The Gorkha soldier once served as one of the strongest human bridges between India and Nepal. Today, that bridge is narrower. Delhi’s challenge is to forge a new generation of substantive ties with Nepal — strong enough to withstand and absorb the shocks of future political upheavals, border disputes or diplomatic disagreements.

India-Nepal relations have never been merely a matter of treaties, trade figures or diplomatic communiqués. Geography made the two countries neighbours; history, culture and religion made them close, but for generations, one institution gave that relationship its most powerful human expression, ie, the Gorkha soldier in the Indian Army.

From Nepal’s monarchy through successive phases of Nepali Congress governments, Left parties of varying hues, the Gorkha soldier remained an extraordinary living link between Kathmandu and New Delhi. Young men from Nepal’s hills enlisted in the Indian Army, served with distinction, retired to their villages and carried home not merely pensions and memories, but a personal familiarity with India. This was soft power in its most organic form. It was also a relationship built on sacrifice, loyalty and shared military traditions. The Gorkha Regiments became one of the most visible manifestations of the India-Nepal relationship, while Indian Army recruitment gave the bilateral relationship a constituency that no embassy or foreign ministry could manufacture. That bridge, however, has been badly weakened.

The introduction of the Agniveer recruitment system has fundamentally altered the attractiveness of military service. Its implications for Nepal’s Gorkha recruitment cannot be........

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