Gurkha Recruitment: How Britain Came to Enlist Nepali Soldiers

Britain has recruited soldiers from Nepal since 1815, when East India Company commanders raised battalions from Gorkhali troops during the Anglo-Nepalese War. The arrangement outlived the Company, the Indian Empire and the handover of Hong Kong. The British Army still runs an annual selection in Nepal and takes a few hundred recruits a year from tens of thousands of applicants.

This article is about the recruiting system: how it was justified, how it was divided up in 1947, how its terms of service were fought over in the courts, and how it works now. For the regiments, the campaigns, the khukuri and what remittance money did to the hill economy, read our military history of the Gurkhas, which covers all of that and is not repeated here.

Where Recruitment Began: 1815, Not 1816

The common claim that the Treaty of Sugauli created Gurkha recruitment is wrong, and the correction is more interesting than the myth. Recruitment began mid-war. When the Gorkhali position in the western hills collapsed in 1815, Company officers raised units from soldiers who had surrendered or come across, and those battalions were in Company service before the treaty was signed in December of that year.

What followed was decades of quiet friction. Kathmandu had just lost a war and had no interest in supplying its former enemy with fighting men. Recruiting was done informally, through Nepali middlemen known as galla wallahs who worked the hill villages and walked young men down to depots on the Indian side of the border. Nepali consent, recruiting offices on Nepali soil and an agreed framework came very much later. The treaty's actual terms, and what it did and did not contain, are set out in our clause-by-clause reading of the Treaty of Sugauli.

The Martial Races Doctrine, and What Is Wrong With It

The idea that certain communities are naturally suited to soldiering hardened into official policy after 1857, when large parts of the Bengal army mutinied and the Indian Army was rebuilt around groups judged reliable. By the end of the nineteenth century the army was publishing recruiting handbooks for each so-called class, describing physique, caste, home district, temperament and, in some editions, facial features.

Three things are wrong with it, and they are worth stating plainly because the doctrine still shapes how Gurkha soldiers are described in the press.

It is circular. A community was called martial because it was recruited, and recruited because it was called martial. Once a district supplied soldiers, its young men grew up expecting to enlist, families organised around the wage, and the recruiters kept returning. The pattern reproduced itself and was then cited as evidence of an inherent quality.

It was a hiring theory dressed as anthropology. It was written by the people doing the hiring, in the aftermath of a mutiny, and it delivered exactly the outcome the army wanted: a force drawn from scattered rural communities with no shared political base.

And it had a cost on the ground. Being outside the martial classification meant being outside a major source of cash income, for generations, in a country with very little else. That exclusion is visible on the map to this day, as the recruiting districts below show.

Historians of the Indian Army now generally treat martial races as a recruiting ideology of the late nineteenth century rather than a description of anything real. The soldiers were and are extremely good. The theory used to explain why was not.

1947: One Force Becomes Three

Indian independence forced a decision about ten Gurkha regiments that had served the Indian Army under British command. The Tripartite Agreement, signed by Britain, India and Nepal in November 1947, split them.

Four to Britain, six to India, and India raised an eleventh regiment in 1948 for men who chose not to transfer. Serving soldiers were given an opt: British service, Indian service, or discharge. The Indian Army kept the older spelling Gorkha; the British Army uses Gurkha. Nepal also maintains its own army, so the same hill districts have supplied three separate national forces ever since.

One clause in the 1947 agreement caused most of what followed. British Gurkha pay was pegged to Indian Army rates rather than British Army rates, on the reasoning that soldiers would retire to Nepal and live on a Nepali cost of living. That was defensible in 1947 and indefensible by the 1990s, and unpicking it took sixty years.

Pay, Pensions and the Campaigns That Changed Them

The Brigade of Gurkhas was formed in 1948 and based in Malaya and then Hong Kong for most of the Cold War. When Hong Kong was handed back in 1997, the Brigade's home base moved to the United Kingdom, and that date became the dividing line in almost every subsequent dispute.

The sequence is easiest to follow as a list of what changed and when.

The settlement question is settled. The pension question is not. Men who retired before 1997 remain on the older Gurkha Pension Scheme, which pays from the day of discharge and was built around retirement in Nepal, rather than the British scheme, which pays from a set age at a different rate. Campaigners argue this is discrimination by another name; successive British governments have argued the two schemes are not comparable because they were designed for different circumstances. Both governments have discussed it repeatedly and it remains open.

