Constructing a Martial Race

When the newly arrived recruits reached the Centre after the first train journey of their lives, the majority of them had never before seen a train, motor car, clock or even worn a pair of boots. They were like a cheerful shaggy crowd of half-grown puppies; they laughed when they should have stood silent, chattered freely in the ranks and spoke openly to the NCO about anything that interested them. For those first days they were all like our shepherd boy, Manbahadur Limbu, showing the basic qualities of the Gurkhas, their love of life, a natural warm sense of humour and an unconscious but fearless pride in their race. (Purthi 2007, 129)

From “half-grown puppies” to warriors, the ways Gurkhas were regarded say a lot about the building of martial race, only to be fulfilled by the British themselves through their training and guidance. Martial race theory and its stereotypes include soldiers who tended to come from rural areas, and who were “hardened by harsher climates,” “relatively uneducated,” and “could be counted upon to be reliable on and off the battlefield” (Peers 2007, 34). The assumption was that such individuals possessed a warlike predisposition and therefore were “better suited to military service” (Peers 2007, 34). That said, however, martial race notions also predated colonial military cultures (Caplan 1995a) and beyond those derived by the British to include other empires. They comprise examples drawn from the contexts of Africa (Kirk-Greene 1980; Osborne 2014) as well as Ireland (Denman 1996), among others. Similarly, the key assumption was that these groups presumably possessed an aptitude for war (Enloe 1980; Peers 2007), as such individuals were both socially and economically less advanced, and as they come from hostile environments in which they inhabit. A widespread concept of a martial race has therefore to do with the idea of natural qualities, with an inherent inclination toward military occupations traced to a particular ethnic community (Enloe 1980). Warlike qualities as assumed to be in the “blood” of Gurkhas also meant that such a trait could be passed on through the generations, thereby deeming them as “natural soldiers” (Vansittart 1906) or a “born soldier” (Northey and Morris 1987, 98).

The Gurkhas were thus one of such groups assumed to possess martial fiber, alongside others such as the Punjabis (Mahmood and Khan 2017; Singh and Singh 2020; Streets 2004) or the Scottish Highlanders (Roy 2013). They have also been compared to these other soldiers, having been recognized as being second to none: “Their fighting qualities, whether for sturdy, unflinching courage, or daring elan, are nulli secundus amongst the troops we enrol in our ranks from the varied classes of our Indian Empire” (Vansittart 1906, 64). Not only were the Gurkhas marked as possessing the requisite physical and mental capacities to be recruited and trained as good and loyal soldiers, which together constitute what Enloe (1980) has termed as a “Gurkha syndrome,” army officers were also playing a critical role in how such cultural and ethnographic information was gathered and analyzed. Thus, they were not merely “consumers of colonial knowledge” but were as well “producers,” positioned as such in the recruitment process (Peers 2007, 36). Importantly, as Peers observes, “What constituted a Gurkha or a Sikh was largely the product of these efforts at identification and classification, and the end result was a series of categories that were as much the product of imperial imaginations as they were the result of indigenous development” (2007, 36). Imperial constructions of these famed warriors consistently highlight their physical abilities and attributes alongside their weapon, the kukri. As Vansittart describes:

The Gurkha, from the warlike qualities of his forefathers, and the traditions handed down to him of their military prowess as conquerors of Nepal, is imbued with, and cherishes the true military spirit. His physique, compact and sturdy built, powerful muscular development, keen sight, acute hearing, and hereditary education as a sportsman, eminently capacitate him for the duties of a light infantry soldier on the mountain side, while his acquaintance with forest lore makes him as a pioneer in a jungle almost unrivalled. His national weapon, the kukri, has, in Burma and other places, proved itself invaluable. (1906, 62)

Another interpretation of the kukri comes from Gould (1999, 1; see also Purthi 2007, 124) who talks about a joke in order to demonstrate how the weapon is a “rich source of mythology”: “The Gurkha’s legendary prowess with the curved knife which is his trademark weapon is celebrated in a wartime joke. Locked in close combat with a large German, a Gurkha takes a swipe at him with his kukri. The German says, ‘Ha, missed!’ To which the Gurkha replies, ‘Shake your head.’”

For Gould then, the kukri functions “more often as a kind of billhook than as a lethal weapon” (Gould 1999, 1). To further his critique of the kukri as imbued with more mythical prowess exacted by the Gurkhas, Gould (1999, 195) cites MacDonell and Macauley (1940, 375) who paint a hyperbolic picture (Gould terms these as “lurid tales”) of the Gurkhas and their knives (presumably the kukri):

It was stated that they could progress uphill on all fours at a greater speed than a horse could run on the level; they carried a large flat knife in their mouths and without faltering could fell the undergrowth, even large trees, and so cut their way through the forest. At times, it was said, they would hang head downwards from the branches of trees and slash off the heads of the enemy with this formidable knife; at other times they would throw the knife with such accuracy as to kill their man immediately, and would then rush forward and regain the knife. As they did these things they would laugh with glee; the scowl of a Cossack was nothing to the smile of a Gurkha.

If anything, such “wild and exaggerated stories” revolving around the kukris serve to function as an “excellent propaganda weapon” for which “even if untrue … helped to inspire fear” (Purthi 2007, 124).

The instilling of fear was not only undertaken by British writers. Kailash Limbu (2015), who was a Gurkha serving in Afghanistan, related a story about Gurkhas and their kukris to the locals, with an intention to strike fear in their hearts. Limbu told of Gurkhas and the British who were fighting against the Pashtun tribesmen in defending the North-West Frontier in the 1930s. When one of these tribesmen captured and decapitated a British soldier’s head and put it on display, the British sahib gave out orders for the Gurkhas to also capture and behead a tribesman. After they did that, the sahib called the local villagers to watch a football match together. In place of an actual football, the players were using the decapitated head of the tribesman. The sahib later explained to the elders of the village that if any one of his soldiers were to be attacked again, he would instruct the Gurkhas to “go out with their kukris and cut the heads off every single male over the age of fourteen” (Limbu 2015, 78). Limbu stated that he did want the Afghans who had heard this story to be frightened of the Gurkhas. Indeed, the account of the kukri and decapitation, whether authentic or not, worked as the Afghans had “listened to this story in silence” (Limbu 2015, 78). One of them later asked if the blade of the kukri was very sharp. The formation of this embellished image along with the kukri has been disseminated through the various avenues listed above. These various platforms thereby illuminate analytical light on how Gurkha martiality was both manufactured and circulated with particular motivations in mind.

Comparing across Nepali Groups

Martial race theory and classification, while broadly applied to Gurkhas, also differed across the various groups or “tribes” of Nepal. Caplan (1995b) suggests that Hamilton (1819, 19) was probably the first European to use the term “martial tribes,” while Hodgson classifies specific groups as “martial classes” (1833, 220). Heterogeneous appraisal of their group-specific traits by British writers stemmed from orientalist constructs of Nepalese. Recruitment classification and comparisons were also made through these constructs as part of the imperial imaginary. Nepal was divided up into different ethnic or “tribal” units, each accompanied by a set of defining characteristics (Caplan 1991). In the process, a handful of British officers ended up becoming “avid ethnographers” (Caplan 1991) in producing military recruitment handbooks (for example, Leonard 1965; Vansittart 1906). These handbooks, among others, underscored ethnic differences across the different groups in Nepal in systematized and exaggerated manners. Eden Vansittart, who was lieutenant colonel of the 2nd Battalion, 10th Gurkha Rifles, notes in the preface of his handbook: “The classification of the various races of Nepal is almost entirely my own … [and for which] the Magars, Gurungs, and Thakurs are, I believe, fairly complete and correct” (1906, i). As for the other groups comprising the Khas, Limbus, Rais, Sunwars, and Murmis, their classifications are “undoubtedly incomplete, and perhaps in parts incorrect,” but for which “a full and true list of their tribes and subdivisions, can only be done after years of incessantly putting down on paper, each fresh tribe and each fresh clan of the same, at such time as a member of it presents himself for enlistment, and then by checking its accuracy over and over again” (Vansittart 1906, i–ii). Vansittart’s account broadly reads akin to what is known as “verandah anthropology” through which natives are summoned to the ethnographer’s verandah. This is so that the latter may study the culture of the former (see Jarvie 1977; Malinowski 1922). In tandem, Enloe (1980, 28) calls the establishment of militaries an “ethnographic enterprise” in which the Gurkhas have become “ethnic soldiers” (Enloe 1980) recruited vis-à-vis British predilections.³

These preoccupations of the British also meant that these enlisted Nepalis would only be able to realize their combat potential under the training and control of British officers (Northey 1938). Not unlike colonial discourses and practices of civilizing natives then, the recruited Gurkhas were assumed to be able to reach their military might through the guidance of the British. This view is articulated by J. P. Cross, a retired colonel who had worked alongside the Gurkhas for almost four decades: “Where many a British soldier got bored too easily and so disregarded basic rules, the Gurkha was very good when properly led” (2009, 144). This seems also to be the case in contexts where Indian officers and Gurkha soldiers are concerned. The former have indicated that even though Gurkhas have obeyed orders, they would convey “explicit obedience” but not necessarily that they had understood these orders (Bammi 2009).

