Distress on suspension of filghts on display at Indo-Nepal meet

“It is not the delay in resumption of flights which is bothering me. It is the fact that India should impose a sanction on a small neighbour like Nepal without even verifying whether such a step was justified,” Kanak Mani Dixit editor of Nepalese publication Himal said. He was speaking at a two-day seminar on reaffirming India-Nepal relations organised by the Editors Guild of India and the Press Institute of India and sponsored by the B P Koirala Indo-Nepal Foundation. The meet ended today.

“Did India stop to find out if there was actually negligence at the airport?” Dixit asked. “And would India have done this so casually if the nation had been Pakistan or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka?” he asked.

The Nepalese distress verging on humiliation at the suspension of flights was made even more evident at the seminar as Nepaleese ambassador B B Thapa vented his feelings. “Indians came and asked me so many times `Why did you do this to us’,” Thapa said. The Indian electronic media gave a totally distorted picture of the incident without even bothering to crosscheck with Nepalese government. As a result Indians perceived the hijacking to be something in which the Nepal government had a role,” Thapa said.

External Affairs Ministry official Meera Shankar responding to the anguished cries from Nepalese delegates admitted that the decision to suspend flights was indeed an immediate one but not calculated to hurt or punish Nepal. “It was prompted more by the feelings of fear expressed by people and also by criticism of the way the government handled the episode,” the official Meera Shankar said. Editors Guild of India president Ajit Bhattacharjea said it was merely inspired by the survival institnct of the government.

Dixit and Pratyoush Onta a Nepalese academic said that Indian media was indifferent about researching the truth and going beyond official handouts. “As a result Indians are linking the ban on 500 currency notes with the ISI, whereas the restriction has been there for the past ten years when no one was talking of the ISI,” Onta said.

Former prime minister I K Gujral criticised the undue delay in resumption of flights though Indian Airlines was said to be losing over Rs 20 lakh per day and appealed to the media and both sides to research and project the truth.

The Nepalese delegates admitted that India was not entirely to blame for the delay in resumption of flights. The politically fluid condition of Nepal had also contributed to the delay, they pointed out.

S D Muni faculty of the Jawaharlal Nehru University and an expert on Nepal said that there was no quesiton of India trying to trample on the sensitivity of Nepal. When there was talk to seal the borders with Nepal, the Shankaracharya of Kanchi and the Army chief of India were the two people who went to the then prime minister with an appeal against such a move, Muni said.

“We are lodged in each other’s intestines and cannot seal borders,” he said. Dixit also said that open borders are the charm of Indo-Nepalese ties and must be emulated in the region.