came to a grinding halt, and along with that, the tradition of spinning of yarn and weaving carpets, blankets, and warm clothing. Many of these highland settlements had to be abandoned. With spinning and weaving traditions lost, men had to search for employment elsewhere. To enable them to tide over the crisis, the once–affluent and entrepreneurial community was given the Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to give them access to opportunities in education and employment.
After a hiatus of three decades, India-China border trade was resumed at Lipulekh Pass and Shipki La in 1992, followed by the opening up of Nathu La in 2006. However, the volumes were nowhere close to the earlier times — because, in these three decades, the markets they served were now better connected with highways in their respective regions, and people’s preferences had also moved from homecooked food which necessitated raw agricultural commodities to packaged foods and ready-to-eat (RTE) meals. When this columnist visited Taklakot in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) a decade ago, the most commonly advertised item on roadside kiosks was the Nepalese product Wai Wai noodles.
Also read: India-China ties — improvement signs are loud, problems sliding under the radar
Concerns and requests
Naturally, there was great excitement in Dharchula when the resumption of Lipulekh trade was announced. The traders’ association also welcomed the upgrade of the trade platform from ‘truck, barter and exchange’ in typical lot sizes of Rs 25,000 each to a rupee-Chinese yuan mechanism. But in the midst of this excitement, there is one issue of immediate concern, two requests, and one apprehension.
Let us first focus on the border traders’ immediate apprehension. This is about the safe retrieval of goods which they had to leave behind at Taklakot when Covid-19 and the border clashes led to a sudden, indefinite border closure in 2020. When the two dozen-odd traders had to exit Taklakot in a huff, they had no option but to leave their stocks of mishri, jaggery, wool, tobacco, tea, traditional processed foods, garments, aluminum and steel utensils, and handmade toys in makeshift warehouses.
Much of the perishable stuff would probably have been lost to the elements, but woolens and utensils may still be retrievable. Then there are two requests. First, for the sanction of a new line of credit based on their past trading track record — to make a new beginning, since new stocks will have to be purchased for the next season. The second is for setting up proper infrastructure — like Petrapole in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas on the India-Bangladesh border.
Their main concern is about the replacement of the old mart at Taklakot where traders from both India and Nepal brought their wares for exchange. It has been replaced with a new terminal market, with state-of-the-art facilities for weighments, assaying, wholesale, and retail outlets. As Nepal resumed trade with TAR last year, Indian traders fear that “the best of the facilities may already have been cornered by them”. They have also learned from their informal contacts in Nepal that the new rentals are prohibitive — while earlier the traders would either set up their makeshift tents or hire private space in the very vibrant Taklakot market, the government has now mandated that all trade will take place in the designated premises.
But the general mood in Dharchula is optimistic — and support for the opening up of the borders and the pilgrim route to Kailash Mansarovar comes not only from ground zero and diplomatic high table, but also from the spiritual savant Sadhguru who has expressed his support for the India-China reset — “We cannot remove the geographical borders we have drawn right now, but they can be slowly made more porous so that people can move easily, and business and trade, especially land trade, can happen”.
Sanjeev Chopra is a former IAS officer and Festival Director of Valley of Words. Until recently, he was director, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. He tweets @ChopraSanjeev. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)