Nepal and India
The 'situation in Nepal is obscure and unhopeful. The deposed King after seeking asylum in the Indian Embassy at Khatmandu, arrived last week in Delhi, where he was received by Mr. Nehru and other Indian leaders with every mark of consideration ; none of the local representatives of the Nepalese Govern:- ment, took part in his welcome, nor did any British or American diplomat. In Khatmandu a three-year-old boy has succeeded to the throne, but effective power remains—as it long has in Nepal— in the hands of the Prime Minister. Meanwhile bands of insurgents under the aegis of the Nepalese Congress (a faction based on Indian soil and nourished, however unofficially, by Indian sympathies) are advancing into the Terai, which is a low-lying, fertile and easily accessible strip of Nepalese territory to the south of the Himalayas. Their exploits, of which exaggerated and tendentious accounts are being given by the Indian Press, have been acclaimed with glee by public opinion in India, and the Government in Delhi has not so far either said or done anything to modify the impression that its policy in this affair is, to say the least, equivocal. It looks, to put it bluntly, as if India, if she is not actively supporting, is doing nothing to hinder the aggressors in a civil war froni whose outcome —if these aggressors are successful—she hopes to gain a measure of political control over a State which, apart from its other attrac- tions, provides a reservoir of military manpower, without equal on the Asiatic mainland.
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