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Friday marked the 200th anniversary of the First Gorkha Rifles, one of the first Gorkha regiments to be raised after the end of the Gorkha War with the British
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From the killing fields of Givenchy in France to lawless Katanga in Congo and from the sands of Megiddo (with Lawrence of Arabia, no less) to East Pakistan, there is no battlefield on which the wielders of the ferocious khukris have not displayed their valour and won honour.
Friday marked the 200th anniversary of the First Gorkha Rifles, one of the first Gorkha regiments to be raised after the end of the Gorkha War with the British. Ironically, the Gorkhas lost the war but impressed the British so much that the right to recruit Gorkha soldiers became a part of the peace agreement. There has been no looking back since and these brave sons of Nepal have served India and Britain with unflinching loyalty.
These ties have withstood the vicissitudes of time, including a dangerous development under Nepal’s Maoist leader Prachanda, who sought to end recruitment of Gorkhas in the Indian military. Happily, that moment passed.
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