Conclusion
In the Wake of Empire
I changed professions a few times before I switched over to the restaurant business in Aldershot, over thirty years ago. Except for a few lads in the British Army this place was unknown to any Nepali desirous of doing business in the UK. I had come to English soil with a lungful of oxygen from Nepal, India, Malaya, Hong Kong and Singapore. I knew exactly when a man runs short of his breath and has to take whatever work is offered. The name of my loved venture was Johnnie Gurkha’s Restaurant.
Hari Bivor Karki, Johnnie Gurkha’s Is with Me
Born in 1945 near Okhaldhunga in East Nepal, Hari Bivor Karki enlisted into the Brigade of Gurkhas in 1961. Apart from serving in the military, he had also taken on different jobs. These include him being a boxing instructor in training both the army and the police in Kathmandu, as an assembler with Ford Motors in Essex, as well as having worked in the food and beverage industry. In 1978, Karki opened his restaurant, Johnnie Gurkha’s Nepalese Cuisine located in Aldershot. It was the first of its kind in the United Kingdom if not any other Western country at that time. His book tells the story of his and his family’s life as immigrants, including contributing to the Nepalese community in the United Kingdom. Indeed, Karki’s arrival on English soil, after having trudged across the different countries in Asia, reflects his experiences and tribulations as a warrior and migrant Gurkha. By extension, Karki and his family who have traversed different places since his Gurkha days shed light on these Gurkha families as transnational social actors located within the wider Gurkha diaspora.
Gurkhas as military/security actors and as diasporic actors function vis-à-vis the ambitions and structures of colonialism and empire building, as well as the current needs of modern nation-states in terms of security and policing in relation to global PMSCs. These two intertwining ambits influence how Gurkhas and their families lead a variety of transnational lives, negotiate varied senses of belonging (structural, legal, sociocultural, and aspirational among others) and understand what it means to be a migrant warrior. While Gurkha families such as Karki’s may all be a part of the same Gurkha diaspora in a manner of speaking, each individual or family unit inhabits diasporic worlds differently and experiences variegated ways of living. These depend on their Gurkha father’s or parents’ migratory route, as well as where they were born and bred and obtained schooling or jobs that in effect determine how their varied senses of belonging occur. Given that migrants “live transnational lives,” “affective belonging is at the same time local, national, and transnational” (Morrice 2017, 605). Together, these mean that there are uneven diasporic and migratory routes. Such unevenness includes different transnational axes of relations, as well as the stipulations and restrictions of nation-states that either enable or constrain rights to abode and citizenship.
The stories and lives of Gurkhas and their families blend colonial histories, migratory aspirations and failures, as well as the manifold acts and challenges of bracketing belonging depending on the different contexts in which they have lived and worked. Arising from these contexts and conditions, then, how belonging pans out, and how belonging shifts for different members of Gurkha families within the wider Gurkha diaspora become key moments in deciphering Gurkhas and their kin as migrant actors beyond the former’s global fame as warriors. The Gurkha diaspora has emerged out of a complex constellation of colonialism, imperialist ambitions, and the confluence of world wars and global security needs that in concert also determine the migratory routes of ex-Gurkhas who enter global security industries as their second-career option. The ambitions, plans, and aspirations of Gurkhas and their families illustrate the broader approaches and strategies that immigrants and the next generations deploy: “Depending on their socioeconomic characteristics, immigrants and their children combine incorporation and transnational strategies in different ways at different stages of their lives. They use these to construct their identities, pursue economic mobility, and make political claims in their home or host country or in both” (Levitt and Waters 2002, 12).
In essence, it is due to the entanglement of history, empire, global political relations, and security demands persisting into the present that routes of movement and mobility for Gurkhas, retired Gurkhas, and their wives and children are sustained. Because of this, belonging and recognition may be interpreted as a “moving kaleidoscope” (Cohen 2022), as has been my endeavor in this book. In studying Gurkhas and how their transnational family lives unfold over many generations, I have also provided different perspectives to rethink how historical and contemporary approaches to security industries and policing are closely tied to colonial and postcolonial structures of governance and interdependency. The transnational lives of diasporic security forces such as the Gurkhas in their second-career milieu in security and policing work today remind us that security work and policing remain transnational. National security requires transnational security labor in the form of Gurkha forces.