Gurkha recruitment typically centered on four main groups—the Magars, Gurungs, Rais, and Limbus (Farwell 1984), although the latter two groups had been regarded as too fractious, headstrong, and undisciplined (Banskota 1994). Hence, they were initially recruited for paramilitary forces such as the Assam Rifles and Burma Military Police (Bammi 2009). Even if the British typically take and represent these groups as a “uniform category” by and large, there certainly are substantial overlaps vis-à-vis inter- and intragroup characteristics (as I indicated above), and not to mention the same in comparison to other groups who are usually not recruited (Caplan 1995b). Magars and Gurungs are deemed to be the “beau ideal” of what Gurkha soldiers ought to be like. They are assumed to be “fond of soldiering,” very “hardy,” and are thought to be “intensely loyal to each other and their officers” during times of danger or trouble (Vansittart 1906, 77). There are also differentiations made between Gurungs from central Nepal as compared to those coming from eastern Nepal. Those from central Nepal are thought to be “magnificent” with “splendid physique” whereas the others from eastern Nepal are considered as “very much inferior” in “physique, appearance, and in all respects.” This was because of their intermarriages with other groups of Eastern Nepal which meant that they had through miscegenation “deteriorated in physique” (Vansittart 1906, 81; see also Roy 2013). Vansittart argues that instead of recruiting an “average Magar or Gurung of Eastern Nepal,” others such as a “good Limbu, Rai, or Sunwar” would be more desirable as soldiers (Vansittart 1906, 81). Among the different clans of the Magars, there are some who stand out for military purposes. They range from the Ales being the “most desirable” men to recruit, followed by the Burathokis who were “very desirable” men to enlist (Vansittart 1906, 87). As a contrast to the Magars and Gurungs, the Newars were regarded as potentially “good soldiers,” even if they were “not a warlike or military race” (Vansittart 1906, 93). As for the Thakurs, those who belonged to good clans and who possessed good soldierly qualities could be recruited in small numbers, since they were quite comparable to the “best Magar or Gurung” (Vansittart 1906, 65).

The Limbus live in the easternmost areas of Nepal, working in the main as shepherds or cultivators. Even if their physique was good and their appearance resembled that of Magars or Gurungs, they were not thought to be as good soldiers compared to them. They were shorter, fairer, and stockier as compared to the Magars and Gurungs. With a quarrelsome nature and headstrong character, the Limbus were thus not as martially comparable to the aforementioned two groups. That said, however, Gurkha regiments which consisted chiefly of Limbus and Rais (namely the 10th Gurkha Rifles and the 8th Madras Infantry) proved that they were just as “amenable to discipline” as Magars and Gurungs. They were thereby to be recognized as well, as Gurkhas deservedly (Vansittart 1906, 101). Limbus and Rais consider each other “equal in all respects,” where their habits and customs according to themselves are identical (Vansittart 1906, 128). What these various physiognomic, cultural, and linguistic differences that Vansittart (1906) and others have recorded concerning the various groups show is that the term Gurkha as a single moniker was far from that of a homogeneous categorization (Roy 2013). In her discussion of British resident Brian Houghton Hodgson (1823–43), Des Chene (1991) notes that Hodgson has queried the idea of “genuine Goorkhas.” Where he concluded that even if the Khas, Magars, and Gurungs emerged as “military tribes” in Nepal, these groups were differentiated from other categories including the Brahmans, “aboriginal tribes,” and “broken tribes” that Hodgson discussed elsewhere (Des Chene 1991, 62). Furthermore, Des Chene (1991, 83) also notes the wide-ranging spectrum of characterizations that depict the Gurkhas from being “fond of flowers,” “hate being nagged at,” to being “a simple soul,” “light-hearted and cheerful,” and “exceedingly superstitious.” As the “Brigade of Gurkhas may typify the martial classes of Nepal but is far from representing typical Nepalis, or even Gurkhas” (Cross 2009, 192), there is therefore no such tribe called Gurkha, and that not all Nepalis are entitled to be called Gurkhas as well (Banskota 1994). Ostensibly, martial race theory and its various constructivist perspectives that these authors deliberate on raise “inherent contradictions” (Des Chene 1991, 74) that underlie the category of the “Gurkha.”

Similar to Vansittart’s group differentiation, Gurung (2009) uses such terms as military castes (2009, 262) or the best fighting castes (2009, 265) in talking about how some Gurkhas were recruited to work as coal mining colliery laborers in Assam in 1923 and 1924. Such labor was considered “trivial jobs” that wasted “human resources,” aside from the ill-treatment of colliers (2009, 265). Regarding castes such as Magar, Gurung, Chhetri, and Thakur as the fighting castes, recruiting them to work at coal mines would “lead to a drain of the manpower and the physique of Nepal … [and] would affect recruitment by cutting into the supply of Gorkhas into the colonial armed force” (Gurung 2009, 265). More important, as Gurung (2009, 268–69) observes, such a process of recruiting Gorkhas to work as colliers

brings to light interesting aspects of how migration of labour to the region was conditioned by the interests of the colonial state. The issue of Gorkha recruitment also brings into focus the wider and an important aspect of colonial thinking or representation on “race” and “martial castes” which was assiduously propagated and cultivated from the late nineteenth century to justify colonial rule… . The exploitation of a martial race … especially in coal mines would be pernicious in its effects on the manpower and physique of Nepal… . Eventually the colonial state had to intervene which prevented the recruitment of certain categories of the “martial race” to industrial services like in the coal mines.

In summation, the British recruitment policy derived from the subscription of martial race theory meant that only particular castes or tribes can be Gurkhas. In adhering to the quadrant recruitment template of Gurungs, Magars, Rais, and Limbus, some applicants were actually “forced to lie and change their surname to any of the four” so as to realize their hopes of Gurkha recruitment (Gurung 2020, 24).

Encounters between the British and the Gurkhas

If there were handbooks in the early 1800s and 1900s that guided the Gurkha recruitment process by differentiating among the various groups, then there are also handbooks in the present-day context that offer guidelines for British military personnel as to how they ought to interact with the Gurkhas. Their interactions are shaped based on prior knowledge about Nepalese culture, religion, and customs. For example, it is “taboo to touch a Gurkha’s shoulder or head especially from behind, during ‘stand to,’ because at that time the Gurkhas believe that God is present on his shoulder or head.” Another cautionary item reads: “Gurkhas get very upset if a British Officer/soldier talks to other people in their presence about their country in derogatory manner. This must be avoided.”⁴ Drawing from encounters such as these and others below, I elucidate on the various instances of cross-cultural encounters and interface between these two groups of military actors. The analysis therefore highlights essentialist racial discourses that revolve around those social actors who toil for the British Army, including the power relations built into their interactions.

Through months of recruit training, Gurkhas enlisting as “young boys” later became “fully trained soldiers” (Purthi 2007, 129). But while these young Nepali soldiers were changing, their growth was also accompanied by British officers who likewise had to adapt to regimental life with the Gurkhas (see also, Darnell 2012). Apart from learning Gurkhali, the lingua franca of Nepal (Farwell 1984), they also played games with them, spent leisure time with Gurkha officers after parade, and gradually learnt more about these seemingly tractable men they were to lead. Purthi (2007, 129) describes these British officers in an almost paternalistic position:

The stocky, slant-eye children of Nepal had now become trained recruits; their officers could see how they had changed from shy, unspoilt boys into seasoned riflemen, expert with their weapons and trained in many of the complexities of warfare that were to face them in the jungles of Burma, the deserts of North Africa, or in the mountains of Italy.

The Gurkhas’ martial traits of unsurpassable courage and feats of daring were oftentimes juxtaposed alongside their childlike qualities (Caplan 1991; Chetri 2016), given for instance, the description above that points to them as “stocky” and “slant-eye children.” Such narrative alignment of two opposite sets of characteristics further feeds into the power dynamics between the British and the Gurkhas. The British-Gurkha relation of power and hierarchy may be interpreted via two subjectivities of the “protective Gurkha officer father” and the “grateful and dutiful Gurkha son” (Chisholm 2022, 83). Such a relationship is therefore never premised on “equal footing,” but that it will “continue to be haunted by the colonial structures and gender hierarchies” that are found in related histories (Chisholm 2022, 83). Beyond these two subject positions, the “warm relations” that they share extend to officers developing further connections with their troops at a “personal level.” British officers would visit the homes and villages of the Gurkha soldiers to meet with their families and relatives. Arising from such personal ties and intimate knowledge, the British were therefore able to both inspire and discipline these Gurkha soldiers (Barkawi 2017, 46). Where military thinkers assumed that the Gurkhas were simple-minded and uncomplicated, this also translated into further presumptions that they would therefore be both apolitical and unquestioning in their allegiance (Caplan 1995b). In these respects, the British continues to wield control and discipline over the Gurkhas. The latter relied on the former to develop their warlike skills, only to be accomplished based on their docility, obedience, and presumed lack of intellect and maturity (Bolt 1967; Caplan 1995b; Chetri 2016).

