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Tensions between India and China continue to simmer in Ladakh of Jammu & Kashmir. Chances of escalation are high as the Indian media report a massive build-up of Chinese forces in the Galwan Valley. Apparently, the Chinese have also rebuilt the camp, just inside India’s borders, which the Indian forces had earlier destroyed. China, meanwhile, maintains it is India that needlessly provoked the Chinese contingent in Galwan. Troublingly, both sides continue to increase their troop presence in the area. 

Among those deployed on India’s behalf will be the Nepali nationals serving in its six Gurkha regiments. There are currently around 40,000 of them. There has been a lengthy debate in Nepal on whether the country should continue to send its able-bodied men to fight—and sometimes die—on behalf of another country. The problem is compounded for Nepal whenever India faces off against China, Nepal’s only other neighbor. Can India use the citizens of Nepal—which has traditionally had close and largely problem-free ties with the northern neighbor—to fight the Chinese?

Nepali foreign ministry officials say there has never been a formal protest from China over the deployment of Gurkha soldiers, who have repeatedly engaged in combat against the Chinese on India’s behalf since the early 1960s. With India-China tensions mounting again, the Gurkha soldiers of the Indian Army on leave in Nepal are being summoned back to duty. In this light, the splinter Maoist group led by Netra Bikram Chand, in a June 20 statement, ‘reminded’ India to desist from using Nepali soldiers against China.  

Despite such concerns, Nepal is in no position to ask India not to use the Gurkhas against China. “We have to accept the reality that they are part of the Indian defense system. We can do nothing about it,” says political analyst Krishna Khanal. Though it is an emotional issue for Nepalis, he argues the Indian defense force can deploy them as they wish. 

Nepal has never brought up the issue of revisiting Gurkha recruitment with India. But it sent a note to Britain in February this year, seeking a review of the tripartite agreement signed in 1947 between Nepal, India, and Britain that split the Gurkha regiments between India and Britain. In an initial reaction, Britain refused to change the agreement.

Till date, Nepalis continue to be recruited into the Indian Army. Lured by attractive salary, pensions, and other social security benefits, they join the Indian Army and take an oath to protect India’s national interests. According to Ashok Mehta, an old Nepal hand in New Delhi, Nepali youths in the Indian Army get four times the salary and pensions they would get in Nepal Army. 

The Covid-19 crisis has battered the Nepali economy and rendered hundreds of thousands jobless. This is surely not the right time for Nepal to ask its nationals in the Indian Army to come back or to stop recruitment into the force. But Nepal may find itself in a tricky spot if China asks it to reconsider.

It started in 2011 as a Facebook page posting information about Nepal banda (general strike called by political parties and enforced by their vandals), load-shedding, and a few jokes. Over the years, the page would evolve into a behemoth with over 1.8 million followers—in addition to having over 700,000 Instagram followers. Routine of Nepal Banda, abbreviated RONB, is these days a popular and celebrated Facebook page for news and information.

“I usually wait for Routine of Nepal Banda to confirm news or information. When I see it posting, it is kind of ‘confirmed’ for me,” says Sudip Poudel, 27, an accountant from Kathmandu. Paudel is among the many youths who reckon RONB is a trustworthy source of information.

Nerajan KC, 21, an IT student from Kathmandu, says RONB is quite an addiction for him. “I scroll the page at least three times a day until my thirst for news, facts, photography, and other useful content is satisfied for the day.”

Likewise, RONB is a reliable source for Mishree Thapa from Chitwan who has just reached 20. “It spreads correct news, not rumors,” she says.

Victor Paudel, 26, the page admin, was pursuing a college bridge course in Kathmandu after school when he started the page. “Besides our hard work, the unique page name is also behind its popularity,” says Paudel.

The page practices citizen journalism, sourcing news and information from people from every part of Nepal, and is run by a team of volunteers spread across the country.

RONB is a reliable source of information for Nepalis at home and abroad. “It is unlike traditional sources for news and information. It is also a good platform to promote and foster hidden Nepali talents in both national and international arena,” says Madan Raj Sigdel, 24, who is currently in Sydney, Australia. 

There is a two-way communication with the visitors. As per admin Paudel, “Through thousands of comments, reacts, share, and hundreds of messages, we are 24/7 connected to our readers, followers, and the general public. They are our reporters, evaluators, promoters—everything really.”

This two-way communication has helped RONB understand people’s likes and dislikes. Sometimes mistakes are corrected when someone point them out in the comments, according to Paudel.

The page does not rush to break news. If it is a little slow, that probably means it is trying to verify information. “Unless something is urgent, we don’t worry about being late. But we don’t want to give wrong information,” says Paudel. The RONB team tries to verify info through various means, including local authorities, residents, and other news sources.