Manifold and contextual notions of belonging—deliberated across different groups and generations of social actors to include the Gurkhas, their wives, and their children—form the crux of this study in presenting Gurkhas as a group of migrant warriors. I have reiterated the conceptual linkages between diaspora and its transnational connections, belonging and not-belonging, as well as generational difference and sameness. I recapitulated how the Gurkha experience as a diasporic security force reflects on migrant mobilities and aspirations couched within specific temporalities and structural possibilities and/or constraints. These dynamics together articulate the workings of a global security landscape wherein the migratory flows and mobilities of Gurkhas and their kin transpire. The many facets of transnational ties, linkages, and senses of belonging are realized over time due to the global dispersion of these migrant warrior families since the imperial period. Such webs of transnational connectivity are enacted with social actors operating along different axial and kin ties occurring between, inter alia, Singapore and Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and Nepal, and Nepal and Hong Kong. Taken together, the differentiated feelings of bracketed belonging unveil the robustness of belonging as an analytical tool. I used it to capture and comprehend the features, composition, and lived experiences of the Gurkha diaspora. I have therefore weaved together a broader abstraction of how one may approach diaspora and belonging by considering military-labor social actors as a category alongside the spectrum and depth of bracketed belonging. This would thereby depart from the extant inventory of migrants that existing studies have routinely examined. More pertinently, I addressed and reiterated the key inquiry of how to grapple with and problematize the relation between migrants and nation-states using the Gurkhas as an illustrative case.
In bracketed terms, belonging is therefore an intersectional notion that overlays and overlaps with similarities and differences as synchronous rather than disparate or disconnected. Moreover, the process, experience, and decisions that are made and unmade to carry out bracketed belonging are oftentimes acts of weighing options. These options are also accompanied if not influenced by a whole host of multivalent factors that may work in concert or run counter to one another. In essence, they impact on how social actors as migrants determine how, when, and with whom or where one belongs. Where Gurkhas mainly exhibit more certainty in how they feel about Nepal, their children’s generation conveys a weightier sense of ambivalence as to where home may be. It follows that, given its shifting complexities and varied meaningfulness that differ from person to person, and from one generation to the next, belonging is more than Janus faced. One also needs to consider the broader institutional and legal structures, as I have analyzed, toward unraveling how brackets of belonging continue to be fluid and malleable, contingent as well on in situ policies and legislative frameworks.
Conceptualizing belonging in bracketed terms highlights the positional and relational aspects of how social actors anchor themselves (Jones and Krzyzanowski 2011). Teasing out the various nuances of what belonging and not-belonging look like indicates how “individuals have to position themselves in relation to an existing collective or community” (Jones and Krzyzanowski 2011, 44). This thereby adds to a further understanding of the relation and social contract between migrants and nation-states. Methodological ventures in the collation of data have brought me to focus on both primary and secondary sources to include narrative interviews, archival-military materials, websites, as well as legal documents that in concert advance important empirical and therefore conceptual avenues to rethink what belonging means.
Belonging is a multiscalar experience, as evidenced throughout the course of this book. How multiple belonging is experienced and narrated reflects “a mixture of hope and fear, integration and marginalization, and longing and belonging” (Kananen 2020, 182). Furthermore, I have also discussed how belonging relates to the transactional and the reciprocal. Where Gurkha children stake claims on their right to belong owing to their birth in Singapore or Hong Kong, or if Gurkha veterans mount claims and pressure on the UK government for equitable pension arrangements or for rights to abode prior to the change of immigratory policies in the United Kingdom in the 2000s, such negotiations of staking belonging reflect precisely their intentions to initiate transactions and reciprocity with nation-states. As Hausner puts it rightly: “To move is not to leave parts of oneself behind, but to attempt to take all parts of oneself to a new place, sometimes with the conscious knowledge that those aspects may look different against another geographical and cultural background” (2018, 511). Together, such experiences and expressions of (wanting to) belong in the United Kingdom, Singapore, or Hong Kong are represented not only through the domain of legal-political citizenship, but that of cultural citizenship. Ong defines cultural citizenship as comprising the “cultural practices and beliefs produced out of negotiating the often ambivalent and contested relations with the state and its hegemonic forms that establish the criteria of belonging within a national population and territory” (1996, 738). In this respect, then, national belonging and its subjective aspects come to the forefront.
A Security Empire of Diaspora Making
The Gurkha diaspora is one that has been created out of colonial contexts, and which continues to bear the remnants of colonial structures in the present. Such a contextual framing that I have adopted in this book echoes Ware’s (2015) take on “sinews of empire”; Gurkha military and police work have been closely intertwined with centuries of colonial history. Even if Nepal had lain “outside the bounds of empire” (Ware 2011, 127), the military and policing agreement that began more than two hundred years ago continues to demonstrate the far-reaching effects of empire and imperialism. These apply both to Gurkhas in active service as well as those who have retired and gone into the global security industry. As a result, unfinished imperialism where the structures of empire, inexpensive labor, and Global North–South relations continue to affect Gurkhas and their families as they work through and navigate their varied feelings of belonging, including their work/life trajectories in the wake of empire.