Power relations between the British and the Gurkhas may be that of the latter being subordinated to the former, as routinely reflected in regimental histories and accounts of wartime. However, Des Chene (1991) makes an interesting if not obverse observation pertaining to the supposed loyalty of the Gurkhas for these white officers. Far from actually possessing “qualities of dog-like devotion” that were oftentimes implied in the accounts of British officers, the Gurkhas instead regarded these officers as incompetent and therefore in need of protection:

The many British tales of faithful Gurkhas shadowing their officers across battlefields or seeing that they have hot meals or rest are read differently by lahores. When I recounted these stories men explained that because the British are likely to be killed due to their incompetencies they must watch out for them. These remarks are not meant to be insulting. Gurungs do not expect wealthy, white, urban people to have such abilities, as they are not the ones they acquire through their lifestyle. This distribution of the abilities required in the army was important to lahores in retaining a sense of their equality with their officers. (1991, 317–18)

It is therefore pertinent to consider both narratives of such presumed loyalty, as well as what the Gurkhas actually thought in terms of their relationship with and regard for the British. For example, Gurkha officers were known to be tactful during moments where they pointed out and corrected the faults of junior British officers. Without encroaching on the latter’s confidence, then, these young officers also learned to respect the Gurkhas’ experience and knowledge without feeling that they had relinquished their authority over them (Farwell 1984). Probing into these divergent perspectives makes it useful to reconsider the British-Gurkha relation of power and hierarchy. This relationship has also routinely been characterized as a special bond, a form of “spiritual companionship” (Farwell 1984, 129), or even as a love-romantic relationship (Gould 1999).

Besides these aforementioned narratives of concurrent strength and docility, including the Gurkhas’ sometimes pitying take on the British, there are other narratives as well that read as problematic. This has to do with assumptions of the sportive life that Gurkhas were involved in. Take for instance, the account below that stretches the athletic abilities of the Gurkhas:

Gurkhas delight in all manly sports—shooting, fishing, etc, and are mostly keen sportsmen and possess great skill with gun and rod. They amuse themselves in their leisure hours, either in this way in the field, or in putting the shot, playing quoits or foot-ball, and they are always eager to join in any game with Europeans… . As compared with other orientals, Gurkhas are bold, enduring, faithful, frank, very independent and self-reliant; in their own country they are jealous of foreigners, and self-asserting. (Vansittart 1906, 60)

Caplan (1995b) notes that even as military writings on the Gurkhas repeatedly highlight their love for sports, sportive life in Nepali society was next to nil, as also corroborated by Allen (1976). Furthermore, it was only from the 1950s that sports began to be developed in Kathmandu (Singh 1980). Apart from wrestling, which was Nepal’s most popular sport before the 1940s, other modern games including football, cricket, and hockey were “practically non-existent” until the mid-twentieth century (Singh 1980, 76).

Given accounts of the Gurkhas’ martialness, including other accounts that decry such image production, how can one then further apprehend both narratives and counternarratives revolving around Gurkhas and their lives that intertwine closely with the British? How are we to make sense of contradictions, gaps, convergent as well as divergent stories of how the Gurkhas are talked about, including their own perspectives?

Domains of Martiality: Narratives and Counternarratives

Narrative constructions of the marital race ideology that typify Gurkhas as brave, fierce, and inherently suited for warfare are on the one hand disseminated across varying domains over time. On the other hand, counternarratives of martiality are also increasingly evident in stories, autobiographies, and histories of Gurkhas. Where constructed narratives are necessarily selective in maintaining the portrayal of these global warriors as indomitable, counternarratives accomplish the opposite and reveal aspects of their physical and mental strain and fear that are seldom articulated. One domain of constructed narratives is traced to British constructions of these Nepalese soldiers’ bodily comportment and skills that render them as a warrior group. As one among numerous examples, Farwell (1984, 51) writes of the Gurkhas perceived through British eyes:

Discipline in its finest senses is the cheerful obedience of orders. This perfect discipline the Gurkha has always possessed, for he knows how to be obedient without being servile and he loves soldiering… . The Gurkha characteristic which most astonished Britons was his quick adaptability and his acceptance of strange people and extraordinary circumstances. Few young soldiers in any army, facing battle for the first time, are prepared for the noise, muddle, blood, horror, and their own fear, nor are they fully aware of the physical and psychological attrition resulting from cumulative filth and fatigue, but even the newest Gurkha recruit appeared to accept with equanimity war’s horrors and physical hardships, remaining cheerful, able to emerge from battle—even defeat—with his morale unimpaired.

Where the British had constructed martial races such as the Gurkhas who presumably love soldiering and thereby highlight their allegedly innate and “untamed” warrior characteristics (Kochhar-George 2010; Laubenthal and Schumacher 2020), such racial stereotyping enacted by the British in turn allows them to construct themselves as sophisticated “masters” by contrast (Golay 2009). By extension, then, martial values are connected as well to “an ethos of discipline, loyalty and self-sacrifice” (Ware 2012, 120; see also, Enloe 1980, 27). I note here contradistinctions to the disciplined trait of the Gurkhas that the British assume. A different way to look at discipline that stems not from innateness but obligation is seen in Rai’s account of having to be the “first target of the enemy” (2020, 95). He says:

Somehow, I was disheartened. I did not know why only our section always had to take the role of leading section to face the enemy’s first firing. Everybody dearly loves their life. A volcano of resistance gravely grew inside me. I looked at the obliged section commander. His appearance wore gloom. Who could stand against the order? Military life is always governed by order and discipline so, we had no other options other than putting ourselves under the yoke of order. (95)

As an example of a counternarrative to discipline and obedience then, Rai’s own experience at war indicates clearly how discipline arose instead out of regimental obligation.

Apart from the perspectives of British officers regarding the Gurkhas, Indian officers likewise shared similar views, even if these are usually not as visible compared to the British point of view in the wider literature. Bammi (2009) interviewed a number of retired Indian officers who had served in Gurkha regiments of the Indian Army. He found that the Gurkhas were similarly lauded by these officers. Gurkha troops followed military orders to the tee, were not afraid of hard work nor fatigue, were “fierce in hand-to-hand combat,” and also preferred using their kukri rather than the bayonet (Bammi 2009, 453). They were also known to possess unshakeable loyalty, “provided the officer was as brave and dedicated as them” (Bammi 2009, 454). What is interesting here, as we see clear overlaps in both British and Indian officers’ regard for the Gurkhas, is that the British had deliberately kept the Gurkhas away from the Indian military. Bammi (2009, 454) contends: “Till Independence the British had kept the Gorkhas away from Indian officers and troops, primarily to serve their imperial motives, but that myth has been broken as now the Gorkha soldier mixes very well with the Indian troops and perform exceedingly well under their Indian officers.” Such separation was borne out of the British’s construction of several martial communities in the Indian Army so as to prevent an “amalgamation of identities between the Nepal army’s soldiers and the Gurkhas of the Indian army” (Roy 2001, 132). Moreover, constructing martial races by the British would also enable them to “play off different communities against each other,” in an effort to prevent any possibility for a “unified anti-British sentiment amongst the colonized” (Roy 2013, 1325).

Some British officers were also known to look down on Indian officers of Gurkha regiments (Caplan 1995b; Izuyama 1999; Rathaur 2000). It was a commonly shared view among British officers that Gurkha soldiers would not have Indian officers commanding them, as the Nepalese as hillmen “had the highlander’s usual aversion to the men of the plains” (Caplan 1995b, 69). To the Gurkhas, therefore, the “idea of military service under Indians [would be deemed as] unacceptable” (Tuker 1950, 626). This view, however, was a misrepresentation, as substantial numbers of Gurkhas had chosen to serve in the Indian Army in 1947, as opposed to moving to the British Army (see Caplan 1995b, 117–18). As Bammi also asserts through his interviews with Indian officers of the Gurkhas, these two groups would establish a “family bond.” Gurkhas had expected a “genuine life-long friendship on [a] reciprocal basis” (2009, 456). The reciprocal relation that these two share can be seen from the Gurkhas having visited both serving and retired Indian officers in Nepalese villages. How the Gurkhas experience and recount their military worlds are apprehended somewhat differently from those who write about them, such as British chroniclers or Nepalese intellectuals (Caplan 1995b). This difference would therefore map onto the productions of martial race communities, where the dissonance between representation and experience form part of the story of martial mien and its constructions (Streets 2004).

