Panchasheel: Keystone Of Nepal’s Foreign Policy

The Buddhist precept of Panchasheel, the five principles of peaceful existence, has been first included in the communiqué on the Trade and Intercourse Agreement signed by India and China on April 29, 1954 in Beijing. It embodies the five basic principles: mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations, equality and cooperation for mutual benefit. It represents the Pan-Asian version of international relations and has some modern-day relevance for small states like Nepal to define its place. Its edifice reflects the middle way between the leaders’ desire to import modernisation ideals and institutions of the West and preserving the sanity of their tradition and solving problems of mutual coexistence without the interference of outside powers. Both prime ministers Jawaharlal Nehru of India and Zhou En Lai of China expressed their special responsibility for Asia. 

The Asian Prime Ministers Conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka on April 28-May 2, 1954 exalted the values of Panchasheel.  It had provided an impetus for Afro-Asian solidarity and set a template to the Bandung Conference in April 1955 seeking to promote sociability of people and nations of the region and escape geopolitical determinism. The historic Bandung Conference in Indonesia, embodying its precepts became an inspirational idea for the decolonization of the Asian, African and Latin American nations thus improving the legitimacy and acceptability of its ideals and non-sentimental promotion of national interests. In 1957, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on peaceful co-existence. Many Buddhist nations have internalized its values in domestic social and political order. 

Diplomatic leverage 

Immanuel Kant has affirmed the rights of people to give a suitable constitution without outside interference and abolish the state of nature. Outside penetration in the constitution makes political stability a Sisyphean toil and affront public opinion.  The spirits of Panchasheel has become a keystone of Nepal’s balanced foreign policy, its voice and visibility of national identity in the global comity. The rationale of Nepal’s membership and consistent participation in Bandung, all non-aligned summits from Belgrade to Kampala, Uganda and the UN are aimed to buttress its diplomatic leverage and wellbeing of people. Nepal had sent a five-member delegation to the Asian Relations Conference held in New Delhi from March 23 to April 2, 1947.

The onset of non-aligned summit in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1961 marked the salience of Panchasheel. It gained universal resonance and became messianic framework of foreign policy conduct of its members to escape from the Cartesian dualism of cold war geopolitics, exercise national self-determination, and self-equalizing motive of national sovereignty. It thus became a driver of new international and political order based on normative principles of collective self-defense, sustainability, justice and peace. The cold war between the USA and former  Soviet Union and their respective allies was deemed cold because neither side was keen to settle disputes by negotiation, nor indulged into direct hot war to mitigate them, not even run away from de-coupling except arms limitation talk. Each side created its own sphere of security, influence and accountability to protect allies and spread ideological ambitions. 

The rising contradictions among liberal, moderate and radical non-aligned nations, however, belittled its value, if not the rationality of common cause, faith in a just world order and need for shared progress. The new version of “modified non-alignment,” has engaged nations with the USA, China and Russia on security, scientific and economic cooperation to come to term with new realities. The non-alignment, coded in the Panchasheel, however, sought to abolish colonialism, apartheid, arms race and bridge the development gaps through the provision of development aid, trade and transit concessions, technology transfer, education and health opportunities and peacekeeping roles. China and India have applied Panchasheel to Asian, African, Latin American and the Arab nations and seek to base it for the Western nations as well to make international relations win-win. 

The Brandtian Ostpolitik that preferred détente, rapprochement and reconciliation between the East and the West has increased its weight to cut the negative effects of superpower rivalries, proxy wars and find comfort in interdependence. It has evolved the concept of enlightened self-interest at a time when foreign policy was governed by a realistic paradigm of national interest in line with the Westphalian system of international relations. Neither the idealistic vision of the world formulated in Panchasheel, nor the creation of the UN nor scores of international regimes, not even international law, human rights and democratic peace have moderated the dark side of power politics veiled in neo-colonialism. 

North-South and South-South cooperation, New International Economic and Information Order hit snag. Recent wars between Russia and Ukraine and Palestine and Israel, Syrian wars, geopolitical tension in Asia-Pacific, rise of nationalism, crisis in multi-literalism and weapon proliferation, etc. indicate that the utility of Pachasheel are growing for small nations like Nepal to jealously guard national sovereignty and great powers to moderate their passion to impose self-will on others.  

Renewed Value: The growing Asianisation of world politics with the rise of China, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, etc. marks the beginning of a new era of global politics. China’s weight is pivotal and its ties with Russia strengthened its gravity in world politics enabling it to pursue global civilizational, security and development initiatives based on non-zero-sum outcomes. Chinese President Xi Jinping in his party’s congress in 2017 declared, “Leaders who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence look to China as a new option.”  

