- Friday, February 28, 2025
The move comes as a symbolic response to the purported ‘Akhand Bharat’ (undivided India) mural that has been installed in India’s new parliamentary building which was inaugurated by Modi last month.
By: Shubham Ghosh
Days after Indian prime minister Narendra Modi vowed to make his country’s partnership with northern Nepal “superhit” during the recent visit by his Nepali counterpart Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, the two time-tested allies appear to have engaged in a cartographical dispute with the mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) putting up a map of ‘Greater Nepal’ in his chamber showing many parts of India as those belonging to the Himalayan nation.
The move comes as a symbolic response to the purported ‘Akhand Bharat’ (undivided India) mural that has been installed in India’s new parliamentary building which was inaugurated by Modi last month.
ಸಂಕಲ್ಪ ಸ್ಪಷ್ಟವಾಗಿದೆ – ಅಖಂಡ ಭಾರತ ??#NewParliamentBuilding#MyParliamentMyPride pic.twitter.com/tkVtu3CCoh
— Pralhad Joshi (@JoshiPralhad) May 28, 2023
According to local media reports, KMC mayor Balendra Shah called his aides on Thursday (8) and asked them to put up a map of ‘Greater Nepal’ in his chamber. It was intended as a counter to the mural in New Delhi with an aide telling Nepal’s Kathmandu Post newspaper the need to ‘remember the proud history of Nepal’.
Kathmandu Mayor Balendra Shah installs map of Greater Nepal amid #AkhandBharat controversy, instructing government to move Singha Durbar if not working for Kathmandu.
— Map shows India's land link to
#NorthEastIndia ,this highlights the ongoing dynamics between the two nations pic.twitter.com/LwGhtQ4jug— South Asian Perspective (@SAnPerspective) June 9, 2023
The development also took place soon after Prachanda said he had raised the issue during his recent visit to India and received a clarification that it was a cultural and not political map. Addressing the parliament, the prime minister however sought ‘further study’ on the matter.
“While talking about the map during my India visit, the Indian side said it was a cultural map, not a political one. Further study should be carried out on the issue,” he said while answering questions raised by the lawmakers.
Nepal’s former prime minister KP Oli told the newspaper, “If a country like India that sees itself as an ancient and strong country and as a model of democracy puts Nepali territories in its map and hangs the map in parliament, it cannot be called fair.”
Indian officials, including external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, also clarified that the issue is not political.
“The mural in question depicts the spread of the Ashokan empire and the idea of responsible and people-oriented governance that he (Ashoka) adopted and propagated,” Arindam Bagchi, spokesperson of India’s ministry of external affairs said recently.
India’s eastern neighbour Bangladesh also expressed displeasure over the mural that includes parts of Afghanistan, and the entire Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Myanmar and sought an explanation from the Indian side.
The Bangladeshi embassy in New Delhi was asked to contact India’s external affairs ministry to get the country’s official explanation on the matter, Bangladesh’s junior minister for foreign affairs Shahriar Alam told reporters in capital Dhaka, Al Jazeera reported on Wednesday (7).
“Anger is being expressed from various quarters over the map. There is no reason to doubt … the installation of the map. However, we have asked our mission in New Delhi to speak to the Indian ministry of external affairs to find out what their official interpretation is,” Alam said.
Pakistan also expressed “grave” concerns over the idea of ‘Akhand Bharat’ and at a weekly news gathering in Islamabad, the country’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch called the assertion in the mural “a manifestation of an expansionist mindset that seeks to subjugate the ideology and culture not only of India’s neighbours but also its religious minorities”.
