As a Wife and Mother: Married to a Gurkha

The history and account of Gurkha wives and families is one that is sparse if not fragmented in the wider scholarship and popular writings on Gurkha military history (see, for example, Cross and Gurung 2002; Farwell 1984; Gurung 2018; Seddon 2022; Sharma et al. 2022).⁷ In Farwell’s (1984, 150) words:

When the young men joined the army they were exposed to a world of new experiences, but to adapt they had only to do as they were told; the army took care of them. Life was more uncertain and held more difficulties for the young brides coming down from the hills of Nepal to be part of their husbands’ lives. How did they feel and how did they react? We don’t know. No Nepalese woman has ever written about her life as an army bride.

Seddon (2022), whose study revolves around Nepali women who traveled abroad since the time of Gurkha recruitment, goes a step further than Farwell (1984). Using such terms as “camp brides” or “camp followers” in his brief mentions of Gurkha wives, Seddon (2022) notes that such accounts remain “largely untold and unknown” (2022, viii). Prior to the Second World War, there has been “virtually no record of” the experiences of Nepali men as well as women (2022, 114–15). The memoir of Lila Seling Mabo (2022) that I introduced above is probably the first one written by someone who is married to a Gurkha.

Seddon (2022) provides a brief historical backdrop to the positioning of Nepali women vis-à-vis broader military histories connected to Gurkha service in India and other locations. Life for Gurkha wives was always about hard work and struggle, be it remaining back at home to ensure and look after the well-being of family and the household while the men were employed overseas, or when they themselves accompanied their husbands and/or migrated abroad to both live and work. For example, Gurkha husbands who were employed in the military police or army saw increasing numbers of Limbu and Rai women accompany them to such places as Darjeeling. While they set up “house” over there, some of these women either worked as domestic servants or as porters.

Prior to these family settlements for Gurkha soldiers, the government of India had earlier refused an 1856 request from the Sirmoor Battalion to convert some erstwhile barracks at Dehra Dun into homes for these soldiers’ families (Farwell 1984). Gradually this attitude changed, and it was thought to be desirable for these men to have their wives and children with them rather than to be far away in the Nepali highlands. Finally in 1864, each of the first four Gurkha regiments of India (Dharmasala, Dehra Dun, Almora, and Bakloh) obtained permission to set up family quarters. This move marked the beginning of official Gurkha settlements abroad (Seddon 2022). That said, however, there was never sufficient quarters to accommodate families of all married Gurkhas. In some cases, some of the Gurkha soldiers had to wait as long as a decade before their families were able to join them (Farwell 1984). Besides, having regimental homes did not necessarily translate into “undisturbed family life, even for those fortunate enough to have their wives and children with them” (Farwell 1984, 146). This was because men who were in active Gurkha service were for the most part away for long periods of time, ranging from months to even years.

Eknath shared with me the problems of family quarters that were associated with Gurkha families in Hong Kong where he was. Although such quarters have been made available to servicemen who are married, Eknath pointed out that “if you have only one child, one bedroom… . One child, one bedroom, no carpet, no air condition.” That was the situation he encountered with his wife and child. This was in stark contrast with British servicemen who were allocated much better quarters, whereby “British people, regardless of number of families, numbers of kids … They [were provided with a] terrace house. The carpet, if you … the rotten carpets [that we had] will be replaced by, not new, by the carpet that was thrown away from the British main quarters.” Apart from living together in such quarters wherever possible, there were other measures put in place in order to facilitate visitations and communication between Gurkhas and their wives. From 1885, for example, railway warrants were provided to wives who wished to visit their Gurkha husbands in their stations in India (Seddon 2022; Vansittart 1993). Besides India, Gurkha families were also established in Burma and Thailand since the 1940s. Gurkhas who had retired from service were granted Burmese citizenship when Burma obtained independence in 1948. Many of these ex-Gurkhas brought their wives and families to live with them there. In Thailand, a Nepali settlement emerged in the village of Pilok, which is situated near the border town of Kanchanaburi and along the Burmese border. Most of these Nepali families in Pilok were former Gurkhas who had previously served in Burma with the British Army. After the end of World War II in 1945, these Gurkha families settled in Pilok and worked in tin mines (Seddon 2022).

Seddon (2022) characterizes Gurkha wives as those who “keep the home fires burning,” where they were always anxiously waiting for news from “the front.” They would cling onto hopes that their military husbands would eventually make their way home with no serious injuries or wounds. Rashid (2020) studies how the military as an institution is affectively linked to families and modern society in Pakistan (see also, Chisholm 2022). Soldiers and families, Rashid argues, form “subjects of militarism who stand at the center of war” (2020, 5). Where “masculine men protect the nation and the women,” the women in turn “serve the nation by not only producing these soldiers but exalting and praising the men who die in wars to protect the nation” (2020, 7–8). Rashid’s gender positioning of men and women in the context of militarism (cf. Enloe 2014) connects to my work on how Gurkha men and women have to organize their lives in terms of military work/sacrifice and gendered division of labor (via family responsibilities among other things). Echoing Seddon (2022), Aadesh similarly pointed out to me the history of the world wars and how wives of Gurkhas had to confront the uncertainties of war:

And let’s say the saddest part is more over here. Let’s say those who join in Second World War and First World War are … mostly sixteen to nineteen and they all are married; we have statistics. They are all married. So in these two World War, more than 40,000, 50,000 died. I think most of them were married. So what happened to their wife? Back to the home. Because they don’t even know where their husband is. And they, they didn’t get any information, whether they’re alive or whether they’re died, you know. Even till now they don’t know anything. That is very saddest part of history.⁸

Lila speaks of similar uncertainties when her husband, Shree, was deployed to Iraq. That was in 2003 when she learned of the news that a missile was dropped in Iraq. She was then “constantly checking to see if [her] husband’s name was listed as one of the men who had tragically died.” Since Shree left the barracks a fortnight ago, Lila had no contact with him and felt it was “an agonising time waiting to find out if he was OK” (Mabo 2022, 7). Clearly, women fear for the men’s safety especially during times of war, which thereby influenced how they perceived soldiering (see Des Chene 1991, 253). The agony of waiting and having to deal with unsettling uncertainty as a Gurkha spouse, daughter, or mother is similarly expressed through the following poem written by Anju Anjali (2013, 7–8). I quote in excerpts, this poem titled “Soldiers, War and My Question”:

No sooner you left for the war

Another war has germinated inside me

It’s war—

Of your memories

Of your affection

Of your whereabouts

. . . . . . . .Will you ever return from the war all right?

Or losing some body parts,

You will return with medals on chest

Of the wounds of bravery

. . . . . . . . . .

I am a spouse of a brave soldier

I am a daughter of a brave soldier

I am a mother of a brave soldier

I am proud of being referred so

I take pride in this identity

Anjali’s worries clearly demonstrate not only the gaping absence of a Gurkha who has left behind his female kin (in their different familial roles), but also contain myriad uncertainties. They include those relating to possible injury, death, yet also triumph—indicated through one’s return, and with medals in recognition of bravery.

Kamadev told me how Gurkha wives, residing in the military family quarters while their husbands were deployed across different parts of the world, were “always thinking about the husband,” as “we are always running everywhere.” Aside from some cases of adultery (Farwell 1984; Seddon 2022), most wives were “faithful and were prepared to immerse themselves in domestic and farm work, bearing the double burden of their menfolk’s absence” (Seddon 2022, 185). Keeping home fires burning as Seddon (2022) indicates was also a recurrent responsibility that Gurkhas and their wives have shared with me, though there certainly are exceptions as well. In Kumud’s words: “Only the husband [works]. The wife is stay at home [sic].” The gender division of labor between Gurkhas and their wives is similarly pointed out by Chisholm and Stachowitsch (2017, 380–81) who note:

In most cases, women stay behind and take on subsistence, domestic and agricultural labour. They are an integral part in the decision to migrate and enable male migration by taking over responsibility for family finances and businesses. The gendered relations imbued in the cultural and legal fabric of Nepal further renders the Gurkha wives in the position of supportive labourers at home. Gendered migration patterns are solidified by legal restrictions and social stigma to women’s independent migration. Hence, the private security industry depends on gendered power relations and reinforces patriarchal values in their recruitment sites.

Militarism produces masculine subjectivities that are distanced and differentiated from women subjects. Rashid (2020) makes a case for how the manufacturing of the soldier-subject requires constructions of hardiness, valiance, and discipline (cf. MacLeish 2012). These imply that there is a need to establish “distance from former objects of affection and ways of living” (Rashid 2020, 14), which include women and familial attachments perceived as feminine and thereby as “threats to the soldier’s ability to stay in service” (Rashid 2020). Similarly, Gurkha soldiers are separated from their wives and families in their initial three years of service (although such rules have been changed), and where military rules have been enforced to provide family barracks for particular ranks in the army, among other regulations and disciplinary mechanisms. Broadly speaking, then, men and women occupy differentiated “subject position” in contexts of militarism and war (Rashid 2020, 14), which is also resonant in my case. Dhanvi married Tufan in 1973, five years after he enlisted into Gurkha service. Their son was born in Nepal while their daughter was born in Hong Kong. They have two grandsons who at the time of my interview in 2014 were two and four years old. As both their son and daughter spoke only Chinese, Dhanvi and Tufan made it a point to practice Nepali with them. They do the same for their grandchildren, who began speaking in English and cannot speak Nepali. Apart from ensuring that their offsprings and the next generation are able to speak their native language, there are also plans to eventually retire in Nepal. When Tufan resumed Gurkha service after the wedding, Dhanvi bought land and built a house using the money that Tufan had remitted home. The spousal partnership that Dhanvi and Tufan share demonstrates that not only did Dhanvi look after the children and her in-laws when Tufan was earlier away from home due to his military service, she also took it on herself to oversee the building of a family house for them during Tufan’s absence from Nepal. The responsibilities that Dhanvi undertook may be conceived as a form of “affective labor” (Chisholm 2022, 43) whereby Gurkha wives would honor and valorize the security work that their spouses engage in by looking after the reproductive work (see also, Des Chene 1991, 253) accomplished at home when the Gurkhas were absent. While Dhanvi shared that it was not easy to manage the construction process of the house, it was something she had to do since her Gurkha husband was away for prolonged periods of time to serve in the British Army. His lengthy absence took place in exchange with him being able to send money home to make this construction possible.

Binsa’s experience is another example that illustrates the independence of some other Gurkha wives. Uttam, her Gurkha husband, was posted to the United Kingdom in 1989. Given that he was holding the rank of sergeant at that time, he was not allowed to bring his family with him to live in the regimental barracks. From the United Kingdom, Uttam next went on to Hong Kong, where Binsa visited and stayed with him for two weeks before returning to Nepal. She then established a travel agency in Kathmandu with the help of her brother. It was a difficult task for Binsa to set up this business where there was only a runner and her brother looking after the office, though the latter was usually more involved in other businesses. She had basically handled everything on her own. The agency has since expanded to three offices when I last visited Uttam and Binsa in Kathmandu.

