This is not a letter of complaint. It is a letter from a neighbour who wishes India well, and who believes that honest words between friends are worth more than polite silence. Decades ago, President Ronald Reagan is said to have told our late King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah that Nepal was a neighbour - a neighbour on the other side of the globe. Think about that for a moment. If a superpower separated from us by oceans and continents could call Nepal a neighbour, how much more should India - whose border we share, whose rivers we share, whose gods, festivals, marriages, pilgrimages, and languages we share - treat Nepal not as a periphery to be managed, but as family standing at the front line of the Himalaya? 'Nepal is not merely a buffer. It is a frontline Himalayan state - and recognizing this will help Indians, not Nepal alone.' When Tim Marshall published Prisoners of Geography, he reminded readers of a truth that states often forget when they become intoxicated by ideology, rhetoric, or short-term politics: geography is the first and most stubborn fact of power. Governments can change overnight, constitutions can be rewritten, alliances can be reversed, and leaders can rise and fall - but mountains remain mountains, rivers continue to flow, and neighbours cannot be relocated. Geography does not determine everything, but it sets the boundaries within which every serious state must think, plan, and act. Nations that ignore geography eventually pay for that ignorance in insecurity, dependency, and strategic surprise. Few countries illustrate this reality more sharply than Nepal. Wedged between India and China, Nepal occupies one of the most consequential positions in Asia. It is not a marginal state perched on the edge of history. It is a Himalayan hinge - a mountain republic sitting above the Indo-Gangetic plain and below the Tibetan plateau, controlling river systems, trade routes, ecological corridors, and strategic approaches that matter far beyond its borders. Nepal's mountains are not only scenic; they are political, military, hydrological, and civilizational facts. They shape the security of South Asia, the water future of the region, and the diplomatic choices of Kathmandu, Delhi, and Beijing alike. What we share, and what we owe Before any criticism, let me first offer recognition - because gratitude spoken honestly gives criticism its credibility. Nepal and India are not merely neighbours. We are civilizational kin. The Ganga that Indians worship begins its life in Himalayan snows. Pashupatinath and Kashi Vishwanath are two lamps of the same flame. Sita of Janakpur is a daughter of Nepal and a mother of India. Lumbini gave the world the Buddha, whose light travelled south across the plains before it travelled anywhere else. Millions of Nepalis and Indians are bound by roti and beti - by bread and by marriage - in ties that no treaty created and no dispute can dissolve. Our priests cross the border to serve each other's temples. Our pilgrims walk each other's sacred roads This is not diplomacy. It is family. And let it be said clearly: India's assistance to Nepal, however modest it may appear beside the aid budgets of wealthy Western powers, has been real and should be acknowledged with grace. The open border that lets a Nepali villager seek work in Indian cities. The transit access that keeps a landlocked nation breathing. The hospitals, the scholarships, the roads, the rushed aircraft after the 2015 earthquake. India is not a rich donor state with limitless resources. It is a vast developing country carrying the burden of over a billion people, managing poverty, infrastructure gaps, and difficult borders with China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. To compare Indian assistance with Western aid budgets without acknowledging these constraints is intellectually dishonest. Nepal recognizes what India has given, small or large, and says thank you without embarrassment. But gratitude should never be confused with silence, and proximity should never be mistaken for hierarchy. And so, as a friend, I must now speak candidly. The dirty shirt: How India's local envoys lost India's friends Let me say plainly what many in Kathmandu say only privately. Over the years, India's offices and missions in Kathmandu have - perhaps unintentionally, perhaps through habit - alienated the very friends India once had: political parties, leaders, institutions, and ordinary citizens who carried genuine goodwill toward Delhi. Micromanagement was mistaken for diplomacy. Pressure was mistaken for partnership. Familiarity was mistaken for entitlement. The result is a policy failure that has cost India influence it never needed to lose. I write this not in anger, but as a friendly note from a neighbour: the friends India lost in Nepal were not taken by anyone else. They were let go. Here is a homely metaphor that every household will understand. When your shirt becomes dirty, you do not throw it away and buy a new one. You wash it, mend it, and wear it again - because it is yours, because it fits you, because it has served you. But that is not what India's local envoys did in Kathmandu. When old friends became inconvenient, when trusted relationships gathered the ordinary dust of politics, the envoys did not wash and mend. They discarded the old shirt and went shopping for new ones - new parties, new favourites, new instruments - again and again. And a man who keeps throwing away his shirts eventually finds himself with a wardrobe full of strangers and nothing that truly fits. This restlessness