Aasef Chauhdry
The discrimination by the Indian Army
vis-à-vis Gurkha soldiers has ultimately forced the Nepal government to ask
Indians from not recruiting the Gurkhas. It’s not only at the government level
but at the public level too that protests are being made against the recruiting
the Gurkhas in the Indian army. Not only that it has sparked a huge row within
the Indian army, but has also gave birth to a great controversy across Nepal
where general people came out with immense anti-India sentiments, forcing
government of Nepal to strongly consider a move to bring an end to any further
recruitment of any Nepali in Indian army. It has now forced the Indian defense
establishment to watch the Nepali government’s reaction with a great concern
and move to eventually halt the recruitment of Gurkhas in Indian army in a
fresh bid in line with the earlier recommendations of its parliament’s report
“Nepal’s Foreign policy in the Changed Context, 2012″.
The Indian government has to face a pressure
on many fronts. On one hand if the Nepal government’s stance is posing a threat
to the Indian military organizational routines then on the other hand, a number
of social circles, human rights organizations and media bodies including Nepal
Journalists Association (NJA) and Human Rights Journalists Association (
HURJA),Nepal have paid rich tributes to the chivalry and bravery of the Gurkha
soldiers in Indian army and elsewhere and have strongly condemned the
discrimination of Gurkha soldiers by anyone, anywhere under any circumstances.
So much so that the President of Nepal Journalists Association Dr. Manju Ratna
Sakya, while talking to media said that Gurkhas were symbol of chivalry and
pride for the entire Nepali nation and their historic contributions of chivalry
in the battlefields were globally acknowledged and recognized and any
discrimination and insult of any Gurkha soldier was deemed to be the insult and
discrimination of the entire Nepali nation.
Raj Bahadur, a veteran journalist and senior
member of NJA; the neutral and highly active med body of Nepali journalists,
looks at the issue from a different angle and believes that this is not the
case of Gurkha soldiers only. It’s a case of the fate of Nepal as well. While a
large part of Nepal is under occupation from India, voices are now gaining
momentum which call for breaking the shackles of Indian hegemony in Nepal.
According to the authenticated reports over 25,000 Nepalese are currently serving
in the Indian Army’s seven Gurkha Rifles (1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th and
11th), each of which has five to six battalions (800 to 1,000 soldiers each),
drawing basically from Rais and Limbus of Eastern Nepal and Gurungs and Magars
from the West. That makes up almost 70% of the Gurkha Regiment, while “Indian
domiciled Gurkhas” from places like Dehradun, Darjeeling and Dharamshala
constitute the rest. There are roughly another 20,000 Gurkhas in Indian
paramilitary and police forces like Assam Rifles while India is supposed to
look after over 80,000 ex-servicemen, 17,000 retired Assam Rifles personnel and
11,000 widows in Nepal. The irony is that no welfare plan has ever been
introduced in this direction by successive Indian governments and military leaderships,
other than routine pensions and the Gurkhas are treated by every government and
the military command not more than a tissue paper and that’s what is causing
alarming restlessness within the ranks. Even within the Indian army there are
two groups; one who are against according extra privileges to the Gurkha
soldiers – of course in majority – and an insignificant group of military
seniors from the West Bengal who support the Gurkhas demands and rights but are
not paid any heed to.
Instead of responding to the grievances of the
Nepal government generally and the Gurkhas categorically, the serving and
retired Indian military top brass has started threatening the latter, directly
and indirectly. One of the former Chiefs of the Indian army Gen. Ved Prakash
Malik recently said, “Nepali Gurkhas have been part of the Indian Army for a
very long time. If they are stopped from joining the army then the association
between the armies and also the countries will be affected. Besides the large
number of Nepali Gurkha soldiers, we also have a large number of pensioners in
the country. We have opened hospitals and other facilities at Kathmandu and
other parts of Nepal,” Malik told The Daily Mail to a query in this direction.
“In some villages in eastern Nepal, about half of the families have one or more
pensioners from the Indian Army”, he added. However Malik had no convincing or
satisfactory reply to the issue of the plight of 11000 widows of Gurkha
soldiers back in Nepal and to the issues like the Ran Bahadur Gurung episode.
However, currently the recruitment of Nepalese
Gurkhas into the Indian and British Armies (which started with the
Britain-India-Nepal Tripartite Agreement of 1947) is under a cloud. Based on
the recommendation issued by a Parliamentary Committee on International
Relations and Human Rights on 26 December 2011, Nepal has directed the
ministries concerned to halt the recruitment of Gurkhas by foreign armies. This
demand had first come up as a part of the 50-point agenda the Maoists submitted
to the government when they went underground in 1996.A couple of years back,
taking exceptional notice of discrimination of Gurkha soldiers in Indian army,
Nepal’s Maoist Chief, Prachanda had very strongly objected to further
recruitment of Gurkhas in Indian army and called for a comprehensive ban by
Kathmandu in this direction. He told reporters that Nepali Gurkhas should not
be allowed to join Indian defense forces.
Amrita Thapa of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (M) says, “Nowhere in the world do you see a system like this. Times have changed from the Empire days. The Gurkhas are taken from Nepal as raw material and used by another country to meet their purposes in exchange for money; there is no value addition. They may be given medals and honours, but it is a form of modern-day slavery that questions the sovereignty of Nepal,” says. The most alarming and dangerous thing is when surprisingly, this move finds support from the Indian Gurkhas, who have always felt sidelined. “Being Indian citizens, they feel they should be given preference over Nepalese Gurkhas,” says a senior officer in the Indian Army.
Gurkhaland is a proposed state in India
demanded by the people of Darjeeling Hills and the people of
Gurkha ethnic origin in Dooars in northern West Bengal on the
basis of ethno-linguistic rights. The movement for Gurkhaland has gained
momentum in the line of ethno-linguistic-cultural sentiment of the people who
desire to identify themselves as Indian Gurkhas. Two mass movements for
Gurkhaland have taken place under the GNLF (Gurkha National Liberation Front
-1986–1988) and Gurkha Janmukti Morcha (2007–till date). The movement for
a separate state of Gurkhaland gained serious momentum during the 1980s, when a
violent agitation was carried out by Gurkha National Liberation
Front (GNLF) led by Subhash Gaisingh. The agitation ultimately led to the
establishment of a semiautonomous body in 1988 called the Darjeeling Gurkha
Hill Council (DGHC) to govern certain areas of Darjeeling district. However, in
2007, a new party called the Gurkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) raised the
demand for a separate state of Gurkhaland once again.
It’s becoming difficult for the Indian
government to handle this double edged issue; satisfying the Nepali and Indian
Gurkhas as far as their demands are concerned and ensuring that out of
desperation the deprived Gurkhas, serving as well as retired ones do not play
into the hands of Gurkhaland movement activists. In case if it happens so then
the Indian authorities are seeing a worst nightmare of their history,
especially when the West Bengal belt is already a troublesome zone for India.
Whatever the case may be but one thing is for sure that it can easily be read
on the horizon that very soon there is no more Gurkha Battle-Cry “Ayo Gorkhali
for Indian Army.
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