Old soldiers fade away

Nepalis do not see the Gurkhas in quite the same light as the British do

THIS week Joanna Lumley, a British actress, received the most extravagant of welcomes in Nepal. She was mobbed at the airport, met the prime minister and president and was lauded by the speaker of parliament as a “daughter of Nepal”. Her reception was a thank you for heading a campaign that persuaded the British government to change its mind and allow United Kingdom residency to Nepali Gurkhas who had served in the British army but had retired before 1997. The moral case was attractive: if someone is willing to die for a country he should be allowed to live in it. The rhetoric that accompanied the campaign was striking, too: it celebrated the martial races of the Himalayan foothills, who are plucky and loyal.

But given that Ms Lumley’s success means that thousands of relatively rich Nepalis will leave a badly governed country, the reception she received might seem strange; indeed, it puzzled some Nepalis. But it is, perhaps, no odder than the position of the Gurkhas in their own country.

The Nepali name for a Gurkha is “lahure”, after the city of Lahore where Gurkhas regiments once served. The name is now applied to the roughly 10% of Nepalis who work abroad. In 2008 their remittances amounted to 17% of national income, one of the world’s higher rates. Almost every poor family has one of these new “lahures” and every middle-class family has members who went to study abroad and may never return. To this exodus may now be added up to 35,000 “pre-97” Gurkhas and their dependents now living in Nepal.

That is bad news for the economy and especially for towns such as Dharan which have large ex-Gurkha populations. British army pay and pensions have given Dharan a relatively prosperous air. The manager of a bank on the high street and many of the Gurkhas who turned up to greet the victorious British campaigner said the local economy is bound to suffer.

Few Nepalis feel strongly about Gurkhas’ complaints of unequal treatment by the British. The soldiers come almost exclusively from a few ethnic groups—and only 230 were recruited last year. This makes them merely one subculture in a country of 100-odd castes and clans, some of whom are at each others’ throats, where the government is unstable. The common attitude is one of slight mockery, expressed in condescending jokes about the Gurkhas’ supposed naivety and unruly wives and children.

“They are not connected to all Nepalis, but they are part of Nepali identity and whenever a Nepali does well abroad we are always proud,” says Gunaraj Luitel, a writer. The old Gurkha is a familiar figure in the villages where many Nepalis grew up. They helped introduce foreign ideas when they returned from service abroad and perhaps assisted the spread of Nepali as a national language. Now, sadly, they have come to represent something new: the desire of Nepalis to live and work outside their country.

The Economist