In Adishree’s case, her first daughter, Mridu was born in 1995 when Ram was away in Bosnia. She said that although Ram was absent from family life with their newborn, she was fortunate to have had the help of her parents and in-laws in his place in sharing “all the hard times.” Adishree made a joke of Ram’s responsibility to bring the dough home while her “responsibility was more of children, educate them, look after them,” thereby indicating a clear division of gendered labor between them. Ostensibly, there would have been no other way given the transnational scheme of Gurkha work. Over the course of Ram’s Gurkha service, the first time where Adishree was able to join him in the family barracks was in 2000:

I applied and I got three months visa and I left Mridu and Chaha back at home with my mum. Then I came to see him, visited him and he requested for leave and we went back to Nepal together. And he got six months leave and then we stayed six months, six months … after that … we had family permission from MOD (Ministry of Defence, United Kingdom) and then I came in 2001 February to stay for a couple of years then all the circumstances changed. From MOD so we were about to stay here otherwise I had to go back to Nepal after two and a half years.

That was the maximum duration of time that Adishree was granted to stay with Ram while he was in active service, depending on the husband’s rank in the army. Two years and six months was all that a wife was allowed to accompany her husband. However, if her “husband was a colonel sergeant, staff sergeant, then you can stay forever with husband.” Adishree had found this rule to be challenging since having a “junior rank husband” translated into the latter not having the chance to “spend time with children or being with family.”

The examples of Gurkha couples such as Dhanvi and Tufan, and Adishree and Ram, among other pairs whom I have met and interacted with, reflect varied experiences and practices of gender responsibilities and positioning. The women manage household responsibilities and young family members with their absent husbands out of the picture. Even if wives are seldom regarded as active agents and stakeholders in the context of the broader circulation of global labor (Chisholm 2022), they are no doubt instrumental in facilitating the security work that their Gurkha partners do across different security regimes, locales, and temporalities. The various spheres of work and responsibility that Gurkha wives undertake also contrast with the stereotypical characterizations raised above. As a foil to Gurkha wives who have been depicted as shy and subservient, my encounters with these couples generally align more with Farwell’s (1984) observation—where Gurkha men are “generally considered to be kind and affectionate husbands,” their “wives were by no means subservient to them” and are indeed “more companionable, more on an equal footing” (1984, 147). Similarly, Forbes (1964) considers Gurkha soldiers to be affectionate and thoughtful husbands and who would carry out their fair share of household chores. Farwell (1984) further notes that Gurkha women were intelligent and bright, and also wielded the gift of repartee and sense of humor that were similar to the men.

As for the gender positioning of the next generation that is Gurkha children, my respondents hold different views on the division of labor and gendered relations. I first met Malashree and Gauri, both returning daughters of SPF Gurkhas, in Kathmandu. I recounted to them one of my fieldwork visits to the United Kingdom where I was invited to a party gathering of a few Gurkha families. Near the end of this gathering, I offered to help with clearing the dishes to bring them into the kitchen. I was told by some of my Gurkha respondents to “let the women do it.” Upon hearing this, Gauri explained: “It’s more of under the Hinduism culture, that the husband they are the sole bread winner of the house so the wives they would take care of the household.” When I probed the both of them further as to whether they would follow suit and “take care of the household,” Malashree and Gauri immediately echoed a resounding “No!” in unison before breaking out into laughter. Malashree stated clearly: “No way! Because we are Singaporeans … self-service.” She further explained: “And we also, because we are educated, we are not like our mothers. So we want our own rights, and own choice to make. So we don’t really adhere to society’s culture.” What is interesting about Malashree’s response is this—not only did her statement reflect intergenerational difference where the children are educated as compared to their mothers, she has also imbibed the practice of “self-service” from her time spent in Singapore (“we are Singaporeans”) that thereby influence how she now views gender relations. Her position pivots more toward partible standing rather than subscribing to patriarchal practices where women are expected to manage the household.

Experiences of absent Gurkha fathers for regimental families typically reflect how a familial household often is split across two countries. When Ram was not with his family, his eldest daughter, Mridu, was about one to two years old. In response to my query as to how her childhood was like without her father being around, Mridu responded that albeit too young to comprehend the context at the beginning, she gradually began to realize as she grew up that she was starting to miss her parents over the course of their continual absence. Mridu had found it particularly difficult when her mother first traveled to England in 2000. While Adishree’s first trip to meet Ram spanned only a few months, Mridu felt it tougher when Adishree’s second trip took place over more than a year. Mridu and her sister, Chaha, were left in the care of their aunt. At the time of the second trip, Mridu had turned nine. She recollected that “not having both parents” around was “the hardest thing.” Adishree pointed out to me that Mridu and Chaha were in the good hands of their aunt and her family who were very caring toward her girls. She further explained as to why Ram and herself had made the decision to leave them behind in Nepal while they were both in the United Kingdom. This decision was borne out of them prioritizing their daughters’ education. Adishree elaborated that they did not want to bring their daughters to the United Kingdom for a couple of years, only to take them out of the school system there and to then place them back into the Nepali curriculum. If they had done so, the arrangement would have been disruptive and would result in “a mess for their education” as she rationalized.

Mridu and Chaha were both born in Nepal. Ram had not been able to be around to witness their birth owing to his Gurkha service abroad. They were eleven and nine respectively when they left Nepal for the United Kingdom. Their third sister, Sumira was born in the United Kingdom. Given that Adishree and Ram’s first two daughters had left Nepal for the United Kingdom at fairly young ages, they did not miss life in Nepal as much as that compared to their parents. Mridu acknowledged that part of the “downside of moving away [to the United Kingdom] at a small age [sic]” was that she did not get the opportunity to grow close to her cousins compared to those who had not left Nepal. Even if her cousins were “warm and welcoming” whenever she traveled to Nepal, Mridu revealed that they did not share a close relationship. Furthermore, Mridu explained to me that she felt “a little bit distant” from her grandparents, though this would be different for her parents. This was because they have grown up “in a sort of society where it’s not just your mum and dad or your siblings, it’s about everyone else,” she reasoned. For Mridu then, while she found that “it will be nice to see them more often,” she regarded these distant ties with her grandparents as constituting “not a big hole” in her life. The experiences of both Mridu and Adishree moving away from Nepal to United Kingdom represent not only intergenerational differences in terms of what it means to migrate as a daughter or a wife of a Gurkha. Rather, their individual experiences also point toward how social actors as migrants, contingent on their biographies and age of outward migration, relate to their nuclear and extended families in contrastive ways. As Mridu further elaborated:

I guess it’s also because they [referring to her parents’ generation] have loads of cousins, they have family all around them and so they miss the family that they don’t have whereas we don’t have anything like that so we just don’t think about it. We just think, “Oh, my mum’s here, my dad’s here, my sisters are here,” that’s all I need. I don’t need another cousin and another uncle.

These cross-generational differences that Mridu has pointed out thereby convey how belonging takes on varied significance based on one’s familial circle and the degree to which these familial ties—ranging from the nuclear to the extended—are either intimately or distantly experienced.

Adishree shared with me that moving to the United Kingdom meant adjusting to a new life: “I used to remember and my friends away from me, but when I am here [in the United Kingdom], it is a different environment and you are all the time busy, so you don’t have much time to think about everybody else.” In adapting to a new environment, Adishree found that family members whom she had left behind in Nepal seldom occupied her thoughts as her life was now in the United Kingdom with her own set of priorities to manage. When asked if it was the norm that Gurkha couples would plan to stay abroad until their children completed their education and secured employment (before husband and wife would return to Nepal), both Adishree and Ram’s response indicated that they were not entirely sure about this. They had harbored mixed feelings. While Ram said that “it’s a long way to go,” and he was not sure if indeed they’ll retire in Nepal, Adishree’s perspective on the matter reflects where home (“here” in the United Kingdom) is tied to one’s immediate family:

It is a dream [to return to Nepal]. Because I used to think, I used to plan that when my children grow up and they have a job. And then Ram and myself we would go back to Nepal and stay there for retired life. But now, I think, I just can’t imagine how can we do that because our family is my husband, my children, my family is … And when my children are here, three of them here and get job, get married and get children, everything here and how could we leave without family? This is a family, our family. Parents are parents and they won’t be there when we retire like sixty, sixty-five. But in fact I told my brother, sister, they have their own family and it is not close as children is it? So I don’t think it’s … That would be nice if you can, we would be in Nepal. (my emphasis)

Interestingly, returning to Nepal during one’s retirement years is bracketed by Adishree as a dream. This dream or hope, however, is contingent on where the (nuclear) family is. Adishree has chosen to remain with her husband and children wherever they would be as home; now that they constitute “family” aside from her own parents or extended kin. That said however, Adishree also acknowledged that for those who have chosen to return to Nepal, their reason for doing so is to “have a good life.” This is because once one joins the British Army, the salary is considered as “quite lots of money [sic]” compared to that which one could earn in Nepal. Consequently, returnees to Nepal are able to “buy whatever you like” including a “big house” or to “save money in the bank” or “do some kind of little business.” Therefore, it would be possible to have “an easy life back at home,” Adishree said.

This “easy” or “good” life would be in contrast to those such as Adishree and her family in the United Kingdom whereby it is essential to have to “work every day to survive,” for “to earn pound it’s not easy.” The experience of another Gurkha couple, Ramesh and Neelam, corroborated Adishree’s statement that making a living in the United Kingdom is not easy. Where Ramesh works as a postman, his wife, Neelam, holds a job as a cleaner in an army camp. She takes home about £1,000 (approximately US$1,262) per month for eight-hour work days, according to Ramesh. As Ramesh lamented: “If wife not working, can’t survive.” Given that earning one’s keep in the United Kingdom is “so difficult” in the words of Kamadev, he and his wife Roopali have decided that they would eventually leave the country and return to Nepal once their children have married and settled down. Kamadev had declared to me: “I don’t want to stay here [referring to the United Kingdom]. My missus and me, plan to go back home.” Life at home in Nepal differs from the experience of these Gurkha couples living in the United Kingdom. Adishree continued the comparison with her brother’s family where her sister-in-law looked after their children and did not (have to) hold a job outside of the family. For these reasons, Adishree clarified why “Nepalese people don’t like to stay here [United Kingdom] until they get, we get old.” For if “we stay here, we have to work. If we don’t work, we won’t be able to survive here … we won’t be able to pay mortgage and expenses and that’s why people go back to Nepal and have a good life.” Clearly, Adishree’s views on where home is, including where she and her family would be located when they retire, involved a number of considerations. These considerations reflect a mixed bag of emotive ties connected to Nepal, to their immediate and/or extended familial members, and which were accompanied by other underlying reasons and motivations. In Eknath’s case, he told me that he thought of the United Kingdom where he is now residing as “home” with a felt sense of belonging for the following reasons: “We call home here… . Because we’ve got family here, we’ve got communities here, we’ve got everything… . In terms of safety and security of life, there is no question. Only problem is this country is very, very expensive. The more you want, the more you have to pay tax. Not only us, even the people here they don’t like.” Both Adishree and Eknath’s accounts that indicated reasons where home and belonging were, articulate the different factors—intertwining the emotive, pragmatic, and biographical (cf. Yuval Davis 2006)—that collectively determine how belonging is experienced. That said however, I also contend that one’s feeling of belonging continues to shift indeterminately (Antonsich 2010; Pickering 2001). As Ram put it, “I can’t really say it now but your whole family is there. I don’t know if it will happen or not so …” Belonging can be experienced momentarily, which also shifts over time.