The US, considering China a strategic competitor, is struggling to contain and rollback it so that it does not defy US hegemony in Asia beefed up by Indo-Pacific Strategy, QUAD and bilateral security, economic, political relations, democratic affinity and market relations.  On July 12, 2024 US President Joe Biden signed into law the “Promoting a Resolution to the Tibet-China Dispute Act” recognising the so-called notion of "Greater Tibet.” The Chinese government reacted by violating America’s long-held position and pledges and the basic norms governing international relations, grossly interferes in China’s domestic affairs, undermines China’s interests, and sends a severely wrong signal to the “Tibet independence” forces. 

The Chinese opposition to Nepal signing MCC and the US and India stoking Nepali fear of signing BRI can lock it in a debt trap shows the delicacy of Nepal’s geopolitics entailing its unbeaten act in tightrope walk. The balancing requirement of stable ties with rival powers is vital to fulfill Nepal’s desire for freedom of maneuver. Many Asian scholars and leaders are rediscovering their nations’ renaissance era and seeking to claim the pride of place now with the rise of their actual power and political will to play matching roles in the world.  Nations of Asia are trying to redefine themselves, embellish their own nationalism and rediscover their own heritage and set to free themselves from neo-colonialism affirming the spirit of Panchasheel. 

The pre-war Asia for Asians echoed by Japan and India finds resonance in the Chinese foreign policy now. Little earlier leaders of Singapore and Malaysia have raised the vitality of Asian community values of harmony, authority, discipline and hard work for the indigenous growth of their nations and set a critique on rugged individualism lacking the warmth of family, community and society. The national spirit of scholars, peoples and leaders helped Asian nations stand before the West, open self-referential loops and issue a torrent of declarations and reflections about multi-polar interactions specific to Panchasheel, non-alignment and the UN principles. The central idea is to reduce the scale of dependency, secure a zone of peace and security and increase freedom of action in world politics.

 Many nations have changed their colonial with vernacular names such as India became Bharat, Burma turned into Myanmar, Ceylon changed into Sri Lanka, East Pakistan became Bangladesh, Turkey turned into Türkiye, Siam changed into Thailand, Persia is converted into Iran, Swaziland  became Kingdom of Swatini, etc. This self-rediscovery of Asian nations is a moment for defining themselves with their own intellectual order, culture, spiritualism and achievements and engaging in the process of self-determination. There are Asia-centric initiatives in teaching, research, publication of journals, newspapers, regional cooperation mechanism, formation of banks and connectivity projects such as Asian highways and BRI. 

These initiatives have spurred Asian consciousness to marvel over a new sense of destiny despite the diversity of the size, race, history, religion, culture, geography and resource potentials. Constitutionally, all Asian nations have espoused the welfare state model to mediate the extremes in golden mean. Many Buddhist nations have adopted Panchasheel as a way of life to build associations, communities and social life and solve their problems through worthy initiatives. Civil societies have been created to take creditable regional initiatives at the levels of labour, women, indigenous people, environmental, parliamentarians, political parties, peace, etc. People of Asia perceive themselves as part of the greater whole connected by family, community, society, the state and civilization and realize the need to manage interdependence so that force as an ultima ratio of world politics can be confined to its limits.

Beyond Manichaean World:  The modern world is characterized by amazing complexity and interdependence, not the binary cosmology of friend and foe seeking to replace each other. Now nations have evolved supranational multi-platforms where common interests are sought over the separate ones. Climate change, nuclear proliferation, migration, terrorism, technological sphere, trade, investments, etc. have assumed global dimensions requiring international cooperation to solve them.

Equality 

The precepts of Panchasheel are regarded as safeguard of small states like Nepal against mighty predatory forces indulged in creating their proxies for social engineering and frequent regime change and sapping the peoples’ aspirations for survival, economic wellbeing, political dignity and pro-active foreign policy of defying negative pressures and warding off risks to its identity, stability, progress and peace. Panchasheel has espoused the equality of states-big and small- against colonial powers which for many years did not accord the Asian, African and Latin American nations’ equal status and privilege which they allowed to each other. Only a hospitable regional and global order can squash choices for Nepal to revive its economy, institutions and leadership proportional to the pragmatic foreign policy ends it wants to pursue. 

It requires tact and delicacy to settle many of its pending foreign policy issues and sail smoothly in the contesting ideological, political, economic and security complexities. Owing to Nepal’s excessive dependence on Anglo-Saxon worldview, foreign policy shapers have ceded too much ground to international institutions and organizations and seemed weak to pursue multilateral diplomacy, gain sufficient trade and transit access and pass judgments on international issues on the basis of merit of the cases. Panchasheel can offer Nepal sufficient consciousness to frame a choice of national freedom, escape from geopolitical entanglements, define policies to realize ordinary peoples’ aspiration for justice and navigate smoothly in a changing global order marked by power shift. 

(Former Reader at the Department of Political Science, TU, Dahal writes on political and social issues.)