Therefore, I, too, buried my Gurkha themes for possible write-ups in this daily. Some weeks thus went by. But then there appeared yet another article on the dear subject on this page on Thursday, July 23, this one by an accredited British immigration officer called Alex McPherson, possibly a Scotsman, about whose people some compliments later. So I retrieved my notes to write this missive, with hope the final one, on my fellow Gurkhas. I have my own contexts.
IDENTITIES AND DEFINITIONS
All Gurkhas – including the Gorkhas in the Indian Army, Brunei and Singapore Police – are Nepalis, but not all Nepalis have the honor of being Gurkhas. These major “martial” races are the ethnic members of the Gurung, Magar, Rai, and Limbu nations of Nepal: a country of many nations, but unable yet to become a state. To be fair, there have been sizeable smattering of Yakhas, Dewans, Sunwars, and Tamangs in the forces strictly reserved for non-Hindu and non-Indo-Aryan Nepalis.
“Gurkha” is a magic word the world over for bravery, humble modesty in peacetime, steadfastness in war, practicing non-partisanship, maintaining apolitical outlooks, with no blemishes of rape, plunder, religious fundamentalism, no court martial on records, and no “unnatural” homosexual tendencies evident among their ranks and file. They practice dispassionate fairness at all times, and expect the same reciprocity from the stiff-upper-lipped British.
It is a separate story that there have been breaches of the trust, and things have become distasteful and devoid of mutual honor, leading to nasty issues lately.
It is also quite another story that it was the British Gurkhas who questioned the righteousness of the British Government in which their own country, Nepal, and its many governments almost always sided with the adversary, about which, too, some more later.
What I must begin with here is that “Gurkha” is not a magic word for those Nepalis who aren’t destined to be Gurkhas. On the contrary, the word is one of utter non-belongingness. Here is a personal anecdote:
I was thrice in Bandar Seri Begawan (Shree Bhagwan), the capital of Brunei Darussalam. One evening, my niece took me to the cleaner to collect our clothes. The laundrywoman uttered the word “Gurkha” when we arrived. My niece was enraged. “I’m not a Gurkha!” she shrieked, creating a scene. Of course, she wasn’t an honorable Gurkha; she was a Newar Nepali and married to a Singaporean Indian. She had been in Brunei for fourteen years, yet she was still identified as Gurkha, to her displeasure. So I had to explain to the laundry lady that all Gurkhas were Nepalis, but not all Nepalis were Gurkhas. What a pity! She was confused. So I said, “Look, you’re a Malay Bruneian, right? There are other Bruneians too, such as Chinese Bruneians, Indian Bruneians, the Dayaks perhaps, and other aboriginal tribes in this land. Such is the fact in our case too.”
She understood, and peace was finally restored in that Islamic Sultanate whose previous Sultan formed his own GRU (Gurkha Reserve Unit) in the capital to protect his royal Istana – beside a British Brigade of Gurkhas battalion stationed in the nearby oil-and-gas-rich Seria – in gratitude to British Gurkha soldiers who rescued him from a desolate rainforest of Lawas when Indonesia coveted Brunei, an encounter which earned Lance Corporal Ram Bahadur Limbu his Victoria Cross. The rulers of Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore and old denizens of Hong Kong remember the Gurkhas to this day while the Gurkhas’ own Nepali brethren call them blood sellers and mercenaries, about which, too, some words later.
“Lee Kuan Yew doesn’t trust us Chinese, Malays or Indians,” the taxi driver told me at the Changi Airport of Singapore. “He trusts only the Gurkhas!” The picture, on the contrary, is not that rosy at home.
But in another dangerous situation in Bandar Seri Begawan, the “Gurkha” word worked magic. It happened a few days later when a Bhumiputra gang of school students ambushed a group of Chinese Bruneian students. When the “natives” began bashing the “immigrants”, there was spotted a pale-brown Tibeto-Burman lad among the yellowish Chinese. One alert Bruneian asked him who he was. Perhaps he too was a Bruneian, or Malay, or an Indonesian.
“I’m Gurkha,” he blurted out in English, as a last resort, and grave consequences were thus averted. He was escorted out of the melee and with apologies. This was the son of a Ranjit couple from Banepa in the employ of the Sultanate. A non-Gurkha Nepali, in this case a Newar, was saved from a possible mayhem, thanks to being “Gurkha”! After all, Gurkhas, in red-alert contingents, protect the sovereignty and vital interests of Brunei.
HAVING IT FROM ALL QUARTERS
But back home in Nepal, another dichotomy, a double-edged khukuri, greets the Gurkhas: That all Gurkhas are Janajatis, or indigenous nations, but not all of the 63 or so officially gazetted Janajatis can proudly call themselves Gurkhas. Consequently, there are high-decibel and frequent instances of jealousy bordering on endemic enmity. It is not surprising, therefore, to read derogatory lines likening “Gorkhali” to “goru khali” in the poems of Bhupi Sherchan, a Thakali Janajati but sadly not a Gurkha. There is this sadness of a fellow Janajati belittling another one on matters of uncontrollable history and fate.
What then of the ruling classes of Nepal – the Bahuns, Thakuris, Chhetris, Newars and other castes belonging to the Hindu hierarchy and their religiously divined decrees of discrimination, and their world view of the Gurkhas – is quite another matter. It is they, more than any other Nepalis, who have enjoyed the direct benefits of the hard-cash remittances made by the Gurkhas, who were the first permanent foreign currency earners of Nepal. If British India offered the Lucknow Loot License to Jung Bahadur and his marauders, the Gurkhas opened the London Lottery for the Rana and Shah rulers and their courtiers, who thus enabled themselves to import choice Scotch and quality tobacco, English bone china, fashionable tweed and corduroy and fine raiment, shiny chandeliers, expensive Belgian glasses and premium French wines and champagne on the income and commission generated by each Gurkha “tauko” in the service of the Angrej Bahadur.
And, most importantly, had it not been for the thousands of Gurkhas fighting and dying For The Friend on the British side in WWI, the British declaration of Nepal as a sovereign nation in 1923 would not have come forth. Yet their fellow countrymen and women continue, to this day, to call them “mercenaries”.
Even among the Gurkha martial groups, there is a disparity of haves and haves-not. Only those able-bodied Gurkhas, on the strict regimen of the British Army since 1818, are enlisted while the rest are rejects who look to the Indian Army, Nepal Army, Nepal Police – in that order – to fulfill their fancy for uniforms. Those who can’t make it to the Brigade of Gurkhas tend to politicize the issue in Nepal, and it is these malcontents who decry British imperialism in the post-colonial era.
So the poor Gurkhas have it from all quarters, finding themselves between the Kala Pani and the steep hills, with cobras and scorpions on either side, while the knife of nationalism stabs them in the back, and in front looms the quest for fame and fortune away from their own famished land – this latter starkness conspiring to pose to them the “Lure of the South” and beyond. So many wrongs, for no rhymes and reasons of one’s own making, would not visit any people on the face of the Earth like the ones sustained by the Gurkhas. Such a maligned lot, for all the greatest good each dead and wounded and surviving Gurkha did for universal order and peace, is hard to find in the history of the world.
(To be concluded)
pjkarthak@gmail.com
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