Bilhana and Manjul wedded through an arranged marriage when they were both just one to two years shy of turning twenty. Manjul, whom I introduced in the previous chapter, was nineteen when he got married to Bilhana. Eight months later, he joined the Gurkhas and flew off to Hong Kong for training. Bilhana stayed behind in Nepal and lived with her parents-in-law, together with Manjul’s younger sister. While Bilhana had initially found it “scary” to live with her in-laws, she gradually became more accustomed to them after several months had passed. They treated her well and she also got along with her sister-in-law.⁹ During Manjul’s Gurkha service, it was not until eleven to twelve years later that he was allowed to bring Bilhana to live with him at the barracks. That took place in 2005 when he was posted to Brunei. However, just fifteen days after Bilhana joined Manjul in Brunei, he received news that he was to be next deployed to Afghanistan for half a year. While they stayed in touch with each other using the phone, Bilhana was constantly worrying for Manjul given that Afghanistan was dangerous, as she repeatedly told her husband. She was finally relieved when Manjul returned to Brunei after serving in Afghanistan. Now that they are both based in the United Kingdom with their two children, Bilhana works as a shop assistant in a military camp. Some Gurkha wives either did not speak English or were minimally proficient in the language for their day-to-day routines, including shopping for groceries. For Bilhana, she maintained that English “it’s not my language! You know, I speak Nepalese!” Clearly, she consciously exercised bracketed belonging to Nepal while living abroad, seen through her assertion of speaking her native language, and with plans together with Manjul to return to Nepal for their retirement years.¹⁰ Overall, this appears to be a recurrent attitude and perspective of what most of these Gurkha wives subscribe to, which are largely consonant with those of their husbands’ as I have discussed previously.

Mastering and using English as a language including issues revolving around one’s accent, span across generations as I return to Adishree and Mridu’s experience. Adishree had learned some English while she was in Nepal. This made it slightly easier for her to pick it up when she moved to the United Kingdom to be with Ram. While it was not too challenging for her to continue with learning the English language, she had found it “difficult to understand [the] British accent [at] first.” She recounted an incident where she first visited Ram in the United Kingdom, who had his friend with him who was a “Scottish Joe.” Adishree could not decipher his accent, as she narrated to me: “He was a Scottish Joe speaking something else, I said pardon pardon … three times! [laughs] I didn’t understand at all, I said. That’s alright. He kept explaining me, I said, sorry I didn’t understand.”

Adishree further added that apart from initial language issues, families in her neighborhood in the United Kingdom were friendly and “very welcoming.” This was despite her being aware that in “some area they don’t like the foreign people … but we have been lucky to stay in this part.” Some of her neighbors were actually more curious if anything and had approached her to write their name in Nepali, as Adishree conveyed to me with amusement. She also mentioned that at times, she was careful not to speak using Nepali in front of the English. This was because she did not want to be mistaken for talking about them. In Mridu’s case, she took to living in the United Kingdom fairly well from the outset, given that she went there at a young age and hence was able to adapt quickly. She explained in greater detail:

I think it was easier because I was younger. So I think it would have been really hard, like I see that it is hard for kids to sort of, a lot of kids come over when they are sort of in their teens, and it’s really hard for them to adjust because … I guess I don’t really know but I think when you are a lot younger, a lot of things were a lot simpler and you can get along with people easily and make friends easily, and adapt easily and pick up the language quicker as well so it wasn’t particularly hard. Like at the beginning, it was sort of, the first few months were a little bit challenging, it was a bit like … I was on the bus with a friend of mine and because, I mean, I knew how to speak English, but obviously you don’t learn it at the same extent that obviously people here, they are gonna speak it quickly and I had a friend who was on the bus and she was telling me all these things and I didn’t really understand and I was like nodding and smiling … and I couldn’t understand what she was saying at all. So it did take a while but, I mean, everyone was certainly friendly and it was fine after a bit. The language came quite quickly, it was just everything else, like the studying, the academic side which was quite hard to adjust to.

When I asked Mridu as to how visits back to Nepal were like, given that she had by then picked up the British accent, she pointed out that her second sister, Chaha, and herself would only “talk in English to each other … [but] don’t talk in English to our cousins.” When her younger sister, Sumira (introduced in chapter 1) went back to Nepal at the age of three, Sumira’s command of Nepali was poor. This thus led to “miscommunication between the aunties and uncles and cousins.” It was therefore difficult to sustain interactions with their extended family. Mridu and her sisters did not use English in speaking with their aunties and uncles, who were older kin and could not comprehend the language as well, compared to their younger cousins. In Sumira’s case, Mridu said that she had an accent, so when she spoke Nepali, that came with a British accent. As a result, some of her pronunciation came across “weirdly,” leading to funny scenarios whenever the sisters went back to Nepal together.

In terms of accented English and depending on where one was born or raised, I refer to other respondents who followed their Gurkha police fathers to Singapore and who were schooling there. I return to the focus group interview of Singapore Gurkha children including Ganga, Renu, Dipesh, and Muna whom I discussed previously. One incident that these informants raised was that of taking public transport, specifically the bus. Dipesh pointed out to me that whenever they refer to a bus in Nepal, they would have to pronounce it as “boss.” This was something that Riju had also confirmed with me. This was because if they were to pronounce “bus” as it is, the locals would laugh at them. Renu explained why this was the case: “Apparently in Nepali, because ‘bus’ was in English-Singaporean language. Bus also they don’t understand. There was in translation English you know, ‘do you … bus.’ Stupid, ‘bus’ also they don’t understand. I have to say ‘boss.’ Sometimes you have to make a fool of yourself just to make them understand.”

Riju cited another example of language-accent miscommunication upon returning from Singapore to Nepal: “When you say ‘twelve,’ you say ‘twelve’ right, then they will be like ‘hehehe.’ For them you must say ‘twelve’ (using Nepali accent). Even my teacher laugh at me. I am like, what kind of teacher are you? I mean you don’t even respect other people and all that.” For reasons such as language miscommunication, different accents, and other factors, Gurkha children have found it tough to adapt to life in Nepal after having grown up in Singapore, as I shall elaborate below in terms of experiences of not-belonging.

On Sumira’s second trip to Nepal, she traveled only with Adishree. At that time, Sumira’s command of the English language was inchoate. When Adishree and Sumira stayed in Nepal for a month, Sumira had also picked up more Nepalese. Said Adishree about Sumira’s communicative approach:

She used to mix Nepalese and English while she was talking, and one of my nieces, she didn’t really understand very good English. She wants to communicate with Sumira so Sumira communicated with her in half English half Nepali, she didn’t understand whole sentence, she just walked away. I don’t understand your English.

What is interesting through these examples of language learning and use, both in the United Kingdom and Nepal, is that not only were there some discernible differences between the two generations of mother and daughter (Adishree and Mridu). Differences were also apparent within a generation when we compare the experiences of Mridu, Chaha, and Sumira as siblings. Being born in Nepal for the former two, and in the United Kingdom for the latter makes a weighted difference in terms of their linguistic capacities, and how these are utilized to communicate with kin in Nepal, or with neighbors and friends in the United Kingdom. Both inter- and intragenerational comparisons that I raise here therefore illustrate the different “repertory of identifications” (Freyer 2019, 257) that connect to manifold approaches to adapting, returning to Nepal (either from the United Kingdom or Singapore), and one’s feelings of belonging. Adishree further recounted to me that aside from Sumira’s experience, both Mridu and Chaha had earlier learned Nepalese in Nepal, but also continued to do so through reading Nepali books:

I used to ask my family to send Nepali books and then we can teach them at home. Chaha used to do until a couple of years ago so now she doesn’t. But she can read Nepali and she can write. I mean, I think this is good thing to speak in Nepali and understand it only, nice to read Nepali word, even though you have got British citizen, but that’s a second thing. But you are being a Nepali, you should read and write your own language.

At this point, Ram chimed in and reinforced what Adishree had just said: “We have to teach [them] where we are from, what is our background, that’s our culture, customs everything we have to teach our children. It is our duty to do that.” This duty that Ram takes on himself together with Adishree as parents is indicative of acts of bracketed belonging linked to Nepal. The bracketing involves language mastery that they carry out with their children. As Adishree clearly pointed out, even if their daughters are British citizens, this should take second place whereas being a Nepali translates into an expectation that one ought to be able to converse and write in “your own language,” and referring simultaneously to the English language as being not of their own. Adishree and Ram’s responses, or their act of bracketing linguistic capacity and belonging, echo what Freyer (2019, 255) talks about in terms of a “compound identity.” Migrants and their children develop and express multiple belongings in relation to the children’s biographical trajectories as they unfold across different social spaces or countries. These approaches of bracketing belonging as manifold further articulate the different migratory trajectories that each of these diasporans have experienced. These variegated trajectories also include the varying points of departure and return across their biographical arc (similar to Sejun’s case) that similarly direct and influence their migratory experiences and positionings of belonging and/or otherwise. For some, such a compound identity or expressions of multiple belongings might be a way to transcend how others feel in terms of being “neither here nor there” as I have discussed in an earlier chapter pertaining to some of the Gurkha children. Such expressions might be read as a way of acknowledging how some respondents may consciously wish to be “here and there” simultaneously, seen in the case of Adishree’s views on her children’s British citizenship that coexist with mastering Nepali as reflective of remaining connected to Nepal.

While Gurkha wives based in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong have been able to find and take up employment, they are not allowed to work in Singapore (Kiruppalini 2011). Some therefore assumed volunteer work with local schools as part of a pilot project called the “school-home-community partnership” that was launched in 1998 by Macpherson Primary School. This project involved a number of volunteer “Nepalese mothers from the Gurkha contingent volunteering their services to deliver Nepali language lessons during the Mother-Tongue periods.” Nepalese students constituted about 16 percent of the entire population at this school. This volunteer scheme enabled these mothers to contribute daily hours of their time and has been described as having reinforced “the importance of knowing one’s roots and appreciating one’s culture.”¹¹ Such a rationale also sits consonantly with many of my informants’ bracketing efforts, including those of Adishree and Ram. Apart from language issues, what other identification or markers of belonging and not-belonging do Gurkha wives and children relate to?

Markers of Belonging

Markers of belonging include the myriad pieces of knowledge and practices of everyday life that one acquires and sustains or recollects. This is concisely expressed by Yuval-Davis (2006, 199):

People can “belong” in many different ways and to many different objects of attachments. These can vary from a particular person to the whole of humanity, in a concrete or abstract way; belonging can be an act of self-identification or identification by others, in a stable, contested or transient way. Even in its most stable “primordial” forms, however, belonging is always a dynamic process, not a reified fixity, which is only a naturalised construction of a particular hegemonic form of power relations.

In my conversations with ex-Gurkhas, and with their wives and children, narratives of belonging are replete with references to everyday practices and encounters that cover the range of informal and formal contexts of sociality. Senses of diasporic belonging as a Nepalese community in the United Kingdom, for example, is exemplified through Yash’s words: “It’s nice because we have a lot of Nepalese community… . We are very close. We celebrate parties… . We say a lot of things, like… . what can I say? We have a common tie, we have a good tie, and very good solidarity.” As an example of a “common tie” as expressed by Yash, food and foodways appear to be a salient and recurring index that connotes one’s sense of belonging, given the familiarity and comfort that they provide. Abdullah argues: “Food and the attendant sensory registers … readily become quotidian expressions of multiple belongings and embodied connections social actors have with ‘home’” (2010, 157). These expressions of belonging through gastronomic practices also include food and foodways that are consciously left out in order to better articulate group sentiments of collective belonging within a singular cultural framing. In Pariyar, Shrestha and Gellner’s (2014) discussion on Dasain, which is one of the most important and biggest religious events of the Nepalese calendar, we are told that the executive committee of the Nepalese Community in Oxford (NCO) prescribes a set of rules that determined how Dasain was to be celebrated. As the authors note: “Food had to be explicitly Nepali” and an “ex-Gurkha was ridiculed at one meeting when he suggested including pasta in the menu” (Pariyar, Shrestha, and Gellner 2014, 142). The authors further elaborate: “Perhaps it might have been acceptable for some other occasion such as the summer barbeque, but it was almost a sin to think about having Western food as part of a Dasain feast. Despite their prolonged work overseas, most Gurkhas remained strictly Nepali in terms of what they ate” (Pariyar, Shrestha, and Gellner 2014, 142).

