Anondescript building by the Blackfriars Bridge, over the Thames in London, houses the Oriental and IndiaOffice Collections of the British Library. Despite its unassuming looks, it is the repository of the institutional memory of England´s colonial past, a .gold mine of preserved records, official memos and astute observations of her civil servants from far-flung outposts of the Empire.
For the last two years, Nepal´s state apparatus has been bogged down with the controversy over Tanakpur barrage on the Mahakali (Sarda) river on the western border with India. This area of Nepal has a history intermeshed with the British Raj going back to the late 18th century. At Blackfriars, one can take a walk through the history of Tanakpur— seeing how these lands "between Kali and Rapti" were ceded to the "Honourable East India Company" by the Sugauli Treaty of 1815, how they were gifted by the British back to Nepal following Jang Bahadur´s help in suppressing the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, and how Chandra Shamshere actually negotiated the details of the 1920 Sarda Treaty.
Nepal´s water negotiations with India has suffered from the loss of institutional memory following the overthrow of the Ranas in 195 l.eightyears of interregnum, ISmonths of abortive democracy, and 30 years of Panchayat rule. India, on the other hand, saw white masters depart and brown masters take the helm without abyteof memory loss within its institutions.
Of all the resources spent on tours abroad by Nepali MPs during the last two years, if only a fraction had been devoted to Tribhuban University researchers spending some time at BlackfriaTs (orif the NepaliMission in London had been instructed to investigate), much of the historical facts of those times would have come to liglil.. Instead, what wehaveseenis an emotional heat wave engulfing thePaTliament and the nation.