The trope of bravery continues to dominate in martial race discourses revolving around the Gurkhas (Caplan 1991). These various war stories, penned either by British officers or Gurkhas themselves, all highlight the extraordinary prowess, bravery, and valor of the Gurkhas—culminating toward articulating the figure of the warrior Gurkha over time. With their famed motto,⁵ “kafar hunne bhanda morno ramro” (“better to die than be a coward”) (Bishop 1976; Vansittart 1906), Caplan (1991, 585) makes an observation that there exists “no printed work on the Gurkhas which does not refer to their toughness, strength, ferocity, courage and bravery.”⁶ I add to Caplan’s observation that such tropes also successively surface in a variety of contemporary sources or write-ups about the Gurkhas, be it through print or social media across different countries as I discuss below.

British military writings are replete with the extraordinary valor and strength of the Gurkhas. Some of these narratives center around a spectacular Gurkha soldier, who seemed to have extraordinarily persisted against all odds. For example, we learn of Havildar Gaje who had fought in the battle against the Manipuris in 1891. Despite leading his platoon and having sustained severe wounds from a grenade, Gaje was still able to sprint through machine-gun fire to not only come face to face with the enemy, but to “cut a swath through them” using his kukri. Only when his commander ordered him to dress his wounds did he eventually relented (Bolt 1967). Having already destroyed two tanks, Rifleman Ganju Lama went forward on his own. Despite being wounded at his wrist, arms and legs, he ploughed on for a good thirty yards to the next tank and also destroyed it single-handedly. Subsequently, both Lama and Gaje were awarded the Victoria’s Cross (Bolt 1967).

Another account conveys not only the superb resilience of a Gurkha warrior, but that his stoic sense of loyalty also comes across simultaneously. Motilal Thapa was lying face down in a ditch, with his “shattered arm hanging by a thread of flesh” (Farwell 1984, 93). He was joined by Captain Hartwell who was also wounded and who took cover in the ditch next to Thapa. After moments when no medical aid came to these two, Hartwell had fallen asleep owing to exhaustion. When he awoken later, Hartwell saw that Thapa had somehow managed to prop himself up and leaned against one side of the ditch. He used his other good arm to shield Hartwell’s face from the sun by holding his field service cap over Hartwell’s eyes. In a melodramatic moment, Thapa had muttered: “I must not cry out. I am a Gurkha,” and died before he could reach an aid station (Farwell 1984, 93). While these are historical examples in the main, such famed warrior figures continue to be constructed martially in the current-day context, which is the subject of the next section.

Cross (2009, 275) notes that it would be “wrong, stupid and unrealistic to consider all Gurkhas ‘supermen,’ ‘heroes,’ or ‘ten feet tall.’” Instead, he observes that “Gurkhas are intensely human people, with strengths and weaknesses like everyone else,” and that the Gurkha’s “strengths are the ones the British Army needs and his weaknesses not so intrusive to be an encumbrance or a liability” (2009, 275–76). Ganesh Rai (2020) fought in the Falklands War in 1982 when he was twenty years old. His views on war, including those of his fellow Gurkha soldiers, demonstrably evince senses of fear and dread as they prepared to go on the battlefield:

We all were physically prepared to go to the war, however, making ourselves mentally prepared was even harder than we ever thought. Psychological terror kept on haunting us. Nobody definitely would smile and step out of door to go to fight the enemy in war. Some senior soldiers … would miserably say, “I should really be pensioned off, but they didn’t let me retire. Now, I have to go to the battlefield.” (43–44)

Clearly, soldiers who are recruited to fight will either have to kill the enemy or be killed, as Rai (2020) further notes. His introspective questions—“Who doesn’t love his or her life?… Who would be ready to die in the world?” (Rai 2020, 44)—speak volumes about what Cross (2009) had also pointed out. Over and above the popular image of Gurkhas as ready to kill or ready to die, there are indubitably many senses of uncertainty and fear of death in contexts of war that therefore reflect the emotional “weaknesses” of these famed soldiers. These weaknesses, which run contrary to martial bravery, are seldom broached in the wider literature on Gurkhas. In contrast to the portrayed stoic heroism of Motilal Thapa, Rai’s (2020, 94) close brush with death points toward his sense of hopelessness: “ ‘Death is sure to claim me today,’ I gave up my hope of being alive by looking at the dropping bomb. Unexpectedly the bomb changed its direction after falling around fifteen feet… . I was astounded. Thank god! I survived despite my hopelessness.”

In tandem, Caplan (1995b, 143–44) interestingly decries the assumed martiality of the Gurkhas and their courage, querying if their courageous acts stemmed from fearlessness, or fear itself. For him, the Gurkhas’ display of courage is mainly physical and where such display stems from “emotion rather than the intellect” (Caplan 1995b, 148). Gould’s (1999) suggestion differs from that of Caplan’s (1995b). He proclaims that for the Gurkhas, war—even though it might be a “grim business” and was a “matter of kill or be killed”—was “approached in a lighthearted manner” and through which they would “extract what fun they could,” looking on war as “a kind of sport, or shikar (hunt)” (Gould 1999, 114). Gould refers to a soldier’s (James Hare of the British 60th Rifles) notes on the Gurkhas to substantiate such a hunting approach: “Yesterday, a sepoy had gone into a hut and was shooting out at the door, when two little Ghoorkas set out to catch him. They sneaked up, one on either side of the door, and presently the sepoy put out his head to see if the coast was clear, when one grabbed him by the hair, and the other whacked off his head with his cookery” (Gould 1999, 114). That said, Gould (1999) makes further pronouncements about courage where the Gurkhas are concerned. He had served as a young officer with the Gurkhas in the 1st Battalion, 7th Gurkha Rifles in the late 1950s. Gould planned on brushing up on his Nepali four decades later in the 1990s, when he wanted to revisit Nepal. He was then put in touch with Lieutenant (QGO) Khembahadur Thapa, who was senior Gurkha officer at 28 Army Education Center in Church Crookham. Gould learnt from Khem that the “two fundamental virtues of the Gurkhas were trust and loyalty” (1999, 400). According to Khem, these virtues had developed from the hilly environments that Gurkhas had lived in prior to enlistment. Khem had said to Gould: “If somebody says to a goatherd that he will bring food on such-and-such a day and fails to do so, it may well mean the goatherd starves to death” (400). Honoring one’s promise is therefore “sacrosanct to a Gurkha” (400). When Khem had sworn allegiance to the crown, it was therefore of utmost importance to keep his words. For Khem, says Gould, British military authors who had represented the Gurkhas as “kukri-waving little supermen,” and by “extolling their bravery,” only served to dehumanize them (400). Adding to Caplan’s (1995b) discussion of courage and the Gurkhas, courage for Khem was interpreted as such: “Courage, or the lack of it, was an individual, not a racial, trait and if it was indeed more common among Gurkhas than in some other peoples then that was a product of the harsh conditions of their life, not some mysterious, innate force” (Gould 1999, 400). Martial race theory, taken as contingent on the basis of European biological determinism (Caplan 1995b; Seeberg 2016), then, ought to consider the climate and environment in which Nepalis have lived which thereby fostered their senses of morality and the cultivation of their values. While this might at a glance be similar with Caplan’s (1995b, 90) indication concerning the “climatic-environmental element,” it was not so much about such an element having organically produced the “best soldiers” (1995b, 90). Rather, it was due more to the adherence to a set of values and norms by the Nepalis/Gurkhas, as shown by Khem’s perspective.

Another way to conceive of courage among the Gurkhas has to do with tradition and history. Limbu (2015, 143) proclaims that Gurkha heroism is not about the self:

To us Gurkhas, our history is very important. It is how we keep our tradition alive. We remember and honour the great deeds of our ancestors, the men who have gone before us. When, today, a Gurkha does something heroic, he does not do it for himself, but for his comrades and in honour of these ancestors. For us, there is nothing greater a man can do than act courageously in battle, and we take enormous pride when one of our number is commended for bravery.

Aside from history and tradition, another interpretation of bravery, fear, and courage is contingent on the “consequence of certain conditions” (Gurung 2017, 111). It is clear that Gurkhas were also fearful of death and underwent numerous moments of uncertainty. In these varied contexts, the bravery of the Gurkhas “appears only when there is fear and when person sense [sic] a less or no surviving option” (Gurung 2017, 111). For Gurung (2017), the Gurkhas’ bravery is attributed not to their fearless fighting, but rather, to life-threatening situations that compel them to be nothing but brave in order to survive. Placing these different interpretations alongside one another, the above narrative examples therefore further confirm the constructivist aspects of martial race theory and suppositions of the Gurkhas’ traits. Courage can at once be mediated through bravery, fear, humor, and tradition and history, depending on who is the one talking about it and for what reasons. Be it for the self or for others, courage and how it is narrated has to do with divergent motivations and intentions that are unveiled through both narratives and counternarratives as analyzed above.

