As the first Indian president to visit Nepal in nearly two decades, Pranab Mukherjeewould want to bring the healing touch to a relationship that has come under considerable recent stress. Putting the tensions behind is only one part of Mukherjee’s diplomatic assignment. It is also about looking to the future and laying out a road map for the modernisation of a very unique partnership.
For India, Nepal is the “Punya Bhoomi”, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi often reminds us. Nepal’s sacred geography is a living repository of the Subcontinent’s spiritual heritage. For Nepal, India is the vast economic hinterland and may well be called its “Karma Bhoomi”. If their destinies are inseparably intertwined, problems have often arisen whenever Delhi or Kathmandu has acted against the logic of extraordinary interdependence.