Gurkha Veterans Fight a Colonial-Era Legacy Still Shaping Nepal

KATHMANDU, Nepal — In one corner of Nepal’s capital, young men are going through the final preparations in pursuit of their singular lifelong dream: a place in the British Army as a Gurkha soldier, perceived as their ticket out of a life of uncertainty and poverty.

They arrive for training before dawn, lifting weights, running sprints and pushing the limits of their teenage bodies. Then they sit for hours of math and English lessons.

“Ever since I was a child, I have worked for this — everything I do is for this,” said Rabin Mahat, 19. “I will make it.”

But in another corner of the capital, Kathmandu, there is a stark reminder that those who did make it faced unequal treatment during their service — and for long after. Thousands of older Gurkha veterans are engaged in a decades-old fight against the British government for pay and pensions on par with the other soldiers with whom they served.

For many veterans, their struggle — in the form of protests, court cases and even hunger strikes outside 10 Downing Street in London — has dragged on longer than the duration of their active service. Thousands of older veterans — of a force sent to fight in bloody battles on behalf of Britain, from the two World Wars to Iraq and Afghanistan — died before receiving the compensation, and the dignified treatment, they sought.

“I served for 24 years,” said L.B. Ghising, who was with the British Army in Malaysia and Hong Kong. “But it’s been 32 years that we have been fighting about our equal right. Unfortunately, we have lost 50 percent of our veterans without getting it.”