Pride or money, Nepal's Gurkhas at moral crossroads

By Krittivas Mukherjee

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - For nearly two centuries, Nepal's valiant Gurkha soldiers have battled their foes with guns and their lethal kukri knives, which tradition demands must draw blood every time it is unsheathed.

But in a narrow lane off Nepal's parliament complex, they prepare for a battle of a different kind -- not with weapons but printing machines and fliers. Their enemy: a life-altering new diktat from Nepal's rulers-elect, the Maoists.

The Maoists, who won a surprise election this month after a decade of civil war, want to stop a 200-year-old tradition of Gurkhas enrolling in the British and Indian armies, calling the practice humiliating and mercenary.

It is a charge the Gurkhas do not deny, but Nepal's crushing poverty and unemployment have pushed the valiant warrior tribe into a moral dilemma of choosing between dignity and livelihood.

"Nothing stirs a Gurkha more than his honor dared, but here we are in a fix," Mahendra Lal Rai, the general secretary of the largest former Gurkha soldiers group, told Reuters.

"We do feel like mercenaries fighting for foreign armies, but who can deny our economic reality, our compulsions? We are caught between pride and practicality."

The Maoist threat is not yet set in stone. Chances are, if not the Gurkhas, the economic reality of Nepal will deter them.

Here is why: in Nepal's impoverished Himalayan foothills, Gurkha service is hugely popular. Last year some 17,500 applicants competed for 230 British army jobs. Gurkha privates in the British army begin their service on $28,000 a year, on the same pay scale and with the same pension as any British soldier.