Beyond strict prescriptions as applied to the menu, the same attitude extended to the choice of music at Dasain. Although Gurkha children have a preference for English and Hindi music, such non-Nepali music and dance music were strictly prohibited as pointed out by the authors. What was emphasized at Dasain and other Nepali celebrations was either Nepali folk or country music. Along with gastronomic and musical stipulations, dress was another idiom of belonging adhered to. At Dasain, attendees should as far as possible, put on the Nepali national dress. The overall aim was to “maintain a distinctive Nepali flavour to the cultural programme, people’s dress, and the cuisine” (Pariyar, Shrestha, and Gellner 2014, 142). While most of them had indeed followed these cultural expectations, “at least two young Gurkha daughters incurred their displeasure by appearing in miniskirts” (Pariyar, Shrestha, and Gellner 2014, 142).

These examples indicate clearly that belonging is consciously bracketed and performed at such festivals as Dasain, reflected through food and foodways, choice of music, as well as expected apparels. More pertinently, such concerted bracketing also reveals contrastive feelings of belonging or not across these different diasporans. For the older generation of ex-Gurkhas, it was important to maintain a singular cultural framing. The younger generation of Gurkha children may on one hand participate at such celebrations, but on the other hand, subscribe to non-Nepali cultural framing as seen in their music preferences and dress sense. As is evident, these “young people … do not want to be constrained by nationalist considerations” (Pariyar, Shrestha, and Gellner 2014, 155). There are therefore concurrent multiple practices and markers of belonging and thereby not-belonging that are determined and carried out by different generations of Gurkha families, depending on their social and biographical location and experience. They relate simultaneously to similar and different cultural scripts in their everyday lives that thereby serve as variegated expressions of how to or not to belong.

Culinary scripts as they are bracketed above reflect the close connections that diasporans wish to maintain with Nepal while they are overseas in the United Kingdom. Conversely, such connections to belonging elsewhere are also articulated through food. The fond recollections that informants articulate vis-à-vis gastronomy indicate their sense of attachment and belonging to Singapore, as the following quotes depict:

• Gauri: I think we all, even me, we are so deeply rooted to the sense that sometimes we just wake up, and then there’s that, that smell of carrot cake, no I need to go to a hawker centre!
• Malashree: I think there’s like two of my friends there now. I think they also got married to someone in the Force, so now they are wives, the rest of us we are all here. So when we meet it’s like eh Hokkien mee, and then roti prata …

Gauri and Malashree, who were both born, bred, and schooled in Singapore, returned to Kathmandu on their fathers’ end of police service. They told me that whenever they missed Singapore food, they would troop down to a restaurant in Kathmandu known as Sing-ma Foodcourt. This is an eatery opened by a Singaporean who serves both Singaporean and Malaysian cuisine including nasi lemak, chicken rice, and beef rendang. Both their mothers also “talk about missing Singapore’s food [laugh]. Char kway teow, hokkien mee and other stuff.” Missing Singapore and Nepali food thus form a part of the processes of migration and return migration in the context of transnationalism in the Oxford and Singapore examples above. Where Nepali culinary practices are adhered to in the case of Oxford, returnees to Nepal relive their Singapore experiences through foodways that they satiate in Nepal.

Manisha related how her aunt first felt homesick about having to leave Nepal for Singapore at the beginning of her police husband’s service. Later on, the same feelings became apparent for Singapore food when her aunt returned to Nepal on holiday during her Gurkha-police husband’s leave. Manisha related her aunt’s experience as follows:

I can’t wait to go back to Singapore. When I first was a newlywed I went to Singapore, I was so homesick I missed all my family and all the Nepali food back home. Now I stay in Singapore, I can’t wait to have chicken rice and all the hokkien mee… . I’m so sick already, I can’t wait to go [back] to Singapore. I don’t know about the kids but I need to be back in Singapore already.

According to Manisha, then, she believed that her aunt “has a sense of belonging to Singapore, and all the food there.” Similarly, Manisha’s mother, Sreva, could not imagine how she would have to adjust to life back in Nepal, after having followed her husband to Singapore as he joined the GCSPF. She lamented: “So good here [referring to Singapore], I don’t know how I am going to manage it when I go back over there [Nepal]. Or enjoy all these roti prata and bee hoon … because you won’t be having these things after you return to Nepal.” Everyday practices such as food and foodways stand for “the process of incorporating the ‘nation’ into everyday life” (Christou 2009, 109). That is to say, the yearning for Singaporean cuisine represents returnees’ subjective identification with the country, mediated through food and food practices as part of everyday senses of belonging.

Interestingly, the identification of belonging to Singapore through food experiences is taken a step further—transpiring in Nepal itself—by Sirish and Manisha when a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet first opened in Nepal. Sirish vividly described to me his recollection of the event:

When KFC first came to Nepal, I was like ‘yes!’ so happy… . Wow. During the opening it was working out very well, but now it is pretty empty. But during the opening everyone went and I remembered during the opening… . There was a huge, long queue. I think … The photo came out in the newspaper. It was so embarrassing. Luckily I was facing my back. So couldn’t see my face. My friends were all shown on the long queue. It’s like you can really see this bunch of uniform group of guys which are from my school. So we went it, and I still remember.

Ostensibly excited about the opening of KFC’s first outlet in Kathmandu, Sirish was able to recollect his memory of joining the queue there. More pertinently, he said that “I can smell the burger smell. It is like, it’s good, it’s good to be back. I was so happy. But it is not as good as Singapore but it’s good enough though.” For Sirish, it helped that a piece of Singapore (via KFC) that he could relive while being back in Nepal alleviated the sense of initial displacement that he felt when he returned there from Singapore. Manisha concurred in tandem: “It just helps you feel more at home. Yeah. But it’s not exactly home. I mean, when I miss home, I miss Singapore.” Similarly, Gauri told me at our meeting that whenever relatives or friends returned from Singapore to Kathmandu, she would take the opportunity to request that they bring her a burger from McDonald’s. That was one of the few things that she had missed about having lived in Singapore earlier on. Re-creating memories of Singapore through gastronomy and the senses as indicated by Sirish, Manisha, and Gauri would thereby mirror Antonsich’s (2010, 647) perspective on autobiographical factors relating to one’s past as a component of “place-belongingness.”

Aside from place-belongingness as part of one’s recollection of memories in Singapore, food experiences and other practices including language were also important facets of Gurkha children having adapted well to life outside of Nepal. Shradda Gurung was born in Singapore, and attended school at Woodsville Primary.¹² Her experience in Singapore has been characterized as follows:

She loves chicken rice and roti prata. And she didn’t miss a single episode of the recently-ended Channel 8 drama, The Legendary Swordsman. But wait, she’s not a Singaporean. Shradda Gurung, 11, is a Nepalese. Born in Singapore, she is a Primary 5 student at Woodsville Primary School… . She’s by no means alone. More than 200 of the school’s 580 pupils are Nepalese.¹³

In this media report, we learn that Mrs. Gurung, Shradda’s mother, finds the local teachers to be “very supportive and warm-hearted towards our children.”¹⁴ Furthermore, Nepalese parents have also been welcomed by Singaporean parents to organize school activities, including Racial Harmony Day. It is through such school events as this that “Nepalese mothers prepared Nepalese food like momo (which is similar to the Chinese dumpling) to sell to students.”¹⁵ The report also notes that the medium of instruction for school children in Singapore is English, which is unlike in Nepal where English is but one subject. Mrs. Gurung also pointed out that these Nepalese children “knows very little about [their] own culture.” Given this identified gap, the “authorities at the Gurkha camp were concerned that the children might slowly lose their roots.”¹⁶ To address this concern, Nepalese children aged between seven and ten (Primary 1 to 4) learn how to read and write Nepali from volunteer Nepalese teachers from the Gurkha camp, thrice a week. By and large both Nepalese and Singaporean children get along well, according to the report. They had “happily showed off the few phrases of Mandarin and Nepali that they had learned from each other,” according to the news team who had visited the school.¹⁷

This example of Shradda Gurung unveils three pertinent points that highlight how dual belonging (Kananen 2020) transpires among the Nepalese children of Gurkhas living in Singapore. First, they have adapted well to local food such as the iconic chicken rice or roti prata, but are also not forgetting their roots in consuming (as well as sharing) momos, a Nepalese staple. Second, even as they pick up Mandarin or English as a foreign language in local schools, they are still exposed to the Nepali language so that they do not “lose their roots” according to the Gurkha camp officials. What these examples of gastronomic and linguistic practices indicate is that Gurkha children are concurrently exposed to two sets of cultural scripts. While they are able to adjust fairly well to living and schooling in Singapore on the one hand, they would still have to keep up with Nepalese culture on the other hand, which form their “roots.” Together, such dual belongingness reflects social anchors that allow these children to enact a transnational relation between Nepal and Singapore in a bracketed sense. This is because they would have to embrace an eventual and incontrovertible return to Nepal upon their fathers’ retirement from the police force. Where some Gurkha children such as Dipesh or Riju expressed to me that they felt they are “from neither here or there” as discussed in chapter 1, this media report seems to convey otherwise; that Nepalese children, represented through Shradda’s experience, are both here and there in terms of adopting and adapting to both Nepalese and Singaporean practices in their day-to-day encounters as a migrant community. Make no mistake, however, that “she’s not a Singaporean”—which arguably thus stands for a form of bracketed and limited belonging to Singapore as well. This leads me to my third point on how belonging and not-belonging are coterminous and overlapping (Gellner 2015; Pfaff-Czarnecka 2020). There is a time limit to (bracketed) belonging since the children’s roots are elsewhere according to the authorities, despite children such as Shradda who are born in and very much accustomed to living and schooling in Singapore.

Lalita, who is the wife of a retired Gurkha chief inspector now living in Nepal, told me that she maintains an account with a local bank in Singapore so that they can easily withdraw local currency whenever they were in Singapore. Furthermore, Lalita proudly declared: “Singapore is my country.” Similarly, Hiresh, who retired from the SPF in 2005 after twenty-seven years of service, receives his pension from the Singapore government through a Singapore bank account. Beyond the practicality of having monthly amounts transferred into this account, he remarked: “Even though [I’m] retired, my heart is still there [Singapore].” He told me that he continues to keep abreast with news on Singapore, making the reading of blogs and other websites for three to four hours a day as part of his daily routine.

These instances of recounting what Gurkha families miss about Singapore, and what they still retain in and of Singapore, represent feelings of sustained belonging. These feelings are not “reducible to human-focused social interaction but … can be derived from relationships with places, objects and ideas” (Kendall, Woodward, and Skrbis 2009, 33). The case of Shradda also points toward how these various material and nonmaterial aspects of life in Singapore that are experienced and reconstructed assume emotional valence for informants and other Gurkha diasporans. These aspects, or what Röttger-Rössler (2018, 257; emphasis in original) would term as the “significance of the experience dimension” of migration, are meaningful as they provide a sense of connection to Singapore. They likewise parallel what Hedetoft (2004, 24) calls the “sources of belonging” that include “familiarity, sensual experience, human interaction and local knowledge,” which are rooted in place. Together, these elements form the “sources of homeness” (Hedetoft 2004, 24). Home, in this case, is traced to Singapore for my interlocutors as mentioned above.

