Gurkhas in double jeopardy: Negative cultural image around the world and denial of equal rights in the British army
Since the British Army started recruiting Gurkhas, it has portrayed
Gurkhas as a “martial race”- very tough, brave and durable on the
frontier. Many Gurkha soldiers have also been awarded with Victoria
Cross (VC), the highest military decoration awarded for the valor in the
battlefield. The hidden agenda behind the recruitment and the
discrimination against the Gurkhas in British Army have always become a
matter of curiosity and discussion among the intellectuals of Nepalese
Studies. About this case, some hardliner nationalists reject the whole
idea of recruitment of Nepalese youth in foreign force. Contrarily,
other views that if we stop stopping recruitment of Nepalese youth in
British Army, it would cause decrease in the source of remittance. The
middle way approach towards this issue is that there should be
continuation of recruitment process but with the reform in the policy
guaranteeing the equal rights for the Gurkhas in British Army.
However, viewing this phenomenon from Anthropological perspective, the
recruitment of Nepalese youth in British has done more harm than good.
The damage is cultural one. Portrayal of the identity of the Gurkhas as
warring and violent race is an irreparable cultural loss. On the top of
that, inequality and discrimination against them in terms of facilities
and services within the army hints the motive of British government.
Ironically, these “warring people” who fought in every battle for two
hundred years for Britain, have become constant victim of structural and
symbolic violence.
The term, “Gurkha" or “Gorkha”
refers to a small hill town of Gorkha from which the Nepalese kingdom
had expanded. Military force of the king who started this unification
process was later known as Gorkhali, meaning soldier of Gorkha. In 1814,
East India Company tried to invade Nepal but the Gorkhali defended
their territory causing heavy casualties on enemy troops. The
colonialist East India Company signed a hasty peace deal and offered to
pay the Gurkhas to join their army. Ever since, the servicemen were
called Gurkhas. The Gurkhas kept fighting for the British Army in the
First and Second World Wars - in France, Flanders, Mesopotamia, Persia,
Egypt, Gallipoli, Palestine, Salonica and in the desert of Arabia and
then across Europe and the Far East in World War II. They have also
fought in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Borneo, Cyprus, the Falklands, Sierra
Leone, East Timor, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. At present
days, Gurkhas have distinct unit in British Army known as the Brigade of
Gurkhas holding 3,500 servicemen.
For 200 years, the majority of
these soldiers were deliberately drawn from the impoverished ethnic and
indigenous minorities impoverished, particularly from Magar, Gurung, Rai
and Limbu for certain reasons.
The first reason is that initially the British were reluctant to try
the Gorkha force, which had required the strength of a vast Chinese army
to push them out of Tibet. The Gurkha soldier known for their speed and
their willingness to defend the cause till death under extreme
conditions had an intricate knowledge of the terrain and were perfectly
suited for guerrilla warfare. They started recruiting Magar, Gurung, Rai
and Limbu who looked like Chinese and had incredible endurance capacity
in harsh physical and geographical condition. The second reason was
that Gurkhas have been perceived as being more amendable to discipline
which is fit for the army. These ethnic and indigenous minority people
are honest and disciplined which British took advantage for itself. The
reason behind the British government still recruiting the Gurkhas is
partly financial. It pays the Gurkhas very meager in comparison to their
British compatriots. The British Army used tricky strategies to
continue the recruiting of Gurkhas.
Before explaining
the strategy of Gurkha recruitment, a definition of the concept of
hegemony is needed to provide a clearer understanding of this process.
Hegemony, as Joseph Femia brings Gramsci’s idea, works with the use of
language. Language serves as a means of “creating and applying hegemony”
(146). Powerful institution be that local or foreign can influence
thought and mindset of people within a society. With constant
circulation of news about the Gurkhas’ “act of valor”, the British Army
plays hegemonic influence over the Gurkha soldiers to fight more
violently for the British Empire. As a result, they tend to enjoy the
complementary words and “medals of valor” while not realizing their
negative cultural image as fierce and violent people. At this point, the
British government succeeded in socializing war and its benefits among
the Gurkha community.