Another noteworthy feature of the page is the use of short (6-7 line) paragraph posts and a simple language along with related photos. Some posts are in Roman Nepali, which many Nepalis use for texting. Even when it uses English, the language is simple enough for nearly everyone to understand.

The page claims to be engaging 3.5 million people a month. “The responses are motivating. People request us to post more often and with more detail. They want more and we are trying to constantly update ourselves,” adds Paudel.

The page also encourages photography talent and promotes Nepal’s tourism in this way. Bishal Humagain, a freelancer travel/landscape photographer from Lalitpur, says the page has proven to be a great platform for him to showcase his skills, right since the start of his career.

Maybe due to its wide following, RONB contents become viral in no time. Encouraged by its success, the RONB has now registered as a media company, and is planning a full-fledged news portal. The team is developing an app too.

Currently, the page survives on advertisements from movies, events, and private businesses. “We have multiple teams looking after different things. Our success depends on teamwork,” adds Paudel. 

He considers the infancy of social media and poor internet bandwidth as major problems for Nepali online media.

As it is not an official media portal, RONB is also facing some difficulties, for instance in its inability to access political content. It is hard to cover the field as a Facebook page, Paudel says.

The new news portal should take care of that, and RONB’s growth and popularity could further grow. 

Narad Rana of Shuklaphanta Municipality-10 (Kanchanpur) had been working as a hotel waiter in India’s Gujarat for 17 years before the Covid-19 pandemic rendered him jobless and forced him to return home. He had left Nepal all those years ago after he couldn’t land a job here. The situation is worse today.

“In India, I used to earn well enough to look after my family here. Now I am jobless and worried about what to do next,” he shares.

Deepak Bhatta of Bhimdutta Municipality-6 (Kanchanpur) feels likewise. He had been working as a security guard in Gujarat for the past four years. But the pandemic shut down his company and he lost his job. He too has returned home and is jobless. “The owner of the company sent us home. I don’t know what I will do here,” he says. Not having a job troubles him more than the fear of the virus.

In Nepal, big industrial units are closed and the current budget has no plan for youth employment, he observes. “Even farming is full of problems. We don’t get fertilizers and seeds on time.” He reckons the government’s lack of plan and vision will hinder the growth of agricultural. “Our only option is agriculture, which, sadly, has never been a government priority.”

Such is also the experience of Harka Bahadur Chand and Umesh Singh Thagunna of Dhangadhi Sub-Metropolitan City-1 (Kailali). Chand returned recently from India’s Rajasthan via the Gauriphanta border point. Thagunna and his brother returned from Bangalore. They used to earn enough in India to sustain their family back home. They too think agriculture could be an option for returning migrants, but don’t know how to get started.

“We worry about what we can do here. Hundreds of thousands are returning from India. Finding jobs for them all will be difficult,” says Chand.

India is the major labor destination for the residents of nine districts in Sudurpaschim. Although the government has no data on such migrants, non-governmental organizations estimate 30 percent of people from this province are currently in India for work. According to the 2011 Census, the province is home to 2.5 million people. That puts the number of migrant workers at around 750,000.  As per government records, over 242,000 workers have returned from India since the first week of March.

While the returnees are worried about finding a job, experts say the youths need to start thinking of self-employment. Chairman of Baitadi Chamber of Commerce and Industry Nara Bahadur Chand suggests the returning youths start organic farming in the hills. “If they grow and sell off-season vegetables, they will make more money here than they did in India. Our farmlands have now turned into unattended forests.”

The government should stop giving subsidies to party cadres and use those funds to provide returning youths with seed capital, fertilizers, and seeds to start farming, Chand suggests.  

Former Registrar of Sudurpaschim University, Hemraj Panta, asks the government to recognize the skills of returning youths. “Hundreds of thousands are currently in quarantine. The government should mobilize local bodies to find out the skills of these people.” After that, self-employment programs should be started according to their skillsets, he recommends. He too reckons agriculture is a sector with high promise: “The government should boost agriculture in order to substitute imports from India.”

Whenever India-China or India-Pakistan border tensions flare up, one of the first concerns in Nepali minds is the fate of the frontline Gurkha soldiers. Accompanying this concern is a query about whether time has come for Nepal to rethink the recruitment of Nepali nationals into the Indian Army.

Same kinds of queries are now being raised as India and China face-off in Ladakh. If it comes to that, is it right for Nepali nationals to fight China, its immediate and vital neighbor, on behalf of a third country? Forget China. Is it even morally right to allow your citizens to serve as mercenaries?

