What history tell us about the reasons for Nepal to edge away India and turn to China
An excerpt from ‘All Roads Lead North’ by Amish Raj Mulmi. Mar 15, 2021 · 08:30 am China s President Xi Jinping and Nepal s President Bidhya Devi Bhandari at Tribhuvan International Airport, Kathmandu, October 2019. | Prakash Mathema / REUTERS
In a sense, Nepal’s relationship with Tibet and China, between the early years of contact in the first millennium and the annexation of the valley’s city-states by the Gorkha Shahs in the eighteenth century, was largely apolitical, with trade and religion being the locus. While China figured in the imagination of Nepali rulers, contact between the two civilisations went through several periods of lapses.