Sagauli treaty of Nepal, more than a bend in the river

The renowned author Ganesh Saili writes about the historic perspective through which the Nepalese view their borders and how the Communist government in Nepal is being pushed over the brink by the Chinese after they have acquired greater clout in the Himalayan landlocked nation.

New Delhi: In 1765 the progenitors of the little warriors who now form so distinguished section of the Indian Army, under the leadership of Prithi Narain, the first of the Nepalese to appreciate and utilize European discipline and arms, began to make themselves felt like a formidable power among the surrounding mountain tribes.

Subduing Kathmandu, Lalitapatan, and Bhatgaon, in Nepal; and, after Prithi Narain’s death, under his widow and his brother as regents for his infant son, they extended their conquest to Kumaon.

In 1790 they captured Almora, and made themselves masters of the whole country up to the Ramganga. From Kumaon, pursuing their career westward, the Gurkhas carried their invasion into Garhwal, but its conquest was delayed by news of a Chinese invasion of Nepal, which caused the invading force to withdraw from Garhwal to assist in defending their own country. A few years later, however, the tide of Gurkha invasion again flowed westward: Srinagar, then the capital of the Raja of Garhwal, was attacked in February 1803, and the Raja retreated southward. He made a futile stand at Barahat, but was driven from there, first into the Dun, and then to Saharanpur.

Here the harassed Raja, Pradyuman Shah raised a couple of lakh rupees by pawning all his property and throne. With these funds he got together a new army, returned to the Dun, and attacked the invaders who, under Umar Singh Thapa, then occupied Dehra; but he was defeated and killed.

In ‘Himalayan Mountains’, J.B. Fraser, mentions that the priests of Paligarh, a sacred glen not far from Yamnotri , prophesied the misfortunes of Pradyuman Shah, the last of the Kings of Garhwal, the rise of the Gurkha power, and its eventual subjugation by the British.

The British forces reached the steep south faces of the Shivalik ranges, just as the Gurkha wave surged up the northern slopes of those foothills. Colonel Burn marched into Saharanpur about the same time as Umar Singh Thapa occupied Dehra in October 1803.

The rule of the Gurkhas was severe. It drove many of the inhabitants to emigration. Slavery increased rapidly; defaulters of every kind were condemned to life-long bondage. It is said that injustice and cruelty were at the bottom of the rule; families of defaulters were often sold to liquidate arrears of revenue.

Indeed ‘Gurkhani’ became a synonym for Gurkha excesses in Garhwal, as having drunk all the milk in a village at night, rapacious soldiers would be back in the morning demanding curd.

Though the immediate cause of the Gurkha war was the destruction of a police station in the disputed portion of territory, beginning with the murder of the Daroga in charge, after a gallant defence, in which eighteen of his constables were killed and six wounded. Another police station was raided shortly afterwards. The season being unfavourable for undertaking punitive operations, so a letter of remonstrance was sent to the Raja of Nepal. The reply was insolent. War was declared on 1st November 1814. An account of the operations may be found in “William’s’ Memoir of the Dun.” The Gurkhas proved no mean foes, a mere handful of fighting men in a hastily constructed fort on the Nalapani hill better known as Kalinga, was as stubborn and heroic as any such deed recorded in history.

In the Doon valley, two small obelisks on the banks of the Rispana stand as a unique memorial, commemorating both the victor and the vanquished. The death of General Gilespie and those who fell with him; the other is a tribute of the brave Balbhaddar Singh and the gallant Gurkhas.

However, on 17th November 1815, the district of Saharanpur was annexed. In 1815 the British general Ochterlony evicted the Nepalese from Garhwal and Kumaon across the Kali River, ending their twelve-year occupation - a period in history that is always remembered in Uttarakhand for its exceptional brutality and repression.

The Nepalese were in occupation of all the land that falls between the Teesta in Sikkim to the east and the Sutlej river to the west.

Negotiations for a general settlement produced an agreement which was signed at Sagauli in Champaran, Bihar in December 1815 and came into effect in the following year in 1816. In turn, Nepal gave up all the territories of the east and west that it had conquered including restoring to the East India Company the entire Terai.

It established the boundary line of Nepal, that was signed on 2nd December 1815 and ratified by 4th March 1816 between the East India Company and Raj Guru Gajaraj Mishra with Chandra Shekhar Upadhaya from Nepal. The treaty represented a Nepali surrender to the British and contained the cession of Nepal's western territory to the East India Company.

Sikkim, Terai, Kumaon and Garhwal were restored to the British pushing Nepal back to its original borders. In Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand, the Sarda river (or what the Nepalese call the Mahakali) was delineated as the border between the two countries. Of course to the east, the old border would become the Mechi river that lower down debouches on to the plains at Kishanganj in Bihar.

The present dispute has its origins in a road built by the Border Roads organisation to shorten the pilgrimage to Mansarovar through the Lipulekh Pass. There are three tributaries of the Mahakali river: Limpiyadhura, Kalapani and Lipulekh in Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand.

The Nepalese claim that Limipiyadhura, in the western extremity, is the border. We believe that its Lipulekh. This dispute is egged on, in no small measure, by the Communist government in Nepal being pushed over the brink by the Chinese, after they have acquired greater clout in the Himalayan landlocked nation.

When elephants fight, the earth shakes and the grass gets trampled. The truth of this aphorism came home to me when news of the recent disagreement broke, every single Nepalese, working in our hill station, had vanished. They had gone back home.

(Written by Ganesh Saili, author of around two dozen books. His work has been translated into twenty different languages and the author is famously recognised worldwide)