Nathu-la pass will be reportedly opened in June after more than 40 years, a potent symbol of rapprochement between the Asian giants.
NATHU-LA: As the rain sweeps across the high Himalayan pass, a Chinese soldier arrives at the three strands of barbed wire which separate his country’s territory from that of long-time rival India. But this soldier is no longer brandishing a gun, on this once most sensitive of borders between the world’s two most populous countries. Instead, he takes some video for his family back home and pauses to shake hands across the rusty fence.
Just a few yards away bulldozers on both sides of the frontline are building not fortifications but a road, to connect India and China and reopen a historic trade route. New Delhi and Beijing plan to reopen the Nathu-la pass in June after more than 40 years, a potent symbol of rapprochement between Asian giants who fought a Himalayan war in 1962.
For an initial five-year period the pass, at an altitude of 4,310 metres, will handle limited border trade between the tiny northeast Indian state of Sikkim and southern Tibet. It will be a modest start, but it promises much more. “We are very much looking forward to the opening of the pass,” said BB Gooroong, adviser to Sikkim’s chief minister. “It is symbolic... but we have to break the ice.”
A gradual process is under way which could eventually lead to a significant trade route opening up from the Indian port of Kolkata to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. “Full-fledged transit trade will take time, but it has immense potential,” said foreign policy analyst C Raja Mohan. A study commissioned by the Sikkim government suggested trade across Nathu-la could reach $2.8 billion a year by 2015.
A few corrugated iron warehouses have been built to handle customs and immigration formalities, and a small trade mart erected to exchange goods.
The passes between Sikkim and Tibet were once part of the Silk Road, a network of trails which connected ancient China with India, Western Asia and Europe. As India and China rebuilt relations, two minor trade points were opened at the western end of the border in the 1990s, but agreement to open the more significant Nathu-la pass came during then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s trip to China in 2003.
Sikkim has few industries, but officials hope the local Dansberg and Yeti beers, produced at a factory in the south of the state, will prove popular across the border. Even more exciting could be the prospect of tourist traffic one day crossing Nathu-la. Officials hope that Sikkim could eventually be the centre of an international Buddhist pilgrimage circuit, from Tibet to Thailand and India to Nepal.
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