Where Recruits Actually Come From

This is where the martial races legacy shows most clearly, and it is the part of the story that matters most for western Nepal.

Note what is absent. The hills of Karnali and the far west, which is the part of Nepal this site is about, barely appear. Jumla, Dolpa, Humla, Mugu, Kalikot, Dailekh, Doti and Achham were not recruiting districts, so the Gurkha wage never reached them. That is a large part of why Pokhara and Dharan grew around pension paying offices, camps and returning soldiers while towns of comparable size in the west did not, and why seasonal labour migration to India rather than military service became the cash economy of the western hills. Our district guides for Jumla and Dailekh describe what that economy looks like today.

The classification also had nothing to do with geography or hardship. Nobody who has walked a Karnali ridge in February would argue those communities were short of endurance. They were simply on the wrong side of a list drawn up in the 1880s.

How Selection Works Today

British Army Gurkha selection runs once a year and is administered from the British Gurkhas camp at Pokhara. Applicants first attend regional selection, held in the west and the east so that candidates from the eastern hills do not have to cross the country to be turned away. Those who pass go forward to central selection at Pokhara.

The stages are education tests in mathematics and English, a medical, a physical assessment, and interviews. The physical component has long included a run uphill carrying a loaded doko, the conical cane basket carried on a headstrap that is the standard load carrier in the Nepali hills. The exact distance, weight and time standards are set by the Army and have been revised more than once, so treat any figure quoted second hand as out of date until you have checked the current recruiting notice.

Two numbers give the scale. The intake is in the low hundreds. The applicant pool is in the tens of thousands. That ratio, rather than any inherited quality, is the reason the standard is so high: the Brigade is selecting from an extraordinarily competitive field, and it has been able to do so for two centuries.

The Brigade opened to women in 2020, when the first female recruits entered training, having previously been an entirely male force. Recruitment is also no longer only into the infantry: Gurkha engineers, signals and logistics units have existed for decades, and selection feeds all of them.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did Britain start recruiting Gurkhas?

In 1815, during the Anglo-Nepalese War, when East India Company commanders raised battalions from Gorkhali soldiers who had surrendered or come over. That is before the Treaty of Sugauli was signed and nearly a year before it was ratified.

Did the Treaty of Sugauli allow Gurkha recruitment?

No. The treaty contains no recruitment clause. Recruiting ran on informal arrangements through Nepali middlemen for decades, often against the wishes of the government in Kathmandu, and a formal agreed framework came much later.

Which Gurkha regiments went to Britain in 1947?

The 2nd, 6th, 7th and 10th. The 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 8th and 9th went to India, which raised an eleventh regiment in 1948 for men who chose not to transfer to British service.

Where are the Gurkhas from in Nepal?

Historically from the middle hills: Gorkha, Lamjung, Kaski, Syangja, Tanahun, Baglung and Parbat in the west and centre, and Bhojpur, Dhankuta, Terhathum, Taplejung and Ilam in the east. Karnali and the far west have never been significant recruiting areas.

How many Gurkhas does the British Army recruit each year?

A few hundred, against tens of thousands of applicants. The exact intake is set annually and published in the recruiting notice, so any specific figure quoted elsewhere may be for a different year.

Can women join the Brigade of Gurkhas?

Yes. The first female recruits entered training in 2020, after more than two centuries in which the Brigade was entirely male.

What was the 2009 Gurkha settlement about?

The right to settle in the United Kingdom. Court rulings and a public campaign led the British government to announce in May 2009 that Gurkhas who had served four or more years before the 1997 cut-off could settle in the UK, extending a right previously limited to those discharged after it.

Is the Gurkha pension dispute resolved?

No. Settlement rights were resolved in 2009, but soldiers who retired before 1997 remain on the older Gurkha Pension Scheme rather than the main British scheme. Campaigners call it discrimination; British governments argue the schemes were designed for different circumstances. Talks between the two governments continue.

Last checked: September 2026. Selection standards, intake numbers and the pension position all change; confirm current details with the British Army recruiting notice before relying on them.