Migrants, Smugglers, Traders and Treacherous Rivers: A Genealogy of the Bihar-Nepal Border from Treaty of Sugauli to c. 1947

Abstract

In September 1903, an attempt was made to rob a runner for the postal services between British India and the Nepal Durbar. He had started his journey from Raxaul in Champaran, Bihar, into Nepalese territory. When the robbers attacked him he resisted and, through the timely intervention by some villagers, the robbery bid was foiled. The next day traders in Kathmandu received the two parcels the runner was carrying, which were insured for the sum of Rs 2,000 and Rs 1,800. The report received by the postal authorities mentioned that these packets contained nothing but waste paper. This was a peculiar situation: why insure packets of waste paper for relatively large sums of money? The postal authorities traced the sender of the parcels: a man named Sherbahadur. In the inquiry it was found that the attack on the runner was planned and executed by Sherbahadur with the help of his two servants. The idea was to later claim the insurance money from the postal authorities. It was an ingenious plan devised to take advantage of the ease with which the border between Bihar and Nepal could be crossed but also the fact that it was indeed an international border with distinct administrative and political structures on either side of the border. The border between Bihar and Nepal created asymmetry in the structures of administrative, juridical and police powers which allowed Sherbahadur to devise a strategy that used the administrative processes of the colonial government to his advantage. Although the strategy is based on a two-pronged manoeuvre that rests on the governmental processes of the colonial power, it can be realised only through violence. This is the leitmotif of the evolution of Bihar–Nepal border where the lines are constantly challenged through violence, capricious flows of rivers, and political subjects who simply refuse to give up their autonomy in the face of the border making and policing processes of state power.