To be a student in Singapore is to recite the national pledge and to sing the national anthem on a daily basis. To be a Nepali studying in Singapore is likewise to both sing and recite allegiance to Singapore, as Singaporean students do. Gauri, for example, claimed that she felt more Singaporean than Nepali, given that reciting the pledge and singing the national anthem has become her daily routine during her school years in Singapore. In fact, she shared with me that she thought she was Singaporean till she had to return to Nepal at the age of twenty-three. In this respect, her sense of “Singaporeanness” thereby acts as a foil to the lack of knowledge or affective ties to Nepal. This is a point that Manisha similarly raised:

You know I was just thinking about it this morning, what are the significant dates in Nepal—in Singapore it was always 9 August, you know? National Day is coming! And then there’s the Padang, and everything, and then here [Nepal] I don’t know anything. I know nuts, you know. It was so funny because I was thinking of … I think this morning or the morning before, so in a way that just shows like how Singaporean we really are. But like I said, it’s slowly coming to terms with acceptance.

Furthermore, Gauri mentioned that “now home is like wherever my family are. So if they are in Singapore, then Singapore is my home. But now we are here … we have to accept the fact that we are here, we are Nepalese, so I guess our home is here.”

The idea and felt sense of home for my respondents such as Manisha and Gauri point toward the multiplicity of home and its attached and shifting meanings. On the one hand, home is clearly a physical site that is built on one’s experiences and memories. On the other hand, familial and other forms of social ties similarly establish where home lies. When my interlocutors concurrently refer to both Singapore and Nepal, this stance further confirms my analysis that they continue to feel neither here nor there as they straddle two worlds in no equal measure. As Malashree shared with me in the course of our interview: “And then we have our childhood memories, everything is there [referring to Singapore]. So we would still feel Singaporean, but we would also love our country, Nepal. We cannot ignore our parents and our own country.” Ostensibly, individuals may simultaneously subscribe to both in relation to Singapore and/or Nepal.

While Gurkha children do feel that Singapore is “home” for them, such sentiments of belonging cannot be translated into legislative and political terms. Singapore is still a host society in which they grew up and spent their formative years as noncitizens. I visited a former Gurkha chief inspector of the SPF in Pokhara, where I spoke with his wife, Lalita (introduced earlier) and daughter as well, about their experiences and memories of having lived and studied in Singapore. When asked about citizenship, Lalita went into the house (we were chatting over tea at the verandah) and subsequently brought out her daughter’s birth certificate to show me. It was a certificate issued by a Singapore hospital which explicitly stated that “the child is not a citizen of Singapore at the time of birth.” By virtue of showing me the birth certificate that clearly and officially marked her daughter as a noncitizen, Lalita indicated that belonging to Singapore was not possible in legal terms.

Thus far, the various examples both demonstrate feelings of belonging and otherwise. The ease and familiarity with which membership of Singapore society and everyday practices are experienced and recounted suggest that there is a felt sense of belonging to the country in which they were born and bred, which is not Nepal—even if it was not legally so. These senses of belonging should not merely be read as “cognitive stories” (Yuval-Davis 2006, 202). They instead stand for emotional connections and desires for attachment, expressing both individual longings and collective social interactions or initiatives in their migrant biographies.

Some of the Gurkha children in Kathmandu meet occasionally under the auspices of what they have termed the Merlion Club, a reference to Singapore’s iconic tourist symbol of a half-fish/half-lion mythical figure. Such attachments relate to what Mee and Wright (2009) coin as the “affective aspects of belonging.” Through the Merlion Club, as well as other gatherings, a sense of belonging is bolstered through different affiliative configurations that add to identity formation as collectives (cf. Fortier 1999). Gurkha wives told me that they often get together to reminisce about their time in Singapore; comparisons are made between their country of origin (Nepal) and the host country (Singapore). These examples would also exemplify “everyday membership practices of identification and categorization” (Brubaker 2010, 65).

If those who had returned from Singapore to Nepal continue to experience and/or talk about their senses of belonging to the former, then reverse forms of bracketed belonging may also be discerned from my other respondents who are based in Hong Kong and who continue to talk about Nepal as their home country. There are, however different reasons that account for why such ideas or felt sense of belonging and not-belonging transpire, depending on the context in which they are studying and/or working. Where Singapore does not allow residency of Nepali actors beyond the Gurkha’s active term of service, Hong Kong grants the right of abode to Gurkha soldiers, their children, and Nepalese civilians who are born in Hong Kong before January 1983. This is based on the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 (Tonsing 2010). This provision notwithstanding, Gurkha children face a set of difficulties as they live in Hong Kong, which thus forms the backdrop that accounts for how they approach belonging or not-belonging. To articulate this context, I draw from among others, Prakat’s biography as I turn to the next section on markers of not-belonging.

On Not-Belonging

Since the time of my first meeting with Prakat in Hong Kong where we chatted in his office at Jordan (Kowloon Peninsula), he had by then lived in the country for fifteen years. Born in Nepal in 1972, Prakat comes from a large family of four boys and three girls. His late father had served as a Gurkha with the British Army and had retired in the mid-1950s. Although Prakat himself had attempted the Gurkha recruitment test twice, he was not able to pass and to join Gurkha service. Besides, he was at that time enrolled in college and had given priority to his studies as opposed to plans for working for the British. By the time he had completed his degree, he had passed the maximum age of twenty-one years of age.¹⁸ For his brothers, as “they’re the very short type,” Prakat pointed out, they therefore could not meet the minimum height requirement for Gurkha recruitment.¹⁹

After completing college in Kathmandu, Prakat traveled to Hong Kong in 1996. He was by then in his late twenties, and first began working in the security industry. At the beginning, Prakat was not able to adapt to life in Hong Kong for a number of reasons:

But our first, in the beginning when we come to Hong Kong, many times people maybe they very feel, very uneasy. Not good. Because we can’t, can’t match, same time with the local culture, local society. But now we follow all their rules and everything. So we are, we are learning their culture. We are learning their society. We want to get in their society. So now it’s okay. But when we come first time, it’s very different. Language problem, food problem, because Chinese food they give us, we don’t know how to don’t eat. And argue. We pay money, why your food is not like Nepal food? Not, not, not Nepalese taste. What kind of your food? So maybe that is the, maybe some problem.

A year on, Prakat then changed jobs and joined the hotel industry. He subsequently set up his own business thereafter, first operating a kindergarten for the Nepalese community over four years. He explained:

The Nepalese community. I was the first time, that time I established the one kindergarten. Because that time so many Nepalese, they born the baby here, and they no idea, they don’t know how to join the school and how to get the kindergarten, something like that… . So I set up, I set up the one kindergarten school. Four years, maybe four years I run the kindergarten. After that, after that I sell.

He had set up the kindergarten after obtaining a teacher’s license. After selling the school, he then opened a company which provided manpower—that of retired Gurkhas—for jobs including security guards, drivers, and body guards.²⁰ As a bhanja himself, he mentioned that these job vacancies were matched with “Gurkhas, Gurkhas’ sons, Gurkhas’ daughters” as his priority, since “sometimes they don’t know how to get the job.” The difficulties faced by these fellow Nepalis are also tied to language abilities, which formed a barrier in seeking employment as Prakat further noted: “Any Hong Kong to give them local job is very difficult. Cause we don’t know Cantonese. Chinese language, their local language. But some of the Nepali people, they, they also don’t know English, then they don’t know Chinese. They speak only in Nepali or Indian, Indian language. So it’s very difficult to get the job.” Language barriers, among other factors, have effectively led to experiences of social exclusion and/or discrimination encountered in Hong Kong society, as observed by scholars working on South Asian communities, Nepalese immigrants and/or specifically the Gurkha community living in Hong Kong (for example, Chiu and Siu 2022; Sun and Fong 2021; Tam 2010; Valenzuela-Silva and Cheung 2016).²¹

Badal, who I introduced in chapter 3, shared with me that he felt out of place in Hong Kong and was facing an “identity crisis”:

But also sometimes when I come to Hong Kong, because we already have the stereotype come here to Hong Kong, one of the incident that really, every time that appears on my mind when I talk about Hong Kong when I talk about identity is that … once I was on my way to university, someone asked me like where are you from? Because I was talking different language from the Hong Kongers, I was, “Nepalese.” “Oh, you’re a security guard.” So, that was really something that hit me on my mind. Because something very bad. Because it’s not that, true. But then I don’t want to shout at them, because the problem is that they [don’t] know this one. No one taught them, so it’s the fault of the system, not the individual’s fault. And I said no I’m not like it. I’m like this this this; I introduce myself. And they say, “oh okay.” But then, this is something I would also feel bad because you don’t have any identity in Hong Kong, that’s what I feel.²²

Badal’s grandfather had served as a Gurkha, but his father and himself were instead encouraged by his grandfather to pursue an education rather than to recruit into the British Army. As he was keen on training to be a doctor, Badal had asked around in Hong Kong as to how to apply to university. He was, however, not able to find anyone who was willing to help him. Subsequently, Badal went to Tianjin, China, to study medicine. Based on my last contact with him a couple of years ago, he and his wife had since moved to Europe to take up a hospital job.

In Tang’s (2017) study of Nepali drug users in Hong Kong, and out of which a majority of his respondents are descendants (second and third generation) of Gurkha soldiers, the author points out that these offspring have faced difficulties in securing good jobs. Therefore, they are not able to earn sufficient money in order to remit their earnings back to Nepal. As ethnic minorities in Hong Kong, migrant communities such as the Gurkha bhanja and bhanji face differentiated treatment in both domains of education and employment. Ethnic minorities such as the Nepalese, Pakistani, or Indian migrant populations enroll in designated schools with poor prospects that in turn lead their graduates to take on low-salary jobs, including construction work and as cleaners (Ku, Chan, and Sandhu 2005; Leung 2021). As similarly reported in the Hong Kong media,

Nepalis have an association with the city dating back to 1969–70, when Gurkha regiments were first based here. The British granted the troops and their families permanent residency in the early 1990s. Then, amid political uncertainty in the run-up to the handover in 1997, many returned to Nepal. The early 2000s, when fears had receded, saw them returning. But given difficulties in finding school places for non-Chinese-speaking minorities, many left their children behind. The lack of Chinese-language support persists, and minorities are often allocated places in so-called lower-band schools, which risks entrenching intergenerational poverty in the community.²³

One of my informants in Hong Kong also told me that South Asian students there attend ethnic minorities school (either government-based or private if they can afford the latter) given that mainstream schools in the country are concerned that these students may affect their rankings with poor scholastic performance. Moreover, jobs that South Asian communities such as the Nepalese hold oftentimes require long if not irregular working hours; facing such segregation in employment and difficult working conditions thus pivot some of these bhanja to turn to heroin use as a form of coping mechanism (Tang 2017). It is only in recent years, as Tang (2017) points out, that the Hong Kong government has begun state provision of funds for related programs as an ancillary response to the social needs of these ethnic minorities. One interesting point that the author raises (Tang 2017, 221) is that of intergenerational differences in terms of the economic context and employability that these different actors confront: “The first generation of Nepalis in Hong Kong were usually retired Gurkhas. When they retired from the army, their qualifications along with a better economy then made it easier for them to find better employment. Comparatively, the second and third generations do not have such advantages.” Essentially, what these descendants of Gurkha soldiers in Hong Kong are facing now are “a changing economy and social marginalization against ethnic minorities” (Tang 2017, 221). These shifting factors and contexts make it comparatively more difficult to attain good education and to find stable and reasonably well-paying jobs.