Apart from the aforementioned military and war stories of the Gurkhas’ ardent courage and tenacity, their roles and presence as a part of the police force in Singapore also register similar “martialness” (Ray 2013). The GCSPF (Gurkha Contingent Singapore Police Force) celebrated its seventieth anniversary in the year 2019. Singapore’s then prime minister Lee Hsien Loong visited the GC on this occasion and also took to Facebook to register that visit as well as his appreciation to these Gurkha policemen.⁷ In his post, Lee highlighted the Gurkhas’ “well-deserved reputation for toughness, alertness, mental and physical resilience.” To continue such traits of martiality, Lee further noted that they were “totally dependable, highly self-disciplined, loyal, and fearless in executing their duties.”⁸ Even as the nation last saw these Gurkhas on security duty at such events including the DPRK-US Singapore Summit in 2018, or the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, the Gurkhas were previously pivotal in “restoring order and confidence” in the riot history of Singapore—the Maria Hertogh riots of 1950, the Hock Lee bus riots of 1955, or the communal clashes between the Chinese and the Malay in 1964, as Lee listed.

The lauding of the Gurkha police in Singapore by its political leaders is not a new phenomenon. The late Lee Kuan Yew, who was Singapore’s first prime minister and who had served in the role for three decades, said this about the Gurkhas in the context of the Japanese invasion of 1941:

There were some who won my respect and admiration. Among them were the Highlanders whom I recognised by their Scottish caps… . And the Gurkhas were like the Highlanders. They too marched erect, unbroken and doughty in defeat. I secretly cheered them. They left a life-long impression on me. As a result, the Singapore government has employed a Gurkha company for its anti-riot police squad from the 1960s to this day. (Lee 1998, 55)

Lee’s account is resonant for two reasons. The first is that he makes a firsthand comparison between two martial races—that of the Scottish Highlanders and the Gurkhas, and thereby arrives at his conclusion that they were very similar in terms of their martial deportment and military integrity, which further reify colonial logics. The second points to the deployment of the Gurkhas in the Singapore police force to maintain social order given their neutrality, which works well in the country. Local news dailies similarly reiterate the indomitable bravery and hardihood of the Gurkhas. They have been routinely described as being well-known for their “extraordinary physical and mental robustness, resourcefulness and dependability,”⁹ “never-say-die commitment,” “athletic prowess,” “total impartiality,” or personified as “loyal soldiers,” “warriors on their battlefield,” “unsung heroes,” “gutsy Gurkhas,” “sinewy Nepalese warriors wielding wicked kukris,” “small men with great courage,” and as a “little tough soldier.”¹⁰ Ostensibly, characteristics of their martiality continue to be emphasized across a variety of media reports and attention placed on them, even if they remain a “visibly invisible community” (Zainal 2012, 93) in Singapore.

Quite apart from straightforward and augmented accounts of bravery and courage, and appellations of fearlessness, there are also expressions of confusion, mixed feelings, and constant fear that Gurkhas at war experience but which are not always explicitly articulated as counternarratives to martiality. Limbu (2015), who had gone through four tours of active service in Afghanistan, in addition to operations in Bosnia and Sierra Leone, expressed his constant fear, uncertainty, and ambivalence while preparing for an operation:

Did we have enough ammunition? How long would it last if there was a big contact on landing?… What about food? How many days could we go if we found ourselves cut off and no resupp could get in?… What if one of the vehicles waiting for us was hit? What if the vehicles weren’t waiting at all? What if one of my riflemen got hit? The possibilities were endless. (Limbu 2015, 27–28)

If anything, the only factor that Limbu did not have to be concerned with was the loyalty and reliability of his men: “As some officer sahib once said, the Gurkha is a pack animal. We work together and fight together as a team. Everyone helps everyone; that’s how we operate. We’d be fine just so long as we remembered what we’d been taught” (Limbu 2015, 29).

I further demonstrate through excerpts from two poems, how Gurkhas and their senses of uncertainty of war and potential death constantly consume their thoughts.¹¹ Such articulations importantly serve as a foil or counterpoint to the routinely embellished or hyperbolized accounts of registering if not celebrating Gurkha gallantry which tend to dominate literature on Gurkha and war experiences (cf. Bhandari 2021; Seeberg 2016). The first is a poem that talks about senses of vulnerability and preoccupations of death that a Gurkha experiences vis-à-vis an enemy.

Me, The Point Man

When I walk through the ploughed field

When I step on the rough paths

When I jump across the ditch

When I run between the walls

When I go through the tree line …

Every step that I make

has a potential explosion.

Enemy might find me first

Enemy might see me first

Enemy might judge me first

Enemy might shoot me first

Every time when they shoot

I am the first sand bag to block bullets

—Run!

-Move fast

-Slow down-Go firm

-Halt

Every step I make

Death will always be with me

—Mijash Tembe, Gurkha War Poems

The second poem, “War,” expresses in tandem the unpredictability of attacks, and of dancing with death that continues to be an ongoing and incontrovertible threat to one at war:

War

An armed soldier am I

Blowing the siren of war.

Ready to explode

. . . . . . .

Playing hide-and-seek

With bullets and gunpowder.

Awaiting the foe-men

. . . . . . . . .

I am celebrating

A festival of death

Barely aware of the darkness

Looming over me.

—Devendra Kheresh, Gurkha War Poems

Expressions of the unknown, potential threats to life, the constant worry about one’s enemy are recurrent motifs in both of the poems above. These forms of uncertainties reveal the magnitude of the Gurkhas’ inner sense of fear, seldom the thematic foci of war literature and regimental histories that routinely celebrate their martiality and which elide their vulnerabilities.

Aside from vulnerabilities as a foil to martial traits, Gurkhas have also stood on the opposite side of discipline and orderliness. Gurkha police in Singapore have over the decades garnered media attention, these times not for their reputed loyalty nor impeccable standards of duty and discipline. Rather, they have also been guilty of “disorderly and boisterous behaviour.”¹² Such unruly conduct or criminal offences cover the range from stealing, reckless driving, and assault, to kidnapping, desertion, armed robbery, participating in a mutiny, involvement in unlicensed cross-border money transfers, and manslaughter and murder.¹³ Quite clearly, I am not making a claim that Gurkhas are imperfect social actors. Instead, the above examples exemplify different sides or characteristics of Gurkhas who may have fallen on the wrong side of the law, but pertinently demonstrate contrastive attributes that are at clear odds with the tenets of martial race theory. This point is crucial for two reasons. The first is to reiterate the gaps or shortcomings of martiality as constructed and reproduced by different actors and sources, for which blanketing Gurkhas as martial figures becomes problematic. The second is to draw attention to the Gurkhas not only to be comprehended as warriors in the main, but also as fallible and vulnerable social actors who were confronted in their lives with economic difficulties, the dangers and risks of wars, as well as the challenges of leading their and their families’ lives as migrant actors given the scheme of military and police service.

Martial Race Expositions or What Comes Before and After the Warrior Gurkha

The image of the Gurkhas as gallant soldiers is also utilized as a resource by retired Gurkhas themselves in reproducing the “rhetoric of martiality” (Caplan 1995b, 101), both for pre-enlistees as well as those who have retired from Gurkha service. By this reproduction I refer to training academies that prepare aspirant Gurkha recruits, as well as security companies that have been established in different countries around the world. These academies and companies have deployed the image of bravery and refrains of martiality as a marketing tool to project and sustain the prowess of these Gurkha men. Such imagery is strategically used to promote conformity to the martial bearing for trainees, as well as to connect with the Gurkha history and branding for security employment. By expanding such constructionist approaches, I develop critical appraisals of different presentations and how tropes of courage and strength are being leveraged by various parties in different temporal contexts. If the Gurkhas are depicted by British military authors as larger than life (Caplan 1995b), such depictions that I have discussed heretofore can also be constitutive of what Gould (1999, 1) terms as “supertruths”—which refer to “permissible exaggerations of real and defining qualities.” These exaggerations are not without cause, for they “perform a vital function in military lore” where the fearsome reputation of the Gurkhas have been established (1999, 1). Similarly, I argue that the function of the celebrated Gurkha figure in the contexts of training centers (Piya 2020) and security services (Chisholm 2014) has to do with promoting the very same reputation in order to convince trainees and clientele who require martial training as well as security services.

As an instructive case in point, Piya’s (2020) study comprises an investigation of two training centers in Pokhara that guide young Nepalese men toward projecting themselves as possessing “normative virtues of a Gurkha soldier” (2020, 327). Calling this inculcated projection as a new form of governmentality as it regulates the bodily comportment of these young aspirants, the author suggests that the enduring legacy of martiality continues to hold firm in shaping how these youths adopt the different registers of Gurkha virtues. Young men who go to such training centers exemplify the learning of martial techniques. Interactions between the technology of the Gurkha self takes place with the technology of domination of the British (Piya 2020). As intermediaries, training centers now have taken over from a group of middlemen called the gallās, often ex-Gurkhas who were remunerated by the British to conduct a preliminary stage of Gurkha recruitment in different villages. These gallās were therefore a complicit party in reinforcing martial race ideology (Piya 2020).