A very significant example of how
hegemony works over individual is the incident of 2010. A Gurkha soldier
hacked the head off a dead Taliban commander with his Khukuri,
ceremonial knife to prove the dead man’s identity. His act was condemned
by the international community for violation of Geneva Convention. It
offends the Muslim tradition of burying the dead with all body parts,
attached or unattached. This act was of course enticed by the sense of
glory but it has compelled people to recognize Gurkha as brutal and
blood thirsty combatant.
People in the countries where
Gurkhas ‘bravely’ fought have also been recognized as “cruel
mercenaries” fighting for the cause of imperialist. For instance,
Gurkha’s image in Falkland war. In 1982, the British decided to invade
the Falkland Islands and the “finest battalion of Gurkhas was deployed.”
(Farwel, 288) Argentine troops were apprehensive about the Gurkhas
because there were many rumors about Gurkha soldiers. It was widely
believed by the Argentines that the Gurkhas killed their own wounded
compatriots and ruthlessly slit the throats of some forty Argentine
soldiers at the place called Moody Brook, near Port Stanley. However,
these myths of Gurkhas “prowess amused the commander who delighted in
their bloodthirsty reputation” ( Farwel, 290).
In his book, The Gurkhas, Byron Farwell quotes of an Argentine captain
inquiring about the Gurkhas to the British officer: “what do you pay
them?” “Oh, a handful of rice a day,” said the British. “We pay them
three handfuls if they will fight for us” said the Argentine. Gurkha’s
image as ruthless mercenaries is great cultural loss for Gurkha
community.
Drawing on Keith Otterbein’s idea about social
characteristic of war, Gurkhas’ tendency to fight loyally and
die-heartily against the enemy of the British empire can be justified as
an aspect of “socialization of war” (2009; 60). The military leader
creates strong hatred against the enemy side through ethnocentric
notion. The national and ethnic identity loyal and disciplined Gurkhas
dilute when it comes to the bifurcation of self into “us” versus “them”.
And the Gurkha’s ethnic identity waters down into “we, the British”.
The British has distorted Gurkhas identity in a very romantic way. The
British construction of Gurkha legend says that it once a Gurkha
unsheathes his kukuri, he must draw blood with it. When a Gurkha
unsheathes his weapon in a non-combative situation, he must then nick
himself to satisfy the "blood thirst" of the blade or slit the throats
of the enemy. But whose enemy? What wrong did this 'enemy' do to the
Nepali 'Gurkha' soldier? Did this enemy come looking to occupy his
country? Whose war is he fighting? Gurkha never asked these questions
rather seemed to enjoy the legend.
As a matter of fact, Gurkhas are not so violent and brutal by nature.
It is the fierce training and psychological makeup that molds them into
such character. It is the myth created and reiterated for decades in
that the Gurkhas are a warrior race, natural fighters, unflinchingly
brave in combat and deeply loyal. In his book, Warrior Gentlemen:
Gurkhas in the Western Imagination, Lionel Caplan claims that the
uniform image of Gurkha is the product of the western imagination of a
“close-knit, public school educated, upper class of British men” (81).
He further claims that the martial race concept attached to Gurkha by
the British also provides some insight into the workings of 19th century
“European imperialist racism outside the more familiar contexts of
either slavery or the Third Reich” (87). As such, their attitudes
towards foreign peoples especially towards Gurkhas were determined in
large part by dogmatic theories of biological determinism. Western myth
about the Gurkhas puts the individual Gurkha soldier into pressure to
fight violently and this has worked almost in every battle that the
empire has involved.
The story of Gurkha regiments has
been told many times, and draws attention of western writers and
artists. Additionally, the stories passed on by the words of mouth by
generation of British soldiers have created more-than-life size image in
the public imagination. Actually, Britishers romanticized the view that
Gurkhas are the “happy warriors; cheerful, proud and content to be
soldiers, and capable of finding humor in the direst of circumstances”
(Chappell, 5). In those history and the anecdotes which have been told
and aggrandized, Gurkhas were never the narrator rather they were
positioned as passive listener.