Britain’s colonial past, specifically in the context of its martial constructs of Gurkhas as brave warriors, continue to wield lasting impact and influence. This is one of the reasons why Gurkhas who have retired persistently surface as security labor in present-day global circuits that PSMCs sustain. Kiruppalini (2013, 74) talks about Singapore Gurkhas in the police force and how they are “defined by a British colonial immigration heritage.” Chisholm (2016, 139) similarly contends that “constitutions of race and colonial histories continue to play out in everyday practices of security.” The aftermath and deep-seated histories of colonialism and imperialism that have endured till the present-day therefore form a long-sustaining backdrop (Laubenthal and Schumacher 2020) to current portraits of the Gurkhas as transnational police and security forces, stemming from their global reputation and famed recognition as loyal fighters. Such recognition was further reiterated by then British prime minister Rishi Sunak who had this to say when invited to the world premiere (in London, September 2023) of a Nepali movie—Gurkha Warrior—based on the Gurkhas who fought alongside the British Army during the Malayan Emergency of 1949:1
“I am delighted to know about the film made about the bravery, sacrifices and dedication of the brave Gurkha soldiers. Thank you very much for the invitation. I am unable to attend the premiere ceremony. I would like to wish a success for the premier show and the movie. Thank you for the letter,” the British PM said in a reply to the letter sent by the makers of the movie.2
It is clear that one ought to bear in mind the relevance and significance of the past to present-day contexts. One could argue that martial race theory, which I have also discussed in this book, serves as one of the “best proofs of just how resilient colonial structures and ideologies can be” (Peers 2007, 52). The remnants comprise the differing modes and extent of bracketed belonging that have affected Gurkha families over the centuries, including the relational consequence of expanding police and security global networks, given their participation in PSMCs and transnational circuits of security contractual work.
This study has been an attempt at crafting new perspectives on belonging through the notion of bracketing. Bracketing processes, ideas, and ideals intersect intimately with colonial and global institutions such as the military, police, together with other political and affective sentiments that both operate within and beyond the parameters of nation-states. I deployed bracketed belonging as a conceptual prism to unpack and problematize the migratory experiences, struggles, and aspirations in the wider Gurkha diaspora and vis-à-vis the historical processes and remnants of empire. In this respect, belonging is as much a project of the self as it is a process of subject-citizen-making for Gurkha diasporans. For the Gurkhas, their subject positioning may have shifted from warrior to working-class victim. This shift occurred in the face of their canvassing for recognition of their contributions to the crown, and thereby to be admitted into the brackets of belonging to the United Kingdom for rights of residence and equitable pension arrangements, among other causes and aspirations. Furthermore, their positionality has also transformed from that of soldier to citizen, at least in the case of the United Kingdom, and in the Hong Kong context where they possess the right to abode. The exception here is that of Singapore where mandatory repatriation remains the order of the day for Gurkhas and their family members. Overall, these processes do not come easily, nor do they mean that belonging is experienced positively and with ease. The different rounds and contours of negotiations, contestations, and recognition in toto go to show how bracketed belonging is valued by both individual and nation-state actors. This is because the politics and stakes of belonging or otherwise for all parties—be they claimants or adjudicators of belonging—are bundled in a constellation of affection, rights, entitlements, and locales of homemaking.
Bracketed belonging as an analytical tool and framework may be apprehended as I have done through three interrelated dimensions—time and shifts, generational convergences and divergences, and the role of institutional actors. These three dimensions overlap with one another and demonstrate how belonging and not-belonging through changing practices of bracketing take place from the moment of Gurkha enlistment toward the varying social and political constellations in which diasporans act or not. Belonging changes with time given that social actors’ biographical phases, experiences, and encounters in different contexts shape and reshape their sentiments of belonging or otherwise. Where temporality and shifts in belonging affect the individual, these are further enabled if not constrained by external factors and changes in the law and in immigration policies over time, as I have also demonstrated in this book.
Given the various contexts in which the Gurkhas and the British presence continued in such countries as Hong Kong and Singapore, and including the presence of retired Gurkhas who now work as security contractors in other parts of the world hired by PMSCs, might these constitute a case of “unfinished decolonization” (Hack 2019)? In tandem, Coburn (2018, 335) points out that the United States is continuing British colonial practices, using Nepali security contractors to exert its influence globally in a manner that is politically and economically incapable of doing by relying solely on US soldiers.3 If that is the case as is being interpreted here, the lasting legacies of the British Empire, even if unintended, continue to exact its influence. Bracketed belonging and its extent, limit, degree, and variegated forms continue to be negotiated by Gurkha families in the countries that I have addressed. Moreover, even if Gurkha security work—both during the period of the British Empire and its conquests, as well as in the postindependence era of its former colonies—continues to be both mobile, transnational, and fluid in the wider global security industry that continues to interface the Global North with the Global South (Chisholm and Stachowitsch 2017), the paradox is that the Gurkhas and their families cannot entirely or sufficiently feel suitably entrenched or belong to any particular location per se. Therein lies the contradictory nexus of security work mobility and how belonging constantly needs to be negotiated between state and nonstate actors.