That said, however, one of my other bhanja interlocutors shared different views on the matter of drug use among the Nepali community. Aakar’s grandfather and father were both Gurkhas and who had served in Brunei and Hong Kong, among other places. Aakar was born in Nepal, followed his parents to Hong Kong, spent three years in Brunei in his early teens, and then returned to Nepal in the early 2000s. It was only in 2007 that he went back to Hong Kong, having first worked as a security guard. His wife was born in Hong Kong. After marrying her, he had come to Nepal as her dependent. Through marriage with his Hong Kong-born wife, Aakar had the rights to stay in the country. In fact, his father-in-law and father knew each other through Gurkha service, where both were friends and occupied the same rank. Aakar told me that “some of the bhanja bhanji children who are suffering with drugs and doing nothing and so on and so forth, they are come from Nepal [sic].” Conversely, those who were born in Hong Kong “are patient and study from the young, those who are born … born here [referring to Hong Kong], they are … they are not involved by this [referring to drug use].” Brian, who served for a decade alongside the Gurkhas as a British officer, shared similar views with those of Prakat’s and Aakar’s. After serving with the army for a total of two decades, Brian is now the managing director of an employment agency that arranges security jobs for retired Gurkhas. He has been based in Hong Kong with the agency for twenty years by the time I met him there in 2014. Brian first talked about the difficulty of language that Gurkha children face, not unlike what Prakat said:

And they have difficulty with Chinese language, and will mean that no, very, very few. We’re talking about tiny numbers, of Nepalese children will go to the Hong Kong school system and then go to university. And they’ll never get a job in Hong Kong as an office worker. So all of the white collar jobs are pretty much ruled out, because they can’t read Chinese.

He then went on to say that Hong Kong society holds a particular view of the children of Gurkhas. He described: “Take drugs, involve in crime. And then they can be quite vicious, when their, things go wrong like. And then, I’m not certain, I think one or two, some people who ended up like that, and this caused a bad name across the whole community.” Such a sweeping view of the bhanja and bhanji in Hong Kong society is thus read as problematic by both Brian and Aakar. They held the same view that quite clearly, not all children turn to drugs, yet such is the stereotypical impression that emerges in Hong Kong.

This point resonates with what Tang (2017) says, which is that there are evidently intragroup dynamics, intergroup differences and intragroup differentiations that intersect with intergenerational relations when it comes to the matter of turning to drugs. In this instance, it seems to be the case that the location of one’s birth place matters in terms of being able to better adapt to a country that is different from one’s parents, as opposed to those who had come to Hong Kong from Nepal. There are also some retired Gurkhas living or who had previously lived in Hong Kong such as Uttam and Nishad, whose views on Gurkha children counter that of the stereotypical assumption that the bhanja and bhanji group consume drugs and constitute a problematic population in totality:

• Uttam: And some of these children are not decent people, some of these children who grew up they went into bad … like drugs. And when they went to Hong Kong a lot of them got caught and the Hong Kong government was frustrated with it.
• Nishad: So some of them are doing really good. But then there are some who are looking for the triads kind and drug addiction and drug abuses and all… . Too many children of the bhanja bhanji have been, have spoilt … If only one can work in Hong Kong, there’s no issue, no problem with the finances, the issue and all. If you can work and make money. But then people are not working; they don’t want to work. They just—they don’t think [of] Hong Kong as their own place and they working. That’s why they fall into those kind of habit, company. (my emphasis)

Where Uttam pointed out that some of the bhanja and bhanji had mixed with bad company and started taking drugs, Nishad’s response illuminated how these Gurkha children do not regard “Hong Kong as their own place.” This positioning is indicative of a sense of not-belonging for those from this generation of Gurkha families. Similarly, a media report in Hong Kong dating to December 1996 reflects some Gurkha children’s lack of rootedness. In that report, readers are told of a twenty-year-old bhanja, Thapa Tekendra, who was caught with six kilograms of “ice” (i.e., methamphetamine) during a police drug bust operation. First mentioned as the “son of a Gurkha officer,” we learn that Thapa had “committed the crime in an extremely confused state,” and for which he was subsequently sentenced to seventeen years’ imprisonment for drug trafficking. More pertinently, the cause of Thapa’s drug offence was traced to his Gurkha father’s constant mobile life that consequently rendered him “rootless”:

Thapa began using drugs because of his rootless life, brought on by his father’s moving from base to base throughout Asia, the High Court heard. His drug use escalated from cough syrup to a hardcore addiction to ice. On February 12, Thapa was caught by the Special Duty Squad of Kowloon West lifting slightly over 6 kg of ice worth an estimated $2.5 million from the boot of a parked car in Ho Man Tin. (my emphasis)²⁴

The struggles of some of these Gurkha children in Hong Kong are clear, interpreted both by themselves and public discourse that broach how they are not able to find their grounding and identity in countries such as Hong Kong. Brian shared with me his understanding of what the barriers to good education, including the nonrecognition of one’s Nepalese educational background, in Hong Kong meant for some of them:

Nobody wants a Nepalese education outside Nepal. Or they stay here they get a bad education. They drop out of school, they have problems… . Hong Kong’s got a really bad social problem. They’re not making [it] beyond security guarding, construction work, and driving … Those four areas are the only ones they can take on. So Hong Kong is using its ethnic minorities as a sort of underclass.

Despite such barriers, encounters, and varying experiences of discrimination or segregation in the scholastic or economic industries, Prakat maintained that there are more opportunities in Hong Kong as compared to Nepal. He explained,

I think the Nepal, Nepal is worse off and no government, police is no good. No system is good. Nepal is I think poor country, because I born there but poor country. The government, police is very poor; everything is very poor there. So, Hong Kong is more a richer, police, everything is. And you have many opportunities for everyone. Even educated or not educated, skilled, not skilled, every people they can get the job in Hong Kong. So we have more opportunities in Hong Kong. So I came to Hong Kong, it’s a good. If I was in Nepal maybe I’ll be unemployed. [laughs] Who knows right?

Nishad shared a similar view. He thought that for his sons, “it’s better that in Hong Kong they can at least make a living here. No need to go [to be recruited as a] Gurkha.” Brian also noted the better prospects that Hong Kong could offer, problems notwithstanding, as compared to the lack of opportunities in Nepal. That said, however, Brian indicated (as with some of my bhanja/bhanji interlocutors) that the desire to stay long-term in Hong Kong is not there. Rather, these diasporans continued to look toward Nepal as their next or eventual destination:

They treated this place where they work, and where they’re based and it’s better than Nepal. And it’s safer there [Hong Kong]. They don’t treat this [Hong Kong] as a base that they’re going to live here forever. And everything in their eyes is back to Nepal. They go back there for every reason they could think of. (my emphasis)

Brian was of the view that “this isn’t where they clearly belong. They just happen to be here [Hong Kong] at the moment.” With eyes trained back to Nepal, diasporans such as Prakat may be said to possess a mental and affective sense of bracketed belonging to Nepal. While Prakat thought that most Gurkha children may not be keen on returning to Nepal, his own perspective on and affinity with Nepal was different and palpable:

Ah, for the bhanja bhanji, I think they don’t want to go back to the Nepal. Because they’re allowed to live here, they’re allowed to die here, they’re allowed to work in Hong Kong. And compared to the, I think more opportunities in Hong Kong, compared to the Nepal. But Nepal is our country. We born there, we love our country. The culture and everything, the food, environment—everything is close in our heart. (my emphasis)

For Prakat, there are still ongoing problems and issues to do with Nepal’s political structure and public infrastructure as well. Moreover, he bemoaned the lack of proper public toilets, political instability, and other problems that deterred an immediate return to Nepal. Prakat and his affective belonging to Nepal, despite dissatisfaction with its politics and infrastructure, represented a form of subscribing to belonging by birth and cultural familiarity. Hence, Nepal is his country and Hong Kong is a place to live and to make a living. I conceive of affective belonging in this instance as a bracketed form of longing to belong, yet discouraged only by unfavorable political and structural circumstances in Nepal. Such longingness is also a reflection of bracketing and reserving belonging until the political situation and livelihood in Nepal changes for the better that in turn flesh out shifting migrant–nation-state relations. As Nepal is not seen now as a place to return to settle down, Gurkha diasporans like Prakat can only parenthesize their sense of belonging to Nepal and suspend this till the situation improves. These particular instances of earning their keep in Hong Kong while looking toward Nepal in the near future articulates an aspirational but suspended sense of bracketed belonging to the latter. In the meantime, livelihoods are better realized and enacted elsewhere, which also includes step migration to another elsewhere (cf. Bunnell, Gillen, and Ho 2018). In Prakat’s case, he told me that he was preparing to go over to the United Kingdom with his son, to join his wife. In Gauri’s case, elsewhere is Australia where she pursued a higher degree after first returning to Kathmandu from Singapore.

Children of the GCSPF are connected both to their birthplace (Singapore) and their place of “origin” (Nepal). The word origin needs to be clarified. Gurkha children are, by virtue of their parents’ nationality, Nepali. Hence, even if they were not born in Nepal, it is because of their parents that Nepal has to be their place of origin or their ancestral homeland. This then accounts for how Manisha’s father constantly reminded her and her siblings that they cannot assimilate too much into Singapore society since the eventual locale of settlement would be Nepal and not Singapore. The sense of belonging that Gurkhas instill in their children links them to their country of origin. As she recounted how her father constantly reminded them:

I don’t know about my friends’ fathers, but my father would say, he’ll be the one … he’s a man of a few words, he will be the one to say yes, be grateful that you have a chance to grow up as a Singaporean, and it’s taken somewhat like a social experiment, you know, you are Nepali but you get the whole Singapore experience, from birth all the way up, but never forget that actually you are Nepali, so in in trying to blend in here [Singapore], do keep a note at the back of your mind, that at one time you have to leave … so while blending in, remember or be careful not to blend too completely to the extent that it becomes a weakness somewhat.

The idea of origin thus takes on different nuances for the first and second generation of Nepalese who worked, studied, or assumed housewifely duties in Singapore. Manisha conveyed what her mother thought of having left Nepal after getting married, and having to return upon her husband’s retirement. She described:

And then I think more than for us she was speaking for herself and the other wives, so, I mean, we stayed there for a good eighteen, twenty years, and then now we’re here [Nepal]. It’s a very pathetic state for us because for us we’re neither here nor there … so where do we pick up from, you know, where do we pick up and where did we really leave, leave Singapore or leave Nepal?

For the children of Gurkhas, and in the case of Manisha’s mother, there is therefore a sense of displacement (Yuval-Davis 2006) in Nepal (where belonging is meant to naturally arise), as a consequence of having spent many years in Singapore (where belonging was meant to be temporary if at all).

Manisha returned to Nepal after she had completed her O levels in Singapore. Her recollection of first impressions of her return conveyed how little she felt she belonged in Nepal. This sense of distance arose from having been brought up in Singapore. Such exposure instilled mores and social norms that Manisha found lacking in Nepal.

