Nepal: The Gurkha Exodus
By Sudeshna Sarkar for ISN
From his bed in the city of Pokhara, Nepal, Captain Lalit Bahadur Gurung is fighting his final battle, watched closely by hundreds of other retired soldiers like him.
The 81-year-old, who joined the famed Gurkha Brigade of the British Army as an 18-year-old, received the Military Cross in 1964 for outstanding valor during the war in Borneo and Brunei. Today, paralyzed by a stroke, he is fighting a dogged legal battle against his former employer, the British government.
“His family has been struggling with his medical expenses, which are enormous,” says Mahendra Lal Rai, general secretary of the Gurkha Army Ex-Servicemen’s Organisation (GAESO), an association of British Army veterans that has been campaigning since 2002 for equal pay, pensions and compensation.
“Also, the hospitals in Pokhara are not well-equipped. On the other hand, as a former British soldier, he can avail of National Health Service and get free medical care if he goes to Britain,” he tells ISN Security Watch.
Until this summer, going to the UK would have been an impossible dream for Gurung and thousands of other soldiers like him due to the British Army’s discriminatory resettlement policy. While soldiers recruited from Commonwealth countries had the right to live in the UK after four years’ service, Gurkha soldiers’ entry was restricted: Only those who had retired after 1997 - when their base moved from Hong Kong to Britain - were allowed to live in the UK.
However, the situation changed dramatically this May after a external pagehigh-profile campaign led by British actress Joanna Lumley caused the government of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown an embarrassing defeat in the House of Commons.
On 21 May, British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced that all British Gurkha veterans who retired before 1997 were also entitled to settle in the UK, provided they had served for at least four years.
The decision means that now some 36,000 Gurkha veterans are eligible to live in the UK, along with their spouses and minor children under the age of 18.
The healthcare lure
The waiting room in the GAESO office in Kathmandu valley is packed with people who have applied to move to the UK: they include veterans, widows and their children.
Lieutenant Dhan Bahadur Rai, 68, retired in 1982. Now that the laws make him eligible to resettle in the UK, Rai is keen to go mainly to seek medical treatment for a heart condition.
Dhanmaya Gurung, 74, is the widow of Corporal Ram Bahadur Gurung who died six years ago. “My father died of a brain tumor,” Dhanmaya’s son Himal tells ISN Security Watch. “We lived in a hospital for six months and it wiped out all our savings. Now we think, what will happen if mother falls ill? We have applied for her to live in the UK so that she receives adequate medicare.”
“People want to go to the UK for mainly two reasons,” says Rai, whose father had served in the British Army before him and whose son is currently in the Gurkha Brigade. “For medical treatment and to ensure a better future for their children since Nepal is still an insecure country, both in terms of job opportunities and safety.”
GAESO has received about 900 applications so far, which means nearly 3,600 people are ready to move out. However, the number is expected to escalate if Lalit Bahadur Gurung wins his case.
A big hurdle for applicants is the fee they are asked to submit with the resettlement application. It is nearly $990, a hefty sum in a country like Nepal, which is among the poorest in the world. GAESO has filed a petition on Gurung’s behalf, asking the British government to waive the fee. The hearing starts this month, and if he wins, it would be a test case that could eventually lead to the scrapping of the fee.
However, once the Gurkha exodus starts, neither Nepal nor Britain has estimated what the fallout could be. On one hand, Britain would have to pay millions of pounds more in terms of health care for the elderly and allowances. Brown had told parliament that resettling the vets alone would cost 1.4 billion pounds and put immense strains on stretched public finances. On the other hand, Nepal would also suffer from a flight of capital as the vets withdraw their pensions and savings.
Notes of discord
A day after the new resettlement policy was announced, the London Times carried a letter striking the first discordant note. The author was Lady Hunt-Davis, wife of Sir Miles Hunt-Davis, a former brigadier and trustee of the Gurkha Welfare Trust, a 40-year-old British charity assisting Gurkha vets and their dependants in Nepal.
“These men do not live in poverty on their return to their native land,” the letter said. “Their British army pensions make them extremely rich men [...]. In the hills, the houses of British ex-servicemen stand out from those who have never benefited from foreign service, often being the only homes to have running water and lavatories, and they serve as a beacon of excellence to others.
“In addition, the Gurkha Welfare Trust exists to assist ex-Gurkhas, their widows and dependants in times of hardship. Projects such as footpaths, bridges and water installation that benefit entire villages and communities are run by ex-Gurkhas, whose technical expertise is invaluable to those among whom they live.
“If all retired Gurkhas settle in the United Kingdom there will be inevitable consequences. First, will the Gurkha Welfare Trust continue to attract the large charitable income that it now enjoys, and if not, what will happen to those too old or infirm to move here? Second, why should Nepal continue to allow external pagerecruitment of its brightest and fittest young men to a foreign army if it gains no financial benefit from so doing?”
Capital flight
The government of Nepal, racked by political instability and trying to cope with its former communist insurgents, is yet to grasp what the long-term implications are. However, bankers are already apprehensive that the exodus will fuel illegal fund transfers.
“Nepal’s laws do not permit a citizen to take his capital out of the country,” says Trilochan Pagini, spokesman at Nepal Rastra Bank, the republic’s central bank. “According to the Foreign Exchange Act, the principal member of a migrating family can take only $5,000 with him while the other members are allowed $2,000 each,” Pagini tells ISN Security Watch.
Yet there are external pagereports of Gurkha veterans selling their homes in Pokhara and towns in eastern Nepal in preparation for the departure. Faced with the bank restrictions, migrants are likely to approach clandestine agencies that operate what is known as the hundi or hawala system. Huge sums of money are transferred from one country to another through a network of brokers, leaving no traces.
Mahendra Lal Rai tries to downplay the fears. “There may not be a flight of capital from Nepal,” he tells ISN Security Watch. “Many of the vets are undecided if they would spend their last days in Britain. They want to go there and check out the situation first. Many of them could come back.”
He also points out that every year hundreds of Nepalis migrate to western countries, especially the US. “Doesn’t that mean a bigger flight of capital?” he says. “But Nepal has still survived.”