was not India's alone. The world's players have done the same in Nepal for decades. First they worshipped the monarchy, treating the palace as the only address in Kathmandu. Then, when the winds changed, they worshipped the political regimes and the party leaders. Now many of them have turned their devotion toward Beijing, courting whoever seems to hold tomorrow's power. Each time, the old relationship was discarded rather than repaired. But Nepal is not a marketplace of disposable loyalties. A nation's friendships, like a family's, must be maintained - washed, mended, and honoured - not replaced whenever fashion changes. India, of all countries, with its civilizational memory, should have understood this better than anyone. Its envoys should have recognized the friends India already had. Now, I say with sorrow rather than satisfaction, it seems almost too late - and 'almost' is the only word of hope I can honestly offer. 'The friends India lost in Nepal were not taken by anyone else. They were let go.' Blood is older than treaties: What India has forgotten Perhaps India's envoys forgot something else as well - something written not in files but in blood. Nepali soldiers have stood beside India in every hour of its need, long before modern diplomacy gave that loyalty a name. In the great upheaval of 1857 - the Mutiny, the first war of what Indians themselves call the Bharat Sangram, the struggle for Bharat - Nepali forces marched south into the plains and shaped the outcome of that convulsion. Whatever the politics of that era, the point is this: Nepali blood has been spilled on Indian soil for more than a century and a half. When India became free, the Gurkha regiments did not abandon her. The tripartite understanding kept Nepali hillmen in the Indian Army's Gorkha Brigade, and they have served with a devotion that Indian generals themselves describe with reverence. In 1947 and 1948, in 1962 against China, in 1965 and 1971 against Pakistan, on the frozen ridgelines of Kargil in 1999, in the brutal hand-to-hand darkness of Galwan in 2020, and most recently in the tense days of Operation Sindoor - the sons of Nepal's hills have fought, bled, and died under the Indian flag. Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw's famous tribute to the Gurkha's courage is quoted at every Indian military gathering. The khukuri hangs in the insignia of the Indian Army itself. Ask yourselves, friends of India: which other neighbour has given India its sons for every one of India's wars? Not one. Pensioned Gurkha veterans live in every district of Nepal's hills - men who carry Indian medals on their chests and Indian memories in their hearts. These men and their families were India's most natural constituency in Nepal, a living bridge of loyalty stretching from Dehradun to Dharan. Did India's envoys nurture this bridge? Or did they take it for granted, like the old shirt, while shopping for newer and shinier friendships? When recruitment questions arose in recent years, was the matter handled with the tenderness such a sacred bond deserves - or with the coldness of a procurement file? A nation that forgets who bled for it will one day wonder why it stands alone. 'Which other neighbour has given India its sons for every one of India's wars? Not one.' Nepal must also look in the mirror: Our division is our weakness But this letter would be dishonest - and unworthy of a friend - if it blamed India alone. Nepal must look in the mirror, and the mirror shows a hard truth. Our own political forces are divided, and they do not even recognize their division as the disease it is. Party against party, faction against faction, leader against leader - each convinced that the other's defeat matters more than the nation's direction. Governments change like seasons. Coalitions are built in the morning and betrayed by evening. Policy continuity is sacrificed to factional bargaining, and corruption drains the public's trust drop by drop. Our forces are divided for instability, when they should be singing one song - a song of unity. Until Nepal's political class can rise above partisan theatrics and agree on a handful of national fundamentals - on water, on foreign policy, on the army, on the economy - no amount of geography will save us, and no foreign friend will be able to help us. And here is the connection that both nations must understand: it was this passing parade of instability - this endless churning of governments and factions in Kathmandu - that eventually caused Indians to lose their understanding of Nepal. When the address in Kathmandu changed every year, Delhi stopped knowing whom to talk to and what Nepal truly wanted. Confusion bred suspicion; suspicion bred interference; interference bred resentment; and resentment opened the northern door wider. Our instability and India's misreading fed each other in a vicious circle. Nepal's division is not only Nepal's wound. It is the crack through which every misunderstanding between our two nations has entered. Mountains may protect borders, but they do not build roads, manage rivers, train engineers, or negotiate trade agreements. Nepal preserved its sovereignty through the colonial era not because of luck, but because of statecraft, discipline, and the sacrifice of its people - the same qualities that made the Gurkha name respected across the world. That legacy must not be romanticized into nostalgia, but neither should it be forgotten. It must now be converted into modern capacity: stronger institutions, serious diplomacy, policy continuity, and above all, unity of purpose. 