An interview with 2024 Raymond Milefsky Award winner Buddhi Narayan Shrestha

In 2024, IBRU awarded the seventh annual Raymond Milefsky award to Buddhi Narayan Shrestha, to honour his career surveying, mapping, interpreting, and communicating borders between Nepal and its neighbours. IBRU’s Philip Steinberg interviewed Mr Shrestha.

In your book About Myself, you state that you are “not a diplomat, nor a University teacher, nor a politician,” but a surveyor who worked his way up through the ranks in Nepal’s Survey Department. How do you feel that your technical background has helped you, or held you back, when working with government officials?

Surveying is at the heart of my approach to borders. I worked for the government Survey Department of Nepal for twenty-seven years and retired as Director General. During my tenure, I spent five years as leader of the eleven-member Nepal-India Joint Technical Level Boundary Committee. I also spent one year as deputy leader of the nine-member Nepal-China Joint Boundary Committee.

Overseeing the renewal of the Nepal-China boundary protocol was a fairly straightforward task of surveying. We followed watershed and median-line river fixed boundary principles in a more-or-less congenial exercise.

Delimiting Nepal's boundary with India has been more complicated, as, for the most part, there are no natural features. So it has taken more time to demarcate the boundary line, matching historical working maps to the ground and vice-versa. In this process too, I have used the technical knowledge earned during my professional workmanship with the Survey Department.

 Nepal shares borders with two much larger states: India and China. How has this impacted your work in delimiting and maintaining borders, and how have you overcome any power imbalances?

Although Nepal shares its boundaries with two giant emerging Asian nations, the two borders are very different. The Nepal-China boundary line is mostly mountainous, whereas the boundary with India is on the flat Indo-Gangetic plain.

The Nepal-China boundary was primarily demarcated during 1961-62 and the boundary protocol was signed in 1963. It was renewed in 1979 and 1988, and I had a leading role in the 1988 renewal. For the most part, this was a simple task, as the mountainous border had already been demarcated. Working with my Chinese counterparts, damaged border pillars were repaired and maintained and  missing pillars were erected.  Changes to the river course were resolved by referencing strip-maps and co-ordinates.

The Nepal-India demarcation has been more complicated. Although 97 percent of that border has now been demarcated, the remaining 3 percent includes the 372 sq km Lipulek-Kalapani-Limpiyadhura area, which Nepal maintains is its territory, by right of the 1816 Sugauli Treaty with British India, but which India has occupied since the 1962 India-China border war.

I remain hopeful that this dispute can be settled through dialogue. In recent years, I have been suggesting a land swap, where Nepal recognizes India’s control of the Limpiyahdhura area in return for Nepal gaining the ‘Chicken Neck’ that separates Nepal from Bangladesh. A land swap like this, for which there is regional precedent in the 2015 India-Bangladesh land swap, would grant Nepal access to a seaport via Bangladesh as well as fostering stability in the region. I suggested this land swap to Nepal’s prime minister prior to his 2023 visit to India, and I was pleased to learn that he raised the prospect of this solution during the visit.

Although mountain regions are ‘natural’ borders, they pose some very specific challenges for bordering. What have been your experiences working on borders in a mountain region?

Although mountain ridges and watershed boundaries are ‘natural’ borders, they are not necessarily self-evident. In 2020, local people in the Limi-Namkha segment of Nepal’s Humla district (on the border with China) asserted that China had encroached on Nepali territory in the area. On investigation, I found that in fact the local frontier inhabitants were confused about the location of the watershed boundary line.

Since then, I have advocated to government authorities that surveyors must visit the sites they are working with maps and co-ordinates. They must work with frontier inhabitants, local government authorities, and district political leaders to verify maps to the ground when delineating borders.

You’ve had a long and exceptional career. What has been your greatest accomplishment?

After consulting historical maps produced by British India and China, I have comprehensively mapped the areas that Nepal disputes with India and China, calculating the lengths of rivers, border segments, and other features. Government organizations and researchers, at home and abroad, have used these statistics. This brings me satisfaction because if we are to peacefully settle border disputes we first need to map them.

In 2020, the Nepali government used my data to produce what has become known as the  'Beaked Map', the first official map to depict territory claimed by Nepal but administered by India. Because mapping is crucial for dispute resolution, I hope that by making this map possible I have contributed to the territorial integrity of the nation.  

What is the future for borders in the Himalayan region?

I am optimistic about a future without boundary disputes. The border between Nepal and China has been fully demarcated and there will be no issues in the future, provided that the border is jointly monitored regularly. If a difference of interpretation emerges, the two sides should be able to resolve it through dialogue and appeals to documentary evidence.

As I have mentioned, three percent of the border between Nepal and India remains to be demarcated. In 2014 Nepal and India formed a Border Working Group (BWG) to sort out the minor issues amicably. I am hopeful that the larger issue of Lipulek-Kalapani-Limpiyadhura can be resolved through effective, Track-II diplomacy.

Heads of government of both countries must initiate and negotiate the border business. This requires governments to plan ahead with: 1) facts and figures about the disputed border(s), 2) accompanying maps and documents, 3) a historical understanding of past incidents at the border, 4) a model plan for negotiation, and 5) a series of steps to be taken in case negotiations fail (e.g. appeals to third-party mediators or the ICJ). With appropriate levels of political will, technical expertise, and a commitment to dialogue, border issues can be resolved.