In the training and preparation programs that these centers offer, trainees are evaluated on the basis of their physical, mental, and social and interpersonal competencies (Piya 2020). Stamina, knowledge, and character basically map onto these three avenues. Through such training, grilling, and assessments, these young trainees thus develop and come into their “own understandings of what it means to be a quintessential Gurkha soldier” (Piya 2020, 335; see also, Chisholm and Ketola 2020). In particular, specific Gurkha narratives are told to these trainees, who later then present them as “appropriate answers” at the actual recruitment process (Piya 2020, 336). These trainees therefore learn to memorize questions, including standard answers. In the process, they “internalize what it means to be a Gurkha” when interviewed by British and Nepali officers subsequently (Piya 2020, 336). Instructors, otherwise known as gurus or masters at these training centers, coach young men to remember ideal answers, including emphasizing one’s mongoloid background. One should also state that as one had come from a Gurkha lineage, there was interest from the applicant to want to “preserve that tradition by serving in the British Military” (Piya 2020, 337). Interviewees who relate explicitly to their “ethnic identity and linkage to Gurkha heritage” are therefore considered as having successfully prepared for these assessments. As an outcome, then, this “reified the British constructed martial race categories” (Piya 2020, 337). Apart from these emphases, trainees are also instructed to present themselves at interviews as both outgoing and shy, and who will carry out action and refrain from talking too much. Besides, they are told to carry the virtues of a lahure by standing in a balanced way, maintaining eye contact whenever spoken to, and to hold their heads high up (Piya 2020). Gurkha training centers by and large provide the necessary learning processes for trainees to “embody the ideals of a Gurkha soldier” (Piya 2020, 349). In sum, learning through “rigorous repetition” not only produces a certain structure of governmentality. Such learning has also sustained and reinforced martial race theory in the present. This is because these centers are replete with “symbols, artefacts, and myths” (Piya 2020, 350) that persistently echo martiality.

From the phase of training toward aspiring to becoming a Gurkha, we now go to the “after” phase of what happens when Gurkhas retire and look to second career options. In this phase, martial characteristics continue to persist and are harnessed for global security marketing. Portraying ex-Gurkhas as carrying martial qualities serves to bring them “into existence and [make them] intelligible only through the colonial script of martial race” (Chisholm 2014, 356). With such a portrayal, this would thereby bring forth “imaginings of a fierce warrior” and his “physical prowess” (Chisholm 2014, 356) even if Gurkhas have left military service. Where Chisholm’s (2014) work investigates Gurkha security companies that are run by white British Gurkha officers who now assume directorships in these outfits, and thus only they can speak for the Gurkhas, my examples here examine companies that are directed by Gurkhas themselves. My first case is Gurkha Security Services, which operates from the United Kingdom with the head office located at Farnborough, and with two other offices in Kent and Birmingham.¹⁴ This company comprises a directorate of three former British Gurkha personnel, including a handful of other ex-Gurkhas occupying the positions of senior/operations manager. To begin with, their accreditation as a security company is first built on the individual Gurkha background of their staff, thereafter to be further confirmed by testimonials that they put up on their website which they obtained from previous clients. We learn that one of the directors, Bishnu Bahadur Tamang, had served with the British Army for more than two decades in the Royal Gurkha Rifles and Parachute Regiment. His vast military experience covered both military and peace support operations, where he has therefore “accumulated vast amount of experience and know-how in organising military activities.”¹⁵ Bishnu is further described as possessing an “unyielding work ethic” and as someone who “has a passion for quality and distinction in everything he takes on.” These (martial) traits of his have apparently positively influenced the “working culture of his staff in Gurkha Security Services, securing a great service time and time again.”¹⁶

Not unlike the Gurkha-martial depiction that represents Bishnu, the other two directors—also with more than two decades of Gurkha experience under their belt as we are told—have likewise highlighted their military and now corporate valor in largely similarly ways. Hari Kumar Shrestha is versatile and enthusiastic in all his undertakings, and he is able to perform exceptionally under duress. Nabin Kumar Siwa wields “immense military experience” that stands him in very good stead to run “in-house company security training for the officers and potential officers.”¹⁷ Other staff members such as operations manager Un Bahadur Thapa have also utilized their years of Gurkha experience and tapped on their martial abilities that are now translated into the provision of security services in the United Kingdom. His biography certifies that “with a strong sense of commitment, loyalty and professionalism gained from his time served in the British Army, Un has built a very comprehensive set of skills that he uses in his day to day role as the Operations Manager.”¹⁸ Clearly, the invocation of one’s Gurkha-martial abilities, certified through decades of military expertise and experience, are built into both the management and training of security services as a company makeup. Their biographies are further bolstered by a tab on the company website that provides a brief “History of Gurkhas,” which predictably underscores the various colonial logics of martial traits as I have analyzed above. “As gentle in daily life as they are fearless and tenacious in battle, they are a dignified people and ideal soldiers and security personnel”¹⁹ is how these ex-Gurkhas are being characterized. In their current positions as security directors and company staff, they are together able to traverse seamlessly from their martial capacities, coupled with gentleness, to current security purposes. The following quote on the website echoes quite clearly, the martial race template that British writers have long deployed:

British officials in the 19th century declared the Gurkhas as a “Martial Race,” a term describing people thought to be “naturally warlike and aggressive in battle” possessing qualities of courage, loyalty, self-sufficiency, physical strength, resilience, orderliness, the ability to work hard for long periods of time, fighting tenacity and military strength… . Gurkhas are famed for carrying a khukuri. It is the national weapon of Nepal, but it is also used as a work tool in the Hills. Each Gurkha carries two khukuris, one for every-day use and one for ceremonial purposes. Their famous war cry, “Ayo Gorkhali” translates as “The Gurkhas are here,” their motto, “Kaphar hunnu bhanda marnu ramro” means “It is better to die than to live like a coward.”²⁰

Taking off from the above martial attestation, the recording and promotion of the Gurkhas’ valiant martiality are further attested by client testimonials. Clients similarly respond by referring to such colonial martial descriptions as they endorse the company with customer satisfaction. Clients routinely praise the company security staff’s reliability, agility, and being “always with an attitude of helpfulness.”²¹ In sum, security personnel who are ex-Gurkhas in the main, have been certified as such: “Anticipating threats and handling difficult situations calmly, swiftly and effectively is second nature to them—as is trust, discipline, courage and dedication to duty.”²²

It goes without saying that both parties—the company and clients—utilize and reassert colonial martial templates. These templates transpire from the days of war theaters that the United Kingdom was involved in together with the Gurkhas to the present-day context of providing security coverage and support during peacetime at public events based on clientele needs. This enduring attestation and utility of the martial race attributes of the Gurkhas, both exercised by themselves and those who hire them, reflect crucially on the durability and continued reification of martiality. The reification transfers from military to civilian domains of security needs and also cuts across different temporalities as well. In this manner, my analysis here coheres with Chisholm’s (2014) study whereby British colonial histories of martial race theorization continue to persist, influence, and make possible security labor for ex-Gurkhas and those who require martial services.

My second case is taken from another Gurkha security company, this time founded and operating in Kowloon, Hong Kong. Called The Gurkhas Group, this security company was established in 1997 and offers a wide range of security services that run from close protection bodyguards and drivers to security for construction, events, Covid-19, industrial, ports and railway, government, and residential requirements.²³ This range indicates the reach and expanse of military martiality that could similarly and readily apply to nonmilitary security sectors in the civilian world. Like the earlier case, The Gurkhas Group is managed by a mix of former Gurkhas, police officers, and civilians. We are told that the chairman, Pun Tej Prakash, was born in Nepal and served with the British for thirteen years. Another fellow ex-Gurkha, Gurung Bhim Bahadur, takes on the role of Assistant Operations Manager. His military biography spanned more than twenty-five years and has included armed force tours of duty in places such as Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, and Bosnia—typical of a Gurkha’s military profile.²⁴ Where the first case presented testimonials drawn from clients, The Gurkhas Group, or G3S as they call themselves, feature instead, snippets of interviews undertaken with ex-Gurkhas in Hong Kong. One of the interviewees, Ghale Humkumar, comes from a Gurkha lineage in which his grandfather, father, and oldest brother all served in the British Army. Ghale feels proud to be a Gurkha. He found his training in the Falklands to be the most memorable, apart from his military experiences in Hong Kong, East Africa, and the United Kingdom. After retiring from Gurkha service in 2001, Ghale then became the bodyguard for Hong Kong magnate Li Ka Shing for three years, before he subsequently joined G3S.²⁵ Gurung Thaku, another of the interviewees, responded to a question on what had changed for him after becoming a Gurkha. His reply serves as a standard martial race template. He said that after joining the brigade, many things in his life had changed, pointing especially to a sense of discipline. Such a trait, accompanied with his other military experiences, have thus carried him further into different security jobs where he worked as a surveillance supervisor in the US consulate in Hong Kong as well as a bodyguard, driver, and the current security job offered by G3S.²⁶

In another news segment that G3S carries, one write-up provides a quick list of who the Gurkhas are. Predictably, martial characteristics are foregrounded across the “10 Quick Facts” section that represent the Gurkhas. They are “well known for their loyalty and bravery” and are “fearless in combat but will never leave one behind.”²⁷ Moreover, when a Gurkha “draws his kukri in anger, he must also draw blood.”²⁸ Finally, “when you know you’re with the Gurkhas, I think there’s no safer place to be,” says HRH Prince Harry when he was on a military tour in Afghanistan.²⁹ The message here, as with the case of Gurkha Security Services rings clear. Hire the Gurkhas for security needs, as they are globally known for their bravery, discipline, courage, and invincibility. These martial attributes are routinely verified not only by the Gurkhas themselves who manage and form such companies, but by those who have had close encounters with them, from clients to royalty. One can therefore not go wrong with the martial race template, both in military and civilian contexts.

