New Delhi: As Indian Army chief Dhiraj Seth reached Nepal on a four-day visit, the clamour by former Gorkha soldiers and military trainees for resuming the recruitment of Nepalese youth into the Indian Army through the Agnipath scheme grew louder.
They have formally asked the Balen Shah government to withdraw the decision by the previous government which had halted the recruitment after India introduced the Agnipath scheme in 2022. Kathmandu’s argument is that the scheme was introduced without consultation with it and violated the Tripartite Agreement between India, the UK and Nepal.
The agreement, signed on 1 May 1947 and ratified later that year, assured citizens of Nepal the same treatment as members of the parent armies.
The gathering of former Gorkha soldiers in Pokhara was described by organisers as a “peace rally” rather than a protest. The rally was organised by the Indian Ex-Servicemen Gorkha Brigade, Nepal-Pokhara. Pokhara is where the training for the recruitment of soldiers takes place. It also hosts the oldest military training centre in the country.
Organisers submitted a two-point memorandum through the local district administration, asking Kathmandu to allow recruitment to resume and to renew recognition of ex-servicemen’s organisations whose names include the word “soldier”.
“There are Nepalese youth now in training who want to join the Indian Army but the Nepal government does not let them. We are simply demanding that the recruitment process restarts,” Tanka Bahadur Ghale, head of the ex-Army Association in Pokhara, told ThePrint.
Nepalese Gorkhas have served in the Indian army for more than two centuries. Recruitment began in the aftermath of the Anglo-Nepalese War and continued under British rule. After India became independent in 1947, six Gorkha regiments of the British Indian Army became part of the Indian Army under a tripartite agreement involving India, Nepal and Britain.
For generations, military service in India became not only a source of employment for Nepalese families but also one of the strongest institutional links between the two countries.
Over 1.22 lakh Nepalese citizens receive a pension from the Indian government for their service in the Army. The pensions and salaries are important for the economy of Nepal, with some estimates indicating that the amount transferred to the pensioners is worth almost 3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Recruitment of Nepalese youth began to unravel around 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the process. Then, in 2022, India introduced Agnipath, a fundamentally different model for recruiting soldiers.
India launched the scheme to reform armed forces recruitment, enrolling youth aged 17-and-a-half to 21 for four-year terms. Aimed at boosting military readiness through merit-based selection, India wants its forces to be more technologically oriented and younger. However, the scheme has disrupted the centuries-old pipeline of Nepalese recruits into the Indian Army’s famed Gorkha regiments.
For Nepal, that change raised questions about whether the old arrangements under the 1816 Sugauli Treaty governing Gorkha recruitment could simply be extended to a different system. Nepal therefore asked India in 2022 to put recruitment on hold until there was greater clarity about the future of Nepalese recruits. No Nepal-domiciled Gorkha has since joined the Indian Army through the new system.
Former Chief of Defence Staff Gen Anil Chauhan had told ThePrint earlier this month that recruitment of Gorkhas into the Indian Army will be based on the Agnipath scheme and that call has to be taken by the Nepal government.
He argued that both Indian and Nepalese recruits will have the same service conditions. “How can we recruit Indians under Agnipath and have a separate scheme for the Nepalese,” Gen Chauhan had questioned.
Why former soldiers want recruitment to resume
For the soldiers campaigning in Pokhara, the four-year term is not necessarily a reason to reject the opportunity.
Colonel D. B. Thapa, a retired Gorkha officer, told ThePrint that Nepalese youths already leave the country for temporary employment overseas. In his view, military service in India offers considerably better conditions and greater social respect.
“Employment as a soldier in the Indian Army is the best, and it is the most respectable profession,” he said.
The timing of the rally is significant. Nepal now has a new government under Balen Shah. Former soldiers see the change in Kathmandu as a possible opening to revisit the recruitment question.
Thapa said the organisers had already written to the prime minister and the Home Minister, Sudan Gurung, asking for recruitment to resume.
The Pokhara gathering was intended largely as a “reminder to the government rather than an attempt to mount a large-scale confrontation”, Col Thapa noted. About 500 to 600 former Indian Army personnel attended, according to Thapa.
Incidentally, recruitment of Gorkhas will be among the issues discussed during high-level meetings of Gen Seth, although the final position of Kathmandu remains unclear.
The problem for Kathmandu
For Nepal’s government, however, the question is more complicated than employment. The old recruitment system offered Nepalese soldiers a career of roughly 15 years or more, followed by a pension. Under Agnipath, most recruits would return home after only four years.
That has implications not only for the individual soldier but also for Nepal’s extensive community of military pensioners.
Nepal must therefore weigh the immediate employment opportunities offered by Agnipath against concerns about the long-term security and status of its citizens serving under the new system. India, meanwhile, has maintained that it cannot operate one recruitment system for Indian citizens and another for Nepalese citizens.
Gen. Chauhan was commissioned into the 11th Gorkha Rifles, so was the first CDS of India Gen. Bipin Rawat.
For the retired military members in Pokhara, allowing recruitment to remain frozen threatens that relationship.
“Kathmandu should not reject the opportunity simply because Agnipath is a four-year system. If the government has concerns it should negotiate with New Delhi for changes rather than shut the door altogether,” Col Thapa said.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: Gorkha recruitment rests with Nepal, Agnipath only route to join Indian Army, says ex-CDS Chauhan