Army chief General Bipin Rawat is both right and wrong about why Nepal and Bhutan cannot delink from India. First, he is right that Nepal and Bhutan are geographically inclined towards India. Both the countries are geographically sheltered from the north because of the Himalayas. Nepal’s northern frontiers are the Great Himalayan Range with the highest elevations in the world such as Mount Everest, Kanchenjunga and others. Bhutan’s northern front is again a natural wall of glaciated and very high mountain peaks. On the southern side, both the landlocked countries share borders with India. Nepal’s southern lowland plains bordering India are part of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. Bhutan is nestled between the Tibet Autonomous Region to the north and the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh in the east, Assam and West Bengal in the south and Sikkim in the west.
However, General Rawat is wrong to pin so much importance on geographical proximity. British imperialism, which led to the occupation of over 24% of the earth’s total land area in the 20th century, established amply that geographical bulwarks succumb to other forces. The strength of shared cultures and harmonious history, developed due to geographical access, also fail under economic imperialism. Especially in an age where the technology of warfare has improved tremendously; moreover where big powers rely on sub-conventional or asymmetric warfare and economic imperialism rather than conventional invasions, the sharp edges of geography are reduced dramatically.
With China’s rapidly growing economic and military influence, it will be a powerful force in Nepal and Bhutan. However, New Delhi has some aces up its sleeve as well which it must be exploited to their full potential — its legacy of friendly ties with Nepal and Bhutan as well as the latter’s fear of a suffocating Chinese embrace, as seen in Pakistan or Sri Lanka. But it is imprudent for India to be complacent by assigning too much weight to geography alone.