31/05/2020
The Treaty of Sugauli (also spelled Sugowlee, Sagauli, Soogoulee and Segqulee),
The treaty that established the boundary line of Nepal, was signed on 2 December 1815 and ratified by 4 March 1816 between the East India Company and Raj Guru Gajaraj Mishra with Chandra Shekhar Upadhaya for Nepal following the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-16. The treaty represented a Nepali surrender to the British and contained the cession of Nepal's western territory to the British East India Company.
Negotiations for a general settlement produced a draft which was initialled at Sagauli in Bihar in December 1815 and required Nepal to give up all territories west and east of its present-day borders, to surrender the entire Tarai and to accept a permanent British representative (or 'resident') in Kathmandu. The Nepalese government initially balked at these terms, but agreed to ratify them in March 1816 after Ochterloney occupied the Makwanpur Valley only thirty miles from the capital
Following the Unification of Nepal under Prithvi Narayan Shah, Nepal attempted to enlarge its domains, conquering much of Sikkim in the east and, in the west, the basins of Gandaki and Karnali and the Uttarakhand regions of Garhwal and Kumaon. This brought them in conflict with the British, who controlled directly or indirectly the north Indian plains between Delhi and Calcutta. A series of campaigns termed the Anglo-Nepalese War occurred in 1814–1816. In 1815 the British general Ochterlony evicted the Nepalese from Garhwal and Kumaon across the Kali River, ending their 12-year occupation, which is remembered for its brutality and repression
Ongoing disputes
Among the border dispute of the Indo-Nepal boundary, the most significant are in the Susta and Kalapani regions. The two regions cover some 40 km of the Indo-Nepal border.
On July 18, 1947 Indian Independence Act 1947 was passed by the British Parliament to assent to the creation of the dominions of India and Pakistan. The aforementioned Article 7 of this Act provides that, with the lapse of His Majesty’s suzerainty over the Indian states, all treaties, agreements, obligations, grants, usages and sufferance’s will lapse. Therefore some Nepalis asked for the territory ceded to the East India Company under the Sugauli Treaty to be returned to them to form Greater Nepal.