With tensions against China mounting, the Gurkha soldiers of the Indian Army who are on leave in Nepal are now being summoned back to duty. In this light, the splinter Maoist group led by Netra Bikram Chand, in a June 20 statement, ‘reminded’ India to desist from using Nepali soldiers against China. 

Despite such concerns, Nepal is in no position to ask India not to use the Gurkhas against China, nor is it the current priority of any of Nepal’s major political parties. “We have to accept the reality that they are part of the Indian defense system. We can do nothing about it,” says political analyst Krishna Khanal. Though it is an emotional issue for Nepalis, he argues, the Indian defense force can deploy them as they wish.

Over the past 60 or 70 years, Nepal’s communist parties used this issue as a political instrument whenever they were out of power, Khanal adds. For instance, stopping recruitment into the Indian army was one of the 40 demands put forth by the mother Maoist party in 1996, right before they launched their insurgency.

During the insurgency, the Maoist party continued to raise this issue. But after joining peaceful politics in 2006, the party abandoned this agenda. Now Gurkha recruitment does not find a mention in the political documents of Nepal Communist Party, the ruling party formed after the merger of the mother Maoists and erstwhile CPN-UML. The Chand faction, plus some other fringe communist outfits, however, has continued to give voice to it.

“In the past, the CPN-UML, like other communist parties, also raised the issue of recruitment into Indian Army for political benefit. But it dropped the agenda when it came to power,” says Ashok Mehta, a retired general of the Indian Army who closely follows Nepal.

History’s burden

There is a long history of recruitment of Nepali nationals into the Indian and British armies. The British started enlisting Nepalis in their colonial army from 1815 when it set up the Gurkha regiments. After India’s independence, six Gurkha regiments were retained in the Indian Army while the British Army got four. Now, there are seven Gurkha regiments in the Indian Army, with 40 battalions and a total of 40,000 soldiers.

Nepal has never brought up the issue of revisiting Gurkha recruitment with India. But Nepal did send a note to Britain in February this year, seeking a review of the tripartite agreement signed in 1947 between Nepal, India and Britain that split the Gurkha regiments between India and Britain. In an initial reaction, Britain refused to make any changes in the agreement. Before that, Prime Minister KP Oli had raised the issue during his bilateral talk with then British Prime Minister Theresa May in 2019.

In 2016, Nepal and India formed the Eminent Persons’ Group (EPG) to study the entire gamut of bilateral relations and to suggest modifications. The EPG prepared a report covering all bilateral issues but not Gurkha soldiers. “We did not discuss Gurkha recruitment as it was beyond our jurisdiction. But the two countries can always discuss this,” says Surya Nath Upadhyay, a member of the Nepal half of the EPG. He says it is a sensitive issue and needs to be dealt with finesse.

Till date, Nepalis continue to be recruited into the Indian Army. Lured by attractive salary, pensions, and other social security benefits, they join the Indian Army and take oath to protect India’s national interests. According to Mehta, Nepali youths in Indian Army get four times the salary and pensions they would get in Nepal Army.

As of now, there are 126,000 Indian Gurkha pensioners in Nepal, and there is an Indian Ex-servicemen Welfare Organization in Nepal working for retired army personnel.

“We are in no condition—politically, economically or socially—to stop the recruitment into Indian Army,” says political analyst Khanal. In economic mess created by Covid-19, that prospect appears unlikelier still.

Fighting for India

Gurkha units have a history of fighting India’s key wars including in 1947-48, 1965, and 1971, all of them in Jammu & Kashmir and all against Pakistan. They also took part in the Indo-China war of 1962, and in later skirmishes between the two countries. There are many anecdotal evidences for this.

Writes ex-Indian Army Brigadier CS Thapa in Indian defense magazine Salute, “In 1962 the Chinese used loudspeakers daily against the company of Major Dhan Singh Thapa, PVC [Param Vir Chakra] asking the soldiers to withdraw as they were from Nepal.”

Then, in September-October 1967, the Nepali Gurkha soldiers were deployed against the Chinese at Nathu La pass between India and China. “A Gurkha unit,” according to Indian General V.K. Singh’s accounts, “gave the Chinese side a ‘bloody nose’… on that occasion, occupying a position after a brutal khukri assault.”

During the Doklam crisis in 2017, there were media reports that Gurkha soldiers were deployed at the forefront against China. But Mehta clarifies that Gurkha soldiers were deployed in Doklam only on second or third lines.

“If there are further tensions, China may raise this issue with Nepal stating that Nepali youths are fighting against China on India’s behalf. But so far as I know, China has lodged no such objection till date,” Mehta adds. Officials at Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also expressed their ignorance of any formal Chinese objection to the use of Gurkha soldiers against them.