So when I was taking the taxi ride back home [from the airport in Kathmandu], as offerings we got Mandarin oranges … and then we were having the oranges in the taxi, and then you know how Singapore is like, you know, it’s a “fine” city, you don’t litter, and then, like you always keep your litter in a plastic bag or in your pockets, so I was eating the Mandarin oranges, the peels were on my hands, on my lap, and then I’m looking at my aunt, looking at the scenery, I’m like, “Where’s the dustbin?” and my aunt points out of the window, and [says] “That’s the dustbin.” She pointed to the ground [outside of the taxi]. So I’m like, “No, I mean the dustbin,” I’m still looking for the dustbin, and then later I comprehend that the dustbin was the open road, and then she just takes the peel from my hand, then she tossed it out the window [while the taxi was still moving]. And until I get home I was still trying to digest, did that really happen? In front of my bare eyes? Or I am just, that was some crazy dream or something? Because I have never done that in my whole life.

Ostensibly, Manisha is confronted with different cultural frameworks (Wilding 2007) in her experience of “return” migration. For her, the materialities of everyday life in the two countries to which she is connected are markedly dissimilar. Similar, Renu’s experience in Kathmandu illustrated her having to adjust to how things are done in Nepal as contrasted with Singapore. She said: “Let’s say there’s a very crowded place, then you have to walk through. Usually in Singapore, we say excuse me. Over here [in Kathmandu], the best way for you to get through is to push. If you say excuse me, it will just fall on deaf ears. You’ll have to push.” On top of the orange peel incident, the following “phlegm” experience also remained etched in Manisha’s memory. The incident highlighted for her the distinction between Singapore and Nepal:

Even when it comes to … dispelling phlegm, we are always taught to spit into our tissue paper, excuse ourselves to the washroom, and here [in Nepal] people just do it in the open. And I was like, I’m gonna hold it, I’m gonna go home and then I’d gonna go the toilet, and then I talk. Then my aunt was like, ‘Why are you so quiet, why are you so quiet?’ She was elbowing me, but then I was pointing to my mouth, she said, “Just spit it out the window!” It was a second shock in the taxi ride, so already … it was really an eye-opener, I couldn’t, I don’t think I could get a shocking, more realistic eye-opener than a taxi ride to home [Nepal]… [the basic everyday things] that I never in my wildest imagination thought would happen in Nepal. There it was, in front of my eyes.

Having to relocate to Nepal because of her father’s retirement from the GCSPF, Manisha’s process of relocation may be regarded as a “project of the self.” This is an undertaking that includes difficulties and successes that operate in tandem as one relocates to one’s homeland.

The enforced relocation from Singapore to Nepal meant having to learn how to adapt in Nepali society even if one was not born there. I have mentioned in earlier parts of the book that most Gurkha parents are conscious of teaching their children Nepali culture and language. To return to the point on language acquisition and use (in connection with Shradda’s experience above and as I have highlighted in chapter 3 in terms of Fateh’s concern), learning Nepali does not always ensure that it may be put to relevant or good use when Gurkha children return to Nepal. Ganga explained in our interview: “Because for them [Nepalis in Kathmandu] it’s difficult to understand our English also. There’s some words they pronounce differently, like we say bus, they say boss. When we say bus, they go: ‘What bus?’ So we feel like we are the fool here.” Himalee Pun and Anita Rai, both of whom are daughters of Gurkhas who had retired from the GCSPF, decided to return to Nepal when the earthquake occurred in 2015. They wanted to serve as volunteer translators for the Singapore Armed Forces’ medical team in contributing to relief aid. Feeling “almost [like] a stranger in [their] homeland,” both of them found language to constitute a barrier between the locals and themselves.²⁵ Said Himalee: “[Our Nepali] sounds different; it’s like how [Singaporeans] speak in Singlish. We have our own slang that the locals cannot understand.”²⁶ In tandem, Anita noted some communicative issues when she went back to Nepal: “The first few months were very difficult as the environment was totally different … Our pronunciation was different and as I’m not fluent in Nepali, I had to converse in English, which many could [not] understand.”²⁷ For these social actors who have found it difficult to adjust to life in Nepal, be it for a short visit as is the case for Himalee and Anita, or for good where Ganga and others are concerned, there are a few other bhanja and bhanji like Manisha who had over time became adapted to living and working in Kathmandu.

From the initial stages of adjusting to life in Nepal, to four years later where she is presently working as a hotel guest relations officer in Kathmandu, Manisha has gone through shifts in sentiments of belonging. She has gradually become used to life in Nepal. For instance, she recounted the story of a Nepali friend who spent her first few years in India, and who came back to Nepal while still a young child. Although Manisha said she does not regard this friend as a “true Nepali,” she admitted that this friend is “more Nepali than me because of the years that she’s here.” However, her friend thought otherwise, as Manisha herself explained:

And yet she says to me that “I’m amazed by the way you’ve settled in, because when I look at you I feel like you are now the local and I’m the tourist.” So I take it as a positive feedback that I’ve really put myself out here, and challenged myself to fit in, and learn … not by the book but by observation and everything that happens around me, and I haven’t just challenged myself, I’ve succeeded actually. So … initially the challenges are there but then it’s up to the individual, whether to succeed and just stick it in, or still deny that you are Nepali and still speak Singlish and you know just brag whatever thing Singaporean. Because that’s sort of an illusion. You are not really holding that red [Singaporean] passport, you have a green passport and you are here [in Nepal].

In Manisha’s own evaluation of returning to Nepal, she realized and embraced the challenges that she had to overcome. On the basis of her friend’s opinion among other factors, she arrived at the conclusion that she has in fact managed well in (re)incorporating into Nepali society. Such an admission is then rounded off by way of referring to belonging in official and legislative dimensions, where Manisha raised the bureaucratic distinction between passports that connote the different nationalities in this context. Having said that, one should note also that the politics of citizenship and of belonging “can be distinguished analytically” (Brubaker 2010, 64). In spite of the connotations of “formal state membership” that is granted vis-à-vis citizenship, social actors can still possess a sense of belonging to more than one country, or to a country other than where they hold citizenship. Manisha’s biography suggests such a form of belonging. While there is no formal belonging to the Singapore state given that she is not in possession of the red passport, Manisha’s narrative nonetheless reflects the presence of substantive or felt membership with Singapore.

Feelings of belonging to both Singapore and Nepal may be discerned from Manisha’s account of reminiscing about the “good days” that she and her cousin experienced in Singapore:

You know, “Oh, you know Singapore won a gold medal in the Olympics, or you know, National Day is coming, and did you check the photographs on Facebook and what they are doing different this year …” So it’s … for me, it’s sort of like, I think I’m trying … I’m becoming more Nepali, and then just when I feel like I’m working there, I mean I don’t force myself to work there but I see it happening. Then something happens that brings me back to Singapore. So it’s just I think another loud statement that I can’t deny that it will always be a part of me. It will have a … permanent space in my heart. Yes.

Concurrent sentiments of belonging to both countries, in the above account, are represented through Manisha’s subscription to the Singapore community and its success or celebrations with regard to international sports performance or national day as a mark of the nation’s independence. Manisha’s account also indicates a shift in belonging, as she felt that she is “becoming more Nepali,” and yet acknowledged at the same time that Singapore will hold a “permanent space” in her heart. Belonging to one country slowly modulates into belonging to two. In contrast, Riju and Ganga were both of the view that they do not feel like they belong to either Nepal or Singapore:

• Riju: We would have belonged somewhere …
• Ganga: It’s like we don’t belong anywhere you know. Not in here [referring to Nepal], not in there [referring to Singapore], just dangling.

Drawing from Gurkha children’s experiences such as those of Manisha, Riju, and Ganga above, sentiments of belonging and not-belonging—and indeed multiple belonging or otherwise—ought to be perceived as sharing the same plane on a continuum instead of a dichotomous polarity.

As different generational members of the wider Gurkha diaspora, social actors struggle to belong across different countries, contingent on their specific migratory pathway, location, and familial as well as individual biographical compositions. Their varied struggles to want to or at least attempts to belong and fit in traverse a range of everyday domains. They comprise language, education, employment, as well as cultural practices and values and ethics, among others. Across these domains, not only have my interlocutors shared their self-identified ways of not-belonging arising from intercultural differences, they have also been externally placed in the category of not-belonging by other social actors. The external placement comes from social actors such as the state vis-à-vis both everyday encounters as well as structural exclusion or discrimination. These parallel threads of identification together demonstrate that belonging and not-belonging are both self-realized and externally or structurally imposed. In comparing these two sections on markers of belonging as well as not-belonging, it is also clear that such markers are similar if not identical; that belonging and not-belonging coterminously traverse the same set of factors and circumstances for diasporans located in different countries. In other words, whether one feels a sense of belonging or otherwise, or for others who suspend belonging as aspirational till a latter time, these varied forms of belonging and not-belonging crucially underline how belonging as a notion and in practice is an ongoing and continual project. As a perennial undertaking, belonging as an endeavor synchronizes with one’s biographical encounters and phases in the migratory journey. Apart from articulating and interrogating the manifold expressions and experiences of belonging or otherwise above, my analysis of belonging as a key concept in this book also attends to what is at stake. That is to say, I am just as interested in unpacking the implications, consequences, and politics of belonging and not-belonging, as I shall examine next.

The Politics of Belonging: What Is at Stake?

Where the above biographical examples of belonging and not-belonging relate to affective and everyday practices in the main, I alter my direction here to consider the politics of belonging. Such politics may be examined in two ways: the first, how claims to belonging are rationalized, leads to the second: the ways Gurkha families wish to assert the rights that arise from those claims. Overall, there are benefits and costs of (not)belonging to different constellations, representing the valuing and judging of belonging (Yuval-Davis 2006). These may pertain to economic and medical entitlements, as well as community development in the country of settlement. In other words, when belongingness is created, claims to belonging can then be formulated and put forward, for example, to the Singapore or the Hong Kong government. As such, belonging becomes a resource (Antonsich 2010) that can be mobilized whereby social actors assert the right to stay, or to work in a place (Ervine 2008), among other claims.

The chairmen of the Everest Association and the Annapurna Community in Pokhara have organized themselves as a collective. It was agreed that the Everest Association would press claims in Singapore and the Annapurna Community would concentrate on contributing to the Nepali community in their postretirement years. In my meeting him, ex-Gurkha Hiresh who was chairman of the Everest Association, enumerated seven requests to the Singapore government through the SPF. These seven items demonstrate what is at stake if and when claims (built on belonging) are successfully pursued. They were as follows:

1. A review of retired servicemen’s pensions, given that the inflation rate [in Nepal] has not been taken into account.
2. An increase of allowance for current servicemen.
3. Review of existing partial medical coverage that can only be reimbursed in Singapore; different medical coverage for servicemen who retired before and after 1994.
4. Permanent residency [in Singapore] for Gurkha children.
5. Wives and children to be allowed to work in Singapore.
6. Reemployment opportunities for retired servicemen.
7. Gurkha widows’ pension.

The above requests were put forward by the Everest Association, crafted on the basis of rights of belonging that thereby engender these claims. As Hiresh put it:

So, once our group retired in 2004, we think, there is no harm requesting to the government … . because we are requesting … if we don’t request … we spent half our lives there, we serve, surviving with the pension given by the Singapore government, where [can] we go [to request]? We are not serving the government of Nepal, we were serving [Singapore] so we should request. I think morally, that should not be any problem. We should request.

