COUNTRY FIRST? (From top) Men from the Gorkha regiment march in a Republic Day parade; retired Indian Army soldier Tikprasad Gurung; and Maoist leader C.P. Gajurel

Tikprasad Gurung has fought three bloody wars against China and Pakistan, putting his life on the line for a country he doesn’t “officially” belong to. Not that it mattered to the retired Indian Army captain, who is actually a Nepalese citizen now living in Pokhara, a picturesque town some 200 km from Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu.

Like most Gorkha soldiers in the Indian Army, Gurung has always felt that he belongs to both nations, physical boundaries notwithstanding. “I have never differentiated between Bharatmata and Nepalmata. Both are my mothers, to this day,” the sprightly 70-year-old says.

The Maoist government in Nepal doesn’t feel the same way. If anything, it seems out to get these men for serving in “foreign” armies.

“Why should Nepalese citizens be used to protect other nations? It reeks of colonialism,” says Maoist ideologue C.P. Gajurel, head of the international department of the ruling Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). “We will have to stop this practice.”

Shortly before he assumed office, Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal — or Prachanda — called these soldiers “mercenaries”. He also pledged to bar them from joining foreign armies if his party came to power.

But Gorkhas have been a part of foreign armies — and for long. Gorkhas, who come chiefly from the mountainous regions of eastern and western Nepal, are traditional warriors who fought for the British in colonial days. After India’s independence in 1947, five of the nine Gorkha regiments which were with the British were transferred to the Indian Army. The remaining four stayed with the British. Later, the Indian Army raised two more Gorkha regiments, taking the total to seven.

The Indian Army now employs some 40,000 Gorkha soldiers (over 60 per cent of whom are from Nepal) versus 4,000 or so Gorkha soldiers in the British army. The Indian paramilitary forces, too, have a large number of Gorkha personnel from Nepal.

Under a tripartite agreement signed in 1947 by India, Nepal and Britain, India and Britain continue to recruit Gorkha soldiers from Nepal. India alone recruits 500-700 soldiers in Nepal every year, besides those hired by paramilitary units such as the Border Security Force, Central Reserve Police Force and Indo-Tibet Border Police.

Unlike Britain where Gorkha soldiers have filed law suits accusing the UK government of discriminating against them in pay and perks, Gorkhas are treated equally in India. “You might get a higher pay in the British army but you are an equal in India. You get the same pay and pension as an Indian soldier,” says Narbahadur Thapa, an army pensioner whose two sons are serving in the fourth and fifth Gorkha regiments of the Indian Army.

Yet any ban on their joining foreign armies will have far-reaching consequences for Nepalese, many of whom join the Indian Army to escape poverty.

“The Maoist will trigger a civil war if they dare do this,” declares Rabindranath Sharma, former president of the Opposition Rashtriya Prajatantra Party. He says the Himalayan nation, now declared a republic by its first Maoist-led coalition government, cannot afford to feed “so many” hungry mouths. “Thousands of Nepalese depend on the Indian Army for their livelihood,” says the 77-year-old leader.

India paid pensions worth over Rs 500 crore to 1.20 lakh retired Gorkha servicemen — 90,000 of them from the army — in Nepal this year. Next year, with pensions increased, thanks to the sixth pay commission recommendations, the figure is expected to shoot up.

With a chunk of its forces coming from Nepal, the issue has its security implications for India, especially when the Prachanda government is inching closer to China, Nepal’s other giant neighbour. Prachanda visited China before making his maiden trip last month to India after assuming office, raising diplomatic eyebrows in New Delhi.

“These serving and retired Gorkha soldiers and their families are the biggest votary of India in Nepal today and we simply cannot afford to lose them,” says Major General (Retd) Ashok K. Mehta, a New Delhi-based security analyst who once commanded a Gorkha regiment.

But in Nepal, as retired Subedar Bharat Bahadur Thapa puts it, an army job revolves around “dal and roti.” On a recent afternoon, a long line of bhupus — the army acronym in Hindi for bhutpurv or former soldiers — snakes its way through the sprawling 47-acre pension paying office of the Indian embassy in Pokhara. It is Dusshera time, the most important festival in this once-Hindu kingdom. And people have turned up in hordes to collect their pensions.

When asked to come back the next day, the former soldiers do not mind. They leave as quietly as they had come. “Gorkha soldiers are prized not just because of their toughness and staying power. They are also disciplined and obedient to the core,” says an Indian Army colonel from the 11th Gorkha regiment.

But the Maoist diktat — that they should stay away from the armies they have served for years — troubles them. “We don’t follow politics, but they (Maoists) should leave us alone. Can they provide us jobs here in Nepal,” asks 60-year-old retired Nayak Manbahadur Gurung of Dhukurpokhari village in Pokhara.

Many stress that India and Nepal share more than a border. “Our relations with India are not just financial. We share our culture, food habits and even our religion,” says Nayak Gurung.

Tikprasad Gurung remembers the camaraderie in the Indian Army — how he escaped death on more than one occasion because of help from fellow soldiers from Punjab and Himachal Pradesh during India’s wars with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971. “We ate together and fled together when we ran out of ammunition during the 1962 war with China,” he laughs. “We never left anyone behind.”

Others agree. “India is the only country in the world where a Nepalese Gorkha can rise to be an officer,” says Captain Ganga Bahadur Khatri of Bhalam in western Nepal.

The former infantrymen — who have gathered in Bhalam, a village in the shadows of Mount Annapurna, to speak to The Telegraph — are a jovial lot. But the mood turns grim when the conversation veers to the rulingMaoists.

“The people of Nepal are not going to accept this,” says Lokbahadur Adhikari, who retired from the Gorkha regiment as a Subedar Major on June 30 after 28 years of service. “India gave us bread and education for our children,” says Adhikari, whose daughter is studying at Central school in Amritsar.

Over the last month, former Gorkha soldiers have been rallying to protest what they call the Maoist game plan. “A People’s War will break out if they try to stop the recruitment,” warns Nepal’s ex-servicemen association chairman Deepak Bahadur Gurung.

Needless to say, the Maoists, aware of the people’s mood, are treading with caution. Prime Minister Prachanda, for instance, studiously avoided the issue during his September trip to India.

For his part, Maoist leader Gajurel hints that the government may not immediately close the centres for external recruitment in Nepal. “We are aware of the resentment that shutting these centres will cause in Nepal because of unemployment problems. But our party’s position is that Gorkhas should not be recruited for foreign countries in the long run,” Gajurel, a member of the party’s decision-making central committee, says.

To be sure, the Gorkhas who have retired from the Indian Army have their share of grievances. They are sore that they get little medical care and their pensions are “paltry” compared to what the Gorkhas from the British army get.

Many like Havildar Balaram K.C., 47, who retired from the Indian Army in 2001, have had to go overseas for jobs to make ends meet. “I got only Rs 3,500 by way of pension, so I had no option but to leave home again,” he says. The former soldier works as a security guard in Kuala Lumpur, earning 40,000 Nepalese rupees a month.

Be that as it may, the call of duty is paramount to a Gorkha. And his motto in life is simple. “Kayar hunu bhanda marnu ramro,” says the Nepali inscription below a stone statute of a Gorkha soldier at the entrance to the Pokhara pension paying office. “It’s better to die than live as a coward.”