My third and fourth cases showcase how security companies in different Southeast Asian countries also extrapolate the Gurkha reputation and appropriate their credibility for their security services. The third case is taken from the company Gurkha International Security Services Co. Ltd, located in Thailand. The company’s brief write-up indicates a combination of staff who are not only ex-Gurkhas, but recruited from various other security personnel all over the world:

GURKHA International Security Co., Ltd. is a standard security company with more than 7 decades of experience in security and law enforcement and our people have been part of the British fighting Army and British Royal guard for almost 202 years, still serving as Singapore Gurkha Police contingent, Brunei King Sultans palace guard & bodyguard, UAE Royal guard, Hong Kong coastal guard during British time and still operating various security duties in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar etc.³⁰

The same global security services of the company reach out to various countries beyond Thailand to include Iraq, Afghanistan, Singapore, Malaysia, India, and Nepal.³¹ Although materials pointing to martial race theory are not as evident as the aforementioned two examples in this case, the company, in foregrounding their branding as that of “Gurkha International” among other security personnel and their varied experiences, deploys the Gurkha name to attract clientele. An example that reflects martial traits can be read from such service as “Bodyguards and VVIP Escorting Team Guard Force.” This unit comprises bodyguards who are “ex-military or special forces with unique skill sets that allow them to provide exceptional security services to their clients.”³²

The fourth and final case is known as Chico Force (M) Sdn Bhd, based in Malaysia.³³ As a company that provides security management services by deploying handpicked “ex-senior police officers,” Chico Force also collaborates with ex-Gurkhas as part of their company makeup.³⁴ They have obtained the approval of the Ministry of Home Affairs to bring in ex-British Army Gurkhas to serve as security guards in Klang Valley.³⁵ Appropriative mentions of these ex-Gurkhas’ martial staples include pointing out their “bravery, integrity and loyalty.” Having served across the globe to include Hong Kong, Brunei, and other locations, these former soldiers are now “re-employed internationally” as security guards, or take up security-related roles in Miami, Los Angeles, and Europe.³⁶ In gist, Chico Force confirms that as these martial soldiers are able to adapt to any new environment, this ability in addition to their military experience and other martial mien thus explain why they are sought after internationally.³⁷

Martial qualities interweave a Gurkha soldier’s trajectory, both before one attempts to qualify for recruitment as gleaned from Piya’s (2020) work, and after one’s Gurkha service and into a second career in security as I have examined. Both phases, indeed, are geared toward subscribing to the martial warrior image, and seeing that through in another career after regimental service. All four examples bear the sinews of martial race theory and take on similar and complementary forms. Not only are the Gurkhas and those who manage them complicit with upholding martial traits (see Chisholm 2014), clients in need of security labor also form another party that endorses such martiality in the production, consumption, and deployment of martial framing. In the end, what is enduring here over time is not only the tenets of martial race theory that continue to construct the image of the Gurkhas in their military and postmilitary milieu. More important, my examples here confirm the multiple functions of the theory, exemplified not only in military and political ways that the British had intended (Streets 2004), but also in influencing current-day security industries that, not unlike the British or SPF, look to Gurkhas and ex-Gurkhas for maintaining order and social control for commercial needs.

Martiality that governs both the “before” and “after” phases of the warrior Gurkha figure signals if not confirms the enduring role and function that the theory serves. These encompass a variety of cognate security needs that characterize both historical and contemporary times. While the tapestry of martial race theory threads through different times and varying purposes, the reach of this theory is also clearly transnational. This transpires through my examples of security companies owned by and operated with ex-Gurkhas (if not to merely use the Gurkha brand), which are located in different parts of the world and include the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, New Zealand, Cyprus, as well as Nepal among many others.³⁸ Indeed, the relics and colonial logics of empire, to paraphrase Des Chene (1991), are far-reaching in terms of both temporality and locality.

Beyond Martial Race Theory and the Warrior Gurkha Image

Just as different versions or constructions of stereotypical if not apocryphal portraits of the Gurkhas abound, then so too would the same apply to the different groups of Nepalis who were singled out as a good fit for military life. Martial race theory blends both reality and imagination (Roy 2013), as I have demonstrated in this chapter and with further examples to follow in subsequent chapters. There are two main strands of representation where constructions of the Gurkhas are concerned. The first clearly speaks to the global image of the Gurkhas’ valor, gallantry, and loyalty, which stems in the main from British military writings, postcolonial discourses, and of late from ex-Gurkhas themselves. The second has to do with the exact opposite. In Nepali modernist and literary narratives (Bhandari 2021; Seeberg 2016), literary texts about the Gurkhas focus on contrastive themes that depart from the first strand. Instead of further highlighting martiality, unconditional loyalty, and bravery, these texts construct Gurkhas in terms of their licentious nature,³⁹ lack of patriotism, moral corruption, as well as their varied experiences of personal loss and separation (Bhandari 2021; Hutt 2012).⁴⁰ As an important corollary, Paudyal and Baral’s (2021) study of Nepali war poetry over two centuries highlights important shifts in how such poetry—some of which are written by Gorkha soldiers themselves—has moved from valorizing the soldiers’ martiality and participation in war, to a denouncement of such violence. This arose in part due to the realization that the Gorkhas’ aggrandized bravery was an outcome of colonial design and fabrication in the main. Martial race stereotypes, then, in connection with present-day Gurkha recruitment continue to “rankle purist nationalists across the political spectrum” (Stirr 2017, 188) as Gurkha service for the British imperial power continues to be read as an embarrassment to the sovereignty of Nepal.

The diverse constructions and representations of what Gurkhas were and are like seemingly point toward specific discourses that are either hyperbolized, silenced, or deployed as a means toward particular ends. When hyperbolized, Gurkhas are portrayed as martial soldiering heroes and painted as such in order to facilitate strategic recruitment (Enloe 1980), and to mimetically form the mirror image of British officers themselves and thus to be “embraced as honorary Europeans” (Caplan 1995b, 155). The basic premise here is to reinforce their outstanding military prowess (Bhandari 2021) so as to achieve both military and political goals (Streets 2004). Discourses that are silenced by both colonial and postcolonial constructs of the Gurkhas include disruptions to family life owing to military theaters and also general feelings of damage, loss, alienation, and meaninglessness as a Gurkha who participated in British military undertakings (Seeberg 2016). As Tim I. Gurung (2020, 2–3), a Gurkha corporal who retired in 1993 vividly puts it:

All the books regarding the Gurkhas so far were mostly written from the Western point of view, mainly by writers with military backgrounds. No matter how much diversity they may have claimed … it was still a one-sided work… . One was the bravery of the Gurkhas, and the other was the self-aggrandizement of the parts of British officers had played in making the Gurkhas world-famous… . The other side of the Gurkha story is unfortunately still not being told … It’s the main reason why the Gurkhas are only known as the bravest soldiers to the world, while forgetting the fact that they were also humans like the rest of us.

Importantly, Gurung continues, the “Gurkha story is not only about bravery, but it’s also the story of tragedy” (Gurung 2020, 2–3). Apart from the other side of the Gurkha story, the deployment of traits of martiality in the present-day context as exacted by security companies and agencies thereby also demonstrate how such characteristics make ex-Gurkhas as potential security guards work for clients as a convincing and reliable narrative. Essentially, they are positioned favorably in the labor-security market where a “Gurkha security package” both markets and commoditizes them (Chisholm 2014).