The portrayal of Gurkhas as
martial race became notorious as the British Empire’s most fiercest and
manly soldiers. Heather Streets- Salter views the cause for this as the
political one.
In her book, Martial Races: The British, Race, and Masculinity in
British Imperial Culture, Streets- Salter argues that martial race
ideology is “savage representation of masculinity that.... came out of
British imperialist elites ... contradictory purposes.”(9) In fact, the
collective and generalized portrayal of “Gurkha as martial race” does
not exist in reality. This is British construction. What British
collectively portray as Gurkha contrarily involves diverse cultural
makeup. There is no singular “race” or “martial race” as Gurkha.
About
the physical requirements for the recruitment and the training that
follows, the Britishers went ‘for true Gurkha martial tribes’. As
mentioned above, the British colonial mission was to push Chinese back
from Tibet, they looked for the Gurkhas who had Mongolian appearance.
Those candidates were accustomed to carrying heavy loads in steep
mountain and hill so had well-developed leg muscles. Even today, only
those recruits, who are fit enough and determined enough to run 5km up
the foothills of the Himalayas, while carrying 25kg of rocks on their
back, will be deemed worthy of joining the British army.
The combative training prepares the newly recruited soldiers to become
very aggressive and violent in the battlefield. The ethnic and
indigenous group which covers the majority of Gurkhas demographic
composition in British Army has strong sense of connections to the rest
of Gurkha servicemen. Indeed, the Gurkha community itself is bound with
strong kinship. Joining a kinsman in the battlefield and fighting
fearlessly to save one another is Gurkhas’ nature. As such, the
Britishers know the fact and exploit it and utilize it “to garner
British raj.” (Pilger, 2008)
There is more severe form of
exploitation against the Gurkha soldier within the British Army. In
fact, it is structural violence. Before explaining the Gurkhas
experience of structural violence in the Army a definition of the
concept of “structural violence” is needed to provide a clearer
understanding of this degree of violence. The term “structural violence”
has been described by Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois (2004) as “the
violence of poverty, hunger, social exclusion, and humiliation”. This
form of “peacetime” violence is often directed at a specific portion or
segment of society and is perpetrated from the highest institutional
levels (Et al, 19). Gurkha veterans were barred from settling in
the UK as British citizens and also restricted from equal pension and
other facilities despite putting their lives “on the line for the
Crown.” (Hickley, 2009) Recently, the Gurkhas have partially achieved
success. Actually, Gurkha veterans who move to Britain are entitled to
full pensions, whereas those back home receive around a third of what
former British soldiers are paid.
In olden days it was cheaper to
recruit Gurkhas than British troops, and there was a shortage of British
troops. Also, Gurkhas are loyal, easily amendable to discipline and
physically capable for the warfare in mountain and hill. On the top of
that, they stayed reticent about the inequality and injustice so far.
However, when Gurkha’s tireless campaign brought down the government to
address the issue, it decided to cut the number of Gurkha recruits.
In present days, Gurkha’s cultural image is huge concern among youth.
Some enjoys the legend of Gurkhas and tries to emulate the footstep of
“war heroes” by vying for the post. However, most of the young
intellectuals condemn the portrayal of this “imagined race” as savage
fighters. For them, the Gurkhas were peace loving before the contact
with the Britishers. As a matter of fact, every community is involved in
some kind of conflict in the course of development and thus each
creates myths, legends and heroes. But when the outsider utilizes that
myth and overdoes it, the legend turns tarnished and back fires the
community. Same is the case with Gurkhas. After the contact with
British, the image becomes more redundant and notorious i.e. blood
thirsty race. . The discourse about Gurkha has come under a massive
deconstructionist approach lately. Such a development in the
reconfiguring the image of Gurkha of course brings hope among the
people.
Bibliography
Caplan, Lionel.
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Chappel, John, Cross, J.P., and Gurung, Buddhiman
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Chappel, Mike.
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Farwell, Byron.
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Femia, Joseph V.
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Fry, Douglas P.
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Hickley, Mathew.
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