Even as the relationship between Nepal and India hit a rocky patch about disputed border territory , ties between the neighbours received a...
Even as the relationship between Nepal and India hit a rocky patch about disputed border territory, ties between the neighbours received a new jolt recently when Nepal’s foreign minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali said that a 1947 agreement that allows India and Britain to recruit Gorkha soldiers is redundant.
“It is a legacy of the past,” Gyawali said during an online interaction organised by the Nepal Institute of International Relations on July 31. India currently has approximately 35,000 Nepali citizens serving in seven regiments, some of whom are deployed along India’s fractious borders with Pakistan and China.
The Indian Army recruits about 1,300 Gurkha youths every year, while Britain selects more than 200 people annually for the British Army and Singapore Police.
Recruitment from Nepal started after the Anglo Nepal war (1814-1816), when the East India Company was vastly impressed by the courage of their opponents. Decades later, Indian Field Marshal Sam Maneckshaw declared, “If someone says he is not afraid to die, he is either lying or is a Gurkha.” After India’s independence, Nepal, Britain and India signed a tri-partite agreement that allowed Nepali citizens to be recruited into their armies.
Treaty renegotiation
Debates about Nepal’s responsibilities to its citizens gained new momentum in 2018, when Britain set about recruiting Gorkha women without seeking...