I return to Marshall’s experience posted at the outset of this chapter here. He had fought alongside the Gurkhas for four years and reflected on his time with the Gurkha battalions:

British officers who served with Gurkha battalions as regulars before the war became rather unbalanced and starry-eyed about the virtues of Gurkhas. One got the impression that some thought the Gurkha could do no wrong. This of course isn’t so. The Gurkha, I think I’ve indicated earlier, had many of the same vices and virtues of the British tommy, which is probably why they get on so well together, but, also, there was absolutely no doubting their courage. (Parker 1999, 143–44)

Clearly, the Gurkhas as courageous and indomitable continue to remain as the core image of those who have had close encounters with them on the battlefields of their lives. The image of Gurkhas as brave, undefeatable, and indefatigable has also traversed onto their next generation, the bhanja and bhanji—or at least so from the point of view of others. In the focus group interview that I held in Kathmandu, Ganga and her friends shared stories of how their teachers used to make fun of their Gurkha heritage. These teachers assumed the same competencies in their fitness levels and strength if not stereotypes about the Gurkhas or Nepalis as a whole given “centuries of hill-climbing ancestors” (Bammi 2009, 86).⁴¹ Ganga and Dipesh each recounted what one of their teachers in Singapore had said to them on separate occasions:

• Ganga: You children … you all go back to Nepal and climb mountain. You know? She said that to the guys. Then to the girls right, she’ll say you children, you go back to Nepal and get married.
• Dipesh: I was sick lah … I was sick for three days. Then I was coughing, coughing. Then you know what she said? You’re [a] Gurkha son right [to her friend], how come you get sick?

Ganga further told me that her group was probably the first to enroll as Gurkha children in a Singapore school. Right after their first day at school, the athletic team called the Gurkha students for a meeting—“just because we are Gurkha’s [children]” and “they want us to run track and field and everything.” The experiences of Gurkha children such as Ganga and Dipesh, among others, is telling of how notions of martial race, first attached to the Gurkhas in military and the police force, have now trickled down into their offspring. Just as the Gurkhas have been perceived in terms of their supposed innate military might and prowess, then so too would that be expected of their children’s physical abilities and capacities. This goes to show how the biological deterministic view of martial race sustains and assumes currency from generation to generation in the eyes of others.

Over and above their brave image, the Gurkhas have also been talked about as being “gentle and compassionate.”⁴² In 1988, it was reported that more than 600 out of the 760-strong Gurkha contingent in the GCSPF had volunteered to sign up as organ donors. Thus, despite being “renowned for their toughness in battle,” they are also deemed as compassionate and gentle, arising from this voluntary participation.⁴³ In the words of Vansittart (1906, 60), the Gurkhas “are domestic in their habits and kind and affectionate husbands and parents.” Interestingly, a 1973 press report in Singapore carried the following headlines: “Gurkha Wife Helps Mellow Warrior Image.” In that report, readers are told that a Gurkha housewife, Mrs. Parwati Thapa, was awarded a Public Service Star by the Singapore Government:

A Gurkha housewife in a dark purple sari helped to mellow the traditional warrior image of her community on Thursday night. It happened when stately Mrs. Parwati Thapa, wife of a Gurkha officer with the Singapore Police Force, strode gracefully to President Shears to receive her Public Service Star at an investiture ceremony… . She was the first Gurkha women to win such high honour from Singapore Government, and one of the only three women to win the Public Service Star in the 1972 National Day honours. A voluntary welfare worker, she teaches Nepali, reading, knitting, sewing and generally serves as a problem solver to families of the Gurkha contingent with the Singapore Police.⁴⁴

Mrs. Thapa came to Singapore in August 1953, which was her first trip out of Nepal. Dubbed a “heroine in her community,” she “won her status not on the battlefield in true warrior tradition but by helping the policemen’s wives and children.”⁴⁵ It is interesting to see this example of Mrs. Thapa, who was accorded high recognition by the Singapore Government for her contributions to the Gurkha community. More important, she has been singled out as a foil to the warrior persona of the Gurkhas, reflecting a different perspective with which to regard Gurkhas and their families.

Orientalist discourses that depict the Gurkhas as quintessentially brave and loyal come with a “very strong sense of consensus and continuity” and which are usually “monolithic and timeless” (Caplan 1991, 573). Such portrayal relies in the main on stereotypes and which seldom consider either the historical or political context. Even if Gurkhas have been positively caricatured or portrayed as larger than life (Caplan 1995b), these constructions have over time become reality given the constant repetition and replication of aligned martial race characteristics produced through a largely unified and integrated narrative (Caplan 1995b; Des Chene 1991). It has also been suggested that these martial soldiers have similarly found resonance in martiality, where they have accepted or even relished such an identity (Streets 2004). Specifically, even if Caplan points out that how these discourses are being produced has to do with the issue of power (since it is usually the British officers who produce “peremptory knowledge about their military subordinates,” [Caplan 1995b, 2]), I add to this line of argument the observation that the Gurkhas themselves have also articulated such similar discourses in order to benefit their post-Gurkha service endeavors in the security industry. The crux here lies in how an examination of texts about and by Gurkhas need to take into consideration those particular contexts through which they were written (Caplan 1995b).

When Rai (2020, 170) returned to England safe and victorious from the Falklands, he and his band of Gurkha soldiers were once more praised and lauded for their “utmost bravery and loyalty.” They had also received many letters of invitations as well as appreciation coming from different parts of the United Kingdom. Having participated in some of such events, Rai had met with some local residents. He says this of their understanding of the Gurkhas, which forms the kernel of what I have examined here:

Despite their considerable knowledge about Gurkhas, we found they didn’t usually know about the etymological meaning of the word “Gurkha.” They had understood the word “Gurkha” as synonymous with courageousness, bravery and fearlessness. That may not be the precise etymology, but I am happy and proud for them to make that link in their minds with my brave people. (Rai 2020, 170–71)

Although Rai has pertinently pointed out some limited understandings of the term Gurkha, he has in a way also imbibed if not solidified martiality (“with my brave people”) as Streets (2004) has suggested of martial soldiers. My cursory discussions about the category of “Gurkhas,” martial race theory, and its various expositions in this chapter provide but only a brief treatment and examination of the vast corpus of Gurkha literature that continues to be produced and circulated widely.⁴⁶ Suffice it to say that where Caplan (1991, 590) raises an interesting line of analysis about how depictions of the Gurkhas by British officer-authors reflect “the essential characteristics of those very officers,” (see also, Bolt 1967; Gould 1999; Leonard 1965), my contribution here concerns how the Gurkhas themselves have as well absorbed and appropriated elements of martial race theory in their self-depictions.⁴⁷ They do this in order to utilize the warrior image for their varied purposes. In this way, it would be jejune to assume that Gurkha literature by and large is to be read only through “crude orientalist” agendas (Caplan 1995b, 3). Instead, I depart from Caplan’s three-decades-old narrative (and the plenteous genres of writing on Gurkhas that continue to proliferate through print and social media), to contribute toward a rethinking of how martial race theory has also been brought into advantageous deployment by the Gurkhas themselves. In so doing, the Gurkhas are, in somewhat equal measure with their British counterparts, complicit in building and sustaining the image of the warrior Gurkha. The main point therefore is not so much about unveiling the ins-and-outs of martial race theorization. It is rather about critically engaging with how and why such framing is put into place; by whom and for what purpose. Scholars have rightly pointed out the constructedness of martial race theory in which the British had deployed vague ideas about martiality and which changed over time and through different perspectives (Des Chene 1999; Gurung 2011). Moreover, others such as Gurung (2017) have contended that the bravery of the Gurkhas is not so much about martiality, but rather, “conditional” where the author’s notion of “conditional bravery” (2017, 105) points toward “becoming brave under certain conditions” (2017, 105). Problematizing Gurkhas as a martial race through examples of narratives and counternarratives is an exercise in exploring how identity claims (Chetri 2016) are projected. Such projection thereby underscores the social, political, and economic utility of the famed image of warrior Gurkhas across history. The constructed nature of martiality and valor of the Gurkhas are therefore made evident, and such constructions are shown to be utilized purposefully by different social actors.

The next chapter foregrounds other aspects of Gurkha lives that transcend the martial race and warrior constructions that I have attended to. If they are “made to appear larger than life” (Caplan 1991, 586) vis-à-vis their invincibility and ferocity, I address the migratory and familial experiences of Gurkhas from the time they leave Nepal, right up to their retirement years. These varied experiences are narrated and analyzed with the backdrop of military and nation-state governance of social actors. Chapter 3 therefore resumes my discussion on bracketed belonging. I spotlight the Gurkhas’ migratory and transnational encounters beyond what we know publicly of their traits as spectacular regimental figures in Gurkha military expositions. Such encounters remain fairly inchoate in the wider migration and transnational literature when relatively compared, and thus warrant attention.

I close this chapter by quoting an excerpt from the poem “The Buddhas Inside War” by Daya Krishna Rai (2013).⁴⁸ The following lines in a nutshell lend resonance to martial race theory as a construct and as a myth. The bravery of Gurkhas, if not deemed innate, are brought out through encounters with war and in various military contexts—the underlining principle for which select groups of Nepalis are classified as suitable for warfare; for war gave birth to Gurkhas who are brave:

Had war never existed

Peace wouldn’t have so much importance

Buddha wouldn’t have been Buddha today

Hadn’t war been there

Gurkhas would have never been Brave Gurkhas

War gave birth to Brave Gurkhas

Buddha gave birth to peace