Although the current state of Nepal’s boundaries were set after the 1814-1816 Anglo-Nepal war that ended with the Sugauli Treaty, the state with its international boundaries was only formally recognized and accepted after the 1923 Treaty of Friendship with Great Britain signed on 21 December the same year in Kathmandu.

The southern flatlands of Nepal known as the Tarai but now called Madhes, was then a thick malaria infested jungle with sparse settlements. The term “Bhitri Madhes” or “inner Madhes” was used by the people of the hill region to define those areas that were inner valleys between the southern flatlands and the northern hills of the Siwalik and Mahabharat range. The flatlands due their inhospitable environment were not suitable for habitation until the jungles began to be cleared by the Rana’s and settlements encouraged especially in the eastern Tarai. This resulted in the mass clearing of the “char kose jhadi” and gave way to large stretches of farmland.

Nepal’s open border with India in the south, east and west, resulted in trans-boundary cultural exchanges and migration, benefiting both sides of the border. People living in the flatlands have martial ties with families from India and Nepalis have migrated to India in search of work for decades now. But here in also lies the problem.

Nepal’s laws until recently did not recognize citizenship based on maternal lineage, which was why many in the Tarai, whose mother’s were from India, were unable to get citizenship. All this changed when citizenship laws were changed, for the sake of gender equality, and citizenship on the basis of the maternal lineage was also considered eligible.

However “Madhesi” is not an ethnic identity on its own. Rather it defines someone who is from the Madhes and is therefore more of a regional identity. Anyone who lives in the Madhes can be called a Madhesi, regardless of whether s/he is a descendent of a Sherpa family residing in the Tarai or is a progeny of a family that has lived in the Tarai for centuries.

It is also true that people of Indian origin, or those resembling Indian origin, ie the darker skinned, have suffered discrimination at the hands of other ethnic groups in the country as much as they have from their own. So called Madhesi leaders today raise the issue of “Pahadi” discrimination of the “Madhesi people” or more precisely those of Indian origin, while forgetting the inhuman treatment “higher caste” Hindu’s give out to alleged lower castes and “untouchables” in the Tarai. A trip to any of the peripheral areas of cities in the Tarai shows how those considered “untouchable” or lower caste are treated by the higher caste Brahmins.

The Madhes issue therefore is not entirely one of ethnicity because within the Madhes people of various distinctly different ethnicity reside. The Tharu people also reside in the Madhes, as do the Dhimal and Rajbanshi, but they do not call themselves Madhesi. Which is why the Madhesi Front’s demand for all of the Tarai to be proportioned as a single federal Madhesi state in the proposed federal structure is not only unjustified but also misled.

What is clear is that outlining the entire Tarai as one federal province, on the basis of the supposed “common Madhesi identity” of the people living in the Tarai will benefit certain communities, not all of whom can realistically be said to have that supposed ethnic “Madhesi” identity.

Popular discourses on ethnic identity began especially after the Supreme Court of Nepal refused to allow the official recognition of the [Disallowed String for - castist reference]i language in Kathmandu Valley and Maithili in Janakpur even before the Maoists began their “people’s war”. The Maoists used the issue of ethnicity during the war to fight against the “Hindu” state promising the ethnic communities their own federal provinces once the war was over. But the Maoist leadership underestimated the issue of discrimination of the people of Indian origin by the state and the people of hill origin, and along with it the influence of Nepal’s southern neighbor on the communities which have close ties with people from across the border.

When Maoist leaders Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai agreed to the four points put forth by the Madhesi Front as a precondition to supporting the formation of the Bhattarai led government, it was clear that the two were making serious compromises, not just on their own political principles but also that of the country’s sovereignty, by promising to form an ethnic federal state carved on a geographical basis, allowing the mass integration of 10,000 “Madhesis” in the Nepal Army, among others.

Never before have the Nepali people been so hopeful on one man, to resolve their problems. But how Baburam is going to do that is anyone’s guess. As a politician he did what he had to get to power, it will now take more than just that to stay in it, complete the peace process and the formulation of the new constitution, both of which seem issues to distant to be discussed anymore.

Nepal’s political problems are getting more and more complex with every new government formed signing agreements, accords and treaties to please everyone, but without the ability to do so. It was then no wonder that Prachanda publicly asked for India’s help in resolving our political problems, the same country he had once accused of being expansionary, intrusive, and bullish.

And in the mean time Nepal’s boundaries are getting pushed further north with border pillars disappearing all along the border. Nepalis living along the border have time and again had to suffer at the hands of the India’s dreaded Border Security Force. But the power brokering and kissing ass is today done publicly with visits to the higher powers that be by our champions of sovereignty, nationalism and independence. Nepal’s political leaders have never been seen to stoop so low. There was a time when the absence of the state in many remote areas of the country could be termed acceptable due to resource limitations but today when the state still seems absent in so many areas, one wonders if there is a state at all and if there is, whose is it anyway?

Kaziba is a Nepali who dreams of conquering the world every night, but ends up waking every morning in the same prison.