'Our forces are divided for instability, when they should be singing one song - a song of unity.' The question India must answer: Water, mountains, and the northern wall Now let me turn to the question in this article's title, because it concerns India's own security more than Nepal's pride. Do Indians understand that China's dam-building on Himalayan headwaters is not a distant engineering project but a strategic warning? Do they realize that China's most consequential southern defence posture now lies on the far side of the Himalaya - hardened, organized, and increasingly capable? China's presence on the Tibetan plateau has transformed the northern side of the Himalaya into a zone of infrastructure, surveillance, logistics, and military readiness. Roads, railways, airfields, and communications networks have reduced the natural insulation that mountains once provided. The Himalaya is still formidable, but it is no longer an impenetrable barrier. China has learned to project power across altitude and distance with modern engineering. Water sits at the centre of this reality. Dams are not merely about electricity. They are about timing, storage, data, and influence. The Yarlung Tsangpo, which becomes the Brahmaputra, is one of Asia's great rivers; any major intervention upstream carries implications for sediment flow, seasonal discharge, ecological balance, and downstream security. The same logic applies to the Himalayan rivers that feed both Nepal and India. No responsible state should panic - but no responsible state should be complacent either. 'In the Himalaya, water is power, and power is never neutral.' Too often, Indian public debate treats Nepal as a sentimental cousin or a diplomatic irritant. That frame is too small for a large strategic reality. Nepal's stability affects India's northern flank. Nepal's hydrology affects hundreds of millions of Indians downstream. Nepal's political orientation shapes the balance of influence across the entire Himalayan arc. If India recognizes Nepal as a frontline Himalayan state, that recognition will help Indians decisively: it will reduce the space for external manipulation, strengthen regional trust, and improve India's own security architecture. Ignorance in this matter is not innocence; it is vulnerability. And China should not be romanticized either. Beijing's interest in Nepal is strategic, not sentimental. It seeks access, influence, and leverage - which is normal in international politics. Nepal should welcome connectivity without surrendering sovereignty, investment without surrendering judgment, alternatives without becoming captive to them. Our goal is not to choose one giant over another. Our goal is to become too coherent to be manipulated easily. What India should do - and what Nepal promises in return Here, then, is the friendly counsel of a neighbour, offered without bitterness. First, wash the shirt. Return to the friends India already has - the political parties across Nepal's spectrum, the Gurkha families, the border communities, the temples and monasteries, the traders and students - and repair those relationships with patience rather than replacing them with new experiments. Respect is more durable than pressure. Partnership is more stable than patronage. If India wants influence in Nepal, it must earn it through reliability, not demand it through habit. Second, invest in the bridge, not the leash. Support Nepal's hydropower with fair long-term power purchase, transparent river data-sharing, modern border infrastructure, disaster coordination, and institutional capacity-building - with more seriousness and less suspicion. A prosperous Nepal is not a threat to India. It is an asset. A Nepal that exports clean energy, manages its borders effectively, and maintains political stability strengthens the entire Himalayan arc and India's own security. Third, honour the blood. Treat the Gurkha bond not as a recruitment arrangement but as a sacred inheritance shared by two nations. The veterans in Nepal's hills, and their grandsons, are the truest ambassadors India will ever have - if India remembers them before it is truly too late. And Nepal, for its part, must promise unity. We must end the passing instability that confused our friends and emboldened our manipulators. We must build institutions stronger than personalities, agree on national fundamentals above party lines, and train a new generation of diplomats, engineers, and planners who understand that our future will be decided not only in parliament, but in the mountains, rivers, and data systems that define our geography. The neighbour on this side of the globe President Reagan called Nepal a neighbour from the other side of the globe. India is our neighbour on this side - the closest, the most consequential, the most intertwined with our prayers, our marriages, our markets, and our memories. Geography has already given both our nations a remarkable place on the map. Nepal is not trapped by the Himalaya; it is entrusted with them. That is a harder task, but also a greater one. The question now, Honourable Prime Minister, is whether our two nations are wise enough to understand what that trust demands - whether India will recognize its Himalayan neighbour not as a buffer to be managed but as a frontline partner to be respected, and whether Nepal will find the unity to be worthy of that respect. The mountains will not decide this. Institutions, leadership, discipline, and strategic imagination will. That recognition would help Nepal. But it would help India even more. Bajgain is the former Member of Parliament, Nepal