Two uncomfortable border problems have come up for discussion between India and Nepal: one in Nepal's southeastern tip in the Tarai plains and the other diagonally across, in the Himalayan fastness of northwest Nepal. Both are manifestations of unfinished business in border demarcation between the two countries, of domestic political sensitivities and compulsions that only a territorial issue can generate.
At the Nepal-India Joint Boundary Technical Committee in 1988, the Nepali side pressed for the application of the fixed boundary principle between Nepal and India rather than rely on river demarcations. At first lukewarm to starting the idea, the Indian side agreed to the proposal, and work was begun to mark a permanent frontier starting in Nepal's eastern Tarai. It immediately hit a problem. Mechi, the border river of east Nepal, at a certain point between Galgalia in India and Bhadrapur in Nepal was thought to be flowing within Nepal. A border marker known as the "Jungay Pillar" after Nepal's first Rana ruler Jung Bahadur, stands well to the east of the Mechi, and this had been regarded as the border.
The Technical Committee's brief in establishing a fixed boundary requires reference to the mapping done by the British in 1874 on the basis of the Treaty of Sugauli back in 1816, after the Anglo-Nepal war. Relying on these often unclear maps, some of them with Urdu writing, the district officials of Nepal and India decided that the true boundary lies somewhat to the west of the Jungay Pillar.
This area of former jungles has been settled by Nepali hillfolk after malaria was eradicated in the 1960s. Since word of the demarcation leaked out a couple of months ago, the matter has become a political cause celebre. After keeping silent in the face of an unnecessarily belligerent press release put out by the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu, the Nepali government was forced to use nationalistic rhetoric on its commitment not to let "an inch" of national territory to go to India.