Sujan Dutta, Telegraph India
New Delhi, July 10: India’s
army chief Gen. Bikram Singh today reached Kathmandu as Nepal seeks to resolve
whether to allow recruitment of its youth in the Indian and British armies.
The highlight of Gen. Singh’s
three-day visit — his first trip abroad after taking office — will be the
ceremonial conferment of the rank of honorary general in the Nepal Army, a
tradition that is reciprocated by India.
But lurking beneath the pomp that
will mark the military investiture ceremony in which President Ram Baran will
hand over the baton to General Singh are tensions that can chip away at the
Indian Army’s manpower and Nepal’s tottering economy.
Last December, a Nepalese
parliamentary panel recommended — in a concept paper titled “Nepal’s Foreign
Relations in the Changed Context” — that Kathmandu should ban the recruitment
of its Gorkhas by foreign armies because the 200-year-old practice did not
befit national honour in the changed political scenario.
Nepal’s government instructed two
of its ministries in March this year to examine the report and suggest how the
practice could be stopped.
The Indian Army has seven
regiments of Gorkhas — more than half recruited from Nepal — and about three
others in which they are recruited. An estimated 35,000 Gorkhas serve in the
infantry and the special forces, about 60 per cent of whom are originally from
Nepal. The rest are recruited largely from Darjeeling and Sikkim.
But Prime Minister Baburam
Bhattarai’s government is still unsure about accepting the recommendations
because of the economic consequences. India spends about Rs 2,000 crore a year
on salaries and pensions for Nepalese Gorkhas. Outfits of veterans and youth
organisations in Nepal have protested against the parliamentary report because
employment opportunities in the country are scarce.
The Indian Army had stopped
recruiting Gorkhas for about two years before reviving the practice in 2010. It
currently recruits about 1,000 soldiers from Nepal every year. The British, who
recruit fewer numbers, have sought to keep jobs in their army attractive by
offering citizenship to recruits from Nepal.
“The visit (of Gen. Singh)
assumes special significance in the light of enhanced defence co-operation
between the two countries and our growing bilateral relationship with Nepal,”
the Indian Army said in a statement in Delhi today.
“Both sides have indicated a
desire to work towards building a mutually beneficial defence co-operation,” it
added.
India has emphasised that it
would want to continue with the close defence relations. “Traditional linkages
of the two armies and defence co-operation have been important tools towards
cementing this friendship,” the statement said.
The practice of recruiting
Nepalese Gorkhas in the Indian Army dates back to an agreement signed in 1816
between the East India Company and the erstwhile kingdom. But Nepal’s Maoists,
now in power in a fragile set-up, have campaigned against the recruitment by
foreign armies for years.
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