What would be the long-term impact of colonial institutions in the case of the Gurkhas and their families? The complex social contract between military migrants and nation-states in a global militarized world is contingent on a use-and-repatriate policy, though the degree and extent of belonging and legitimacy differ from country to country, and across different time periods. Where use is concerned, bracketed belonging, transnational ties, and the need for neutrality determine how these Gurkha soldiers or police are sustained in each of the countries where they make their living. In terms of repatriation, nation-states would need to ensure the doling out of pensions and compensations in the postservice period, including immigration policies that determine if citizenship is to be awarded or not. There are also ramifications arising from such policies, which influence where their children may stay or not.
Belonging and Its Limits
There are limits and timelines to how belonging is perceived, experienced, or shifts. Social actors are either subject to the constraints imposed structurally or socially that determine the extent of whether they may belong; or they themselves place and bracket limits based on their experience, location, and aspiration. Such cognizance is reflected through conscious acts of bracketing belonging, the core idiom that this book has engaged with. Consequently, these acts elucidate the malleability and transformative aspects of how diasporans find their grounding across the different countries where Gurkha families are located. In the wake of empire, not only has the Gurkha diaspora taken different shapes and forms, but military security and theaters of war have inadvertently, through the construction of martial races, expanded police and security networks beyond the nation as a category.
There are therefore three ways to think about diaspora and belonging. The first pertains to a sustenance of home/hostlands, enacted by the British government prior to the 2000s when Gurkhas were to be recruited and retired in Nepal. In this thread, the home/hostland axial stands up to a certain point in the timeline of immigration policies and their concomitant changes. The second relates to the shifting brackets of what constitutes home/host when claims to rights, and changes in legal and immigratory structures propel a rethinking of where home is, and who the foreigners are who then turn into good and deserving migrants in establishing home outside of Nepal. The third has to do with the transnational expansion of security forces and networks, where the Gurkhas continue to deliver sustained security services for other nations. This also means a different approach toward understanding the contours of the Gurkha diaspora in the postempire or postcolonial era. The Gurkhas, in their second-career policing and security positions, disrupt the first thread of home/host dynamics given their flexible mobilities and police/security contract work across the globe. Policing space is also widened in the global security industry due to the Gurkhas’ reputation in the military context, thereby adding a newer perspective on police militarization. Their jungle warfare expertise, bravery, and loyalty pave the way for later entry into the global security industry covering different aspects of policing, security, and peacekeeping. In addition to pivotal aspects of affective and aspirational practices or plans to belong as illustrated by my discussion of my interlocutors’ varying biographies and experiences, the politics of belonging and what would be at stake, may also be interpreted as a form of “postcolonial claims-making” (Laubenthal and Schumacher 2020, 1133). In the current-day context, remnants of empire remain visibly present.
As migrants and security contractors, Gurkhas and families continue to negotiate the varied permutations of bracketed belonging as a perennial undertaking. This continual endeavor intersects both state and nonstate actors in multifarious ways as I have analyzed herein. I regard belonging as a relational and intersubjective process that enmeshes and interfaces different cultural schemas or repertoires all at once. Paying attention to processes and acts of bracketing further brings out the relational logic of how social actors draw up and determine their varied senses of belonging or not to particular social groups and to nation-states. Even if sentiments of belonging or otherwise may stem from affective and emotive experiences of place, memories, and social relations, these feelings either of individuals or social groups are also broadly determined by institutional, legal, and policy frameworks. They include the state, the military, and police bodies interfacing or interacting in relation to the different scales of institutional encounters, control, and management. Nation-states and their paramilitary institutional structures are accompanied by different rules and regulations of bracketing armed services, immigration policies, rights to citizenship, education, and pension. The key institutional actors in my book include the British, Singapore, Nepali, and Hong Kong PRC governments. I have discussed at length the varying structures and bracketed approaches through which the extent, degree, and temporality of belonging for Gurkhas and their families across these respective countries pan out over time and under shifting colonial/postcolonial contexts. Gurkha families continue to reside within the context of a postimperial limbo where together, these different individual and institutional actors form constellations that may build, reject, or alter conditions and sentiments of belonging and not-belonging.