The rationale for requesting these allowances is contingent on having served Singapore, and not the government of Nepal. This therefore prompted Hiresh and his group of ex-Gurkhas to make their claim based on moral grounds of service and sacrifice as a kind of “framing device” (Laubenthal and Schumacher 2020, 1139). Hiresh cited the example of an ex-Gurkha who, having retired in 1962, continued to receive SGD$62 (approximately US$45) as his pension. The response to this request from the Singapore Police Headquarters was that every retired serviceman who had served in Singapore could, from 2005, receive no more than SGD$218 (approximately US$158) per month.

Further claims to permanent residence for their children were also raised, given that they were born and bred in Singapore. They would therefore not be able to fit in in Nepal:

We also request with the government that … children who were born there, they be given PR, because they are born [there], they are brought up there! They studied there, and … they come here [Nepal], they are treated by Nepalese government like alien. Because they don’t know any rule … they don’t know any rule, they don’t know Nepali, they don’t know the system here, here you have a lot of under the table things you know? They don’t know, they are very straight, they are like Singaporean.

Hiresh argued that they were brought up the “Singaporean way.” Following the rationale that these children would know and therefore could survive and adapt to Singapore society, this meant to him that the children thus deserved the right to remain: “I think, for them, surviving in Singapore, they are qualified also. They studied there, they adapted there, so … we requested, if they are given, and then, it will be much more better [sic].” As bhanji Riju and Ganga both told me in a larger focus group interview, being born and bred in Singapore ought to translate into a right to studying or working there:

• Riju: I mean even if you don’t give us PR [permanent residence], just give work permit and you know …
• Ganga: We grew up there, we know Singapore’s history and everything. It’s like our home there you know? And then we are not granted our work permit and we are being sent back [to Nepal]. But then they [in Singapore] are giving work permit to Filipinos, China… . Those who don’t even know the history of Singapore, those who doesn’t even know the national anthem of Singapore, you know?

Ganga’s response reflected her claims toward the right to belong based on one’s knowledge of Singapore’s history and national anthem, which was to be pertinently differentiated from others who are given work permits. Such knowledge translates into a form of resource pegged onto one’s right to belong in close association with rights to education and employment. Having a permanent residence status would then mean that the children could continue to pursue their education and eventually work in Singapore, despite their Gurkha fathers’ retirement and mandatory return to Nepal. In other words, their claims to belonging articulate pragmatic aspirations if not opportunities for educational and economic inclusion. Comparatively, and even in the case of Hong Kong where Gurkha diasporans have the right to abode which is unlike that in Singapore, those in Hong Kong are also aspiring for similar inclusionary opportunities as I have discussed above. Hiresh elaborated further as to why permanent residence status ought to be awarded to the children, in part due to their families’ ability to finance their education costs:

The other thing is, one thing is, once the father retires, whole family have to retire you know? We are repatriated. Can’t stay on. Problem. That is a difficult fact. Children don’t want to come [to Nepal]. Children want to stay there, want to study there! Also cannot! Not given the opportunity. The amazing thing is, if the people want to go for tertiary education, or somebody want to go further studies, in Singapore … they also have money, and they are given the opportunity. But the children of the Gurkhas, they have CPF [Central Provident Fund], they have gratuity everything, so they can support their [children’s education], because why? Every parent want to support their children. For their education. Even though they have CPF, they have gratuity, they … money accumulated for the children, they want to give them also, it’s not given the opportunity you know. That’s the … very sad … and very … disappointing fact. So … we raised this point also.

Similar stances were also adopted by other retired Gurkha servicemen. They claimed it was puzzling and frustrating that in spite of their children having been schooled and trained as nurses in Singapore, they were not allowed to work as nurses thereafter. Furthermore, these servicemen also pointed out that there are many foreigners in Singapore working mainly as nurses in the medical industry. They come from such countries as China, the Philippines, and India. One ex-Gurkha noted that some nurses from China could not speak English: “But they can’t even speak English. We can speak English but [are] not allowed to work in Singapore.” Hiresh’s frustration, similar to Ganga’s, is discernible here:

Singapore [is] employing the nurses from Philippines, from China, and India as well. But the Gurkhas’ children, study there, and born there, brought up there, and did the nursing course there! Staff nurse course. But not allowed to work. So they migrated to elsewhere. Some … Australia, some in United Kingdom, some in the States. Since their degree is accepted in those countries, why not in Singapore? This is the problem. Because the children are penalized because the father is Gurkha. Very sad case.

Beyond the impossibility of working in Singapore, Hiresh’s observations raise another point in the cycles or processes of migration that are associated with not-belonging in this instance. That is to say, although some Gurkha children have earned the relevant qualifications, they are on the one hand not permitted to put their skills to good use in the Singapore medical field.

On the other hand, return migration to Nepal is also not a desirable option. According to Hiresh, they would be regarded as “aliens” in Nepal. Migrating to other countries outside of Asia for further studies or work then becomes the only viable option in their onward migratory journeys. In sum, the politics of belonging, documented through the foregoing discussion, is connected to citizenship and its rights and duties, including “the right to migrate, the right of abode, the right to work and, more and more recently, the right to plan a future where you live” (Yuval-Davis 2006, 208). Hiresh’s varied rationale on behalf of the Gurkha children reflected a stance premised on exerting both the legitimacy and deservingness to belong (Blachnicka-Ciacek et al. 2021). In so doing, they could thereby join the “community of value” (Anderson 2013) as good migrants. This sentiment has been echoed by both former Gurkhas and their children who worked and studied in Singapore. What is at stake in the politics of belonging—where belonging translates into a localized resource (Khan 2021) as discussed above—has to do with securing both educational and economic rights and stability.

In order to expand on the varying registers of belonging across different generations, and what is at stake in them, I draw particular attention to the seventh requested item that has to do with establishing a widows’ pension. Hiresh mentioned that in comparison to the widows’ pension that is made available for the wives of deceased Gurkhas in the British and the Indian Army, there is no similar scheme in the case of Singapore. He then explained why such a pension is important:

Of course we understand that there’s no pension for Singaporean also. We understand. But, the Singaporean widow have [sic] much more advantage. They can work. The Gurkha wives, they remain as dependents. Whole … whole … time, all the way, the husband works there. Can’t work. And … the time when she can work, time has gone you know! By the time the husband reaches the forty-five, forty-five years, then it’s too late. She come back here [Nepal], she has nothing. So that’s why … we requested the government that the, at least, … that’s why we have a, one widows’ fund. We created our own.

Asking for the widows’ pension therefore connects to the other request on allowing Gurkha wives to seek employment in Singapore, through which they can then be economically self-sufficient should their spouses pass on.

While waiting for this request to be considered, the Everest Association has, on its own, initiated a widows’ pension. Active servicemen contribute SGD$10 (approximately US$7) per month to this cause. Hiresh cited the case of one Gurkha policeman who was in Chitwan on leave from service in Singapore, and who died when the boat he was in capsized. His wife and children had to return to Nepal with no form of support. The widows’ fund was subsequently established as a way to help such widows cope with the loss of their only source of income. In this respect, belonging is counterposed to economic dispossession (Stratford 2009) in the recommendation for a pension scheme for Gurkha widows. In other words, belonging here is transformed into a resource for these widows to obtain economic stability as a “right” to be exercised.

Aside from the varied military, police, and migratory experiences of Gurkha soldiers and police as part of the Gurkha diaspora, the other key transnational social actors in this diaspora are their wives and children, and their experiences, encounters, and aspirations as contextualized in different countries. I interrogated the composition, shifts, rationale, and negotiations associated with belonging and not-belonging. In my attempts to evaluate what belonging means, as well as the accompanying stakes that come into play in relation to not-belonging, I have argued that belonging first needs to be empirically realized so as to draw attention to what it means to belong or not belong to a particular country or countries. By narrating a range of perspectives, motivations, plans, and aspirations across a spectrum of social actors, I demonstrated what it means for these individuals to be a part of the Gurkha diaspora. From the Gurkha to his wife, and his children who were born outside of Nepal, the idea of “origin” and therefore “return migration” take on perceptible differences given contrasting biographical backgrounds and social locations of these social actors. Where the Gurkhas and their wives have left Nepal for Singapore or Hong Kong, their children, as Singapore-born Nepalis for instance, have not experienced the same type of departure. Instead, their departure from Singapore may very well connote this country as “origin”; having to “return” to Nepal, at first, makes no sense. It follows that instead of comprehending return as marking the end of the migration cycle, it must be seen as one of many stages in the migratory process (Cassarino 2004). In the case of Gurkha families in Hong Kong, the three different generations of these diasporans and their diverse phases of traveling to Hong Kong, then back to Nepal, and yet again back to Hong Kong likewise corroborate with Cassarino’s (2004) critique of “return” as I indicate above. Furthermore, practices of remigration, contingent on which group of Gurkhas and families we are focusing on, implies a reversal of source and destination countries. This reversal thereby reconfigures what constitutes as emigration or immigration locations (Ho 2019). Given the problematization of “return” as a process and not as an end point in the larger scheme of migration, it remains to be seen as to whether senses of belonging and not-belonging may take on different permutations for retired Gurkhas and their families in varying host-origin contexts and further stages of their biographical trajectories.

Second, belonging and not-belonging should not be treated in a dichotomous manner. Through the narratives that I have presented above, it is clear that belonging and not-belonging may take place concurrently, given the simultaneous subscription to felt senses of familiarity, comfort, and longing for both Nepal and Singapore, for instance, that thread across different phases of informants’ lives. For the indicators that my interlocutors relate to and register as reflecting their sense of belonging—comprising foodways, language use, and others—then the same set of indicators likewise applies for their sentiments of not-belonging. Third, belonging also shifts in meaning and through context. Having a stake in a country means asserting one’s rights, such as the claims that have been put forward by Gurkha families with regard to education, medical, and employment entitlements in or from Singapore. Returning to Nepal from Singapore also means organizing Gurkha families as a collective, so as to deliver community-based initiatives as Nepal becomes bracketed as their aspired country of belonging in a retirement milieu. Similarly, those who are presently living and working in Hong Kong have as well bracketed their aspirational longing to return to Nepal only when the political situation takes a turn for the better. This is a country they were born in but for which return has to be suspended for the moment.

The final point to note is that much scholarship has made conceptual distinctions between belonging, identity, citizenship, and other cognate notions within the wider discussion on migration. However, these imbricated categories of experience, be they at the level of the everyday or at the structural or sociolegal level, need to be addressed concurrently. The aim is therefore to provide a fuller, and both empirical and categorical, means of unpacking what belonging, not-belonging, and the politics of belonging connote for different generations of migrants. Diasporans and their similar and different pathways are multidirectional and shift from generation to generation. I have pointed out examples that reflect differences both within and between different generations of Gurkha wives and children. These thereby remind us of how such variation call forth manifold “turning points” (Berg 2011) that influence how belonging is felt or continues to shift for different diasporan actors and which thereby assume different valence, forms, and meaning. As I have also suggested, belonging and not-belonging are not to be regarded as occupying two opposite ends of a dichotomy. Rather, they should be consigned as different points along a continuum. It is therefore crucial to realize why and how migrants of different generations inhabit varying points on this continuum, and how best conceptual notions of belonging and not-belonging vis-à-vis- bracketing can account for the heterogeneity of experiences. The investigation should address the multifaceted makeup of diasporic populations and their generational actors, and engage with types of migrant trajectories that together animate cross-border and cross-cultural encounters within specific sociocultural and political structural milieus.