The Tripartite Agreement between the United Kingdom, India and Nepal is a treaty signed in 1947 concerning the rights of Gurkhas recruited in military services of United Kingdom and India.[1] This agreement does not apply to Gurkhas employed in the Nepalese Army. Under the agreement, six of the ten Gurkha regiments remained as part of the Indian Army, while the remaining four joined the British Army. As of 2020, India has 39 Gorkha battalions serving in 7 Gorkha regiments.[2] Those transferred to the British Army were posted to other remaining British colonies. In Malaya and Singapore, their presence was required in the Malayan Emergency, and they were to replace the Sikh unit in Singapore which reverted to the Indian Army on Indian independence. Those units in Malaya (Malaysia and Brunei) and Singapore, after these British colonies gained independence, are still part of Brunei and Singapore armed forces respectively.
From the first quarter of the 19th century, Gurkhas from Nepal had served under the British, first in the armies of the East India Company, and then the British Indian Army. The terms and conditions of service for the Gurkhas were solely a matter for the British Indian authorities, without reference to the British Government in London.
In 1947, India became independent from the United Kingdom, and it was decided between the two governments to split the Gurkha regiments between the British and Indian armies — six Gurkha units became part of the new Indian Army, while four were transferred to the British Army:
As a part of this arrangement, it was agreed that Gurkhas in British and Indian service should enjoy broadly the same conditions of service, to ensure that there was no unfair advantage to serving in one or other, thus maintaining economic stability and social harmony in the Gurkha recruiting areas. Thus, the governments of the United Kingdom, India and Nepal came to sign the Tripartite Agreement (TPA).
The main points of the agreement are:
The agreement applies to the 3,500 Gurkhas serving in the British Army, and close to 40,000 Gurkhas in the Indian Army. It does not apply to Gurkhas in the Nepalese Army.
The TPA underpins the unique terms and conditions of service of the Gurkha soldier which in a number of key areas differ markedly from those of his British or Commonwealth counterpart. Such differences arise because of the need to maintain broad comparability with certain Indian Army conditions of service, to protect the Gurkha national, religious, cultural and domicile status and the need for Gurkhas to maintain close links with Nepal throughout their service. It is against this background that the UK Government has continued to maintain separate terms and conditions of service for Gurkhas.
The maintenance of different terms and conditions for Gurkha soldiers as opposed to their British counterparts has been a source of friction in recent years, particularly in regard to pension provision. While Gurkha pensions provide a high standard of living in Nepal, they were calculated at a fraction of the pensions provided to British soldiers. As a consequence, in January 2005, the British Government announced a review of Gurkha terms and conditions to attempt to rectify these inequalities. In May 2007, a new set of proposals was adopted, with a number of points in different areas:
A major proposal is the drawing up of a bilateral memorandum of understanding between the governments of Britain and Nepal, and allowing the TPA to lie. It is unclear how this would affect the recruitment of Gurkhas in the Indian Army.