Book Review, October 2008
Warrior Gentlemen: “Gurkhas” in the Western Imagination
By Lionel Caplan
Berghahn Books (1995)
ISBN 1571818529
Introduction
Warrior Gentlemen is an academic exploration of Western perceptions of the Gurkhas viewed through the prism of historic and contemporary literature. In essence, Caplan argues that there is no such thing as the Gurkhas; that the Gurkhas are not a people capable of accurate description and that the image of the Gurkhas and their character, as depicted in literature on the subject, is both demeaning and simply a product of Western imagination. It is a complex piece that is far too full of complex ideas to retain any clarity of thought and the logic of the book is lost in places. That said, it stands as one of the most controversial works on the Gurkhas and is worth a place beside traditional regimental histories, memoirs and coffee table books on the subject.
Prevailing Perceptions
In reviewing the voluminous literature on the Gurkhas, Caplan identifies a number of themes and ideas that he links together to paint a picture of the Gurkha as it has been commonly understood in the West. He claims that it is a broadly uniform image of a warrior race of natural fighters, unflinchingly brave in combat, deeply loyal to the British Crown and sharing a strong affinity with British soldiers and officers through their sense of fair play and honour as gentlemen.
Caplan argues that this image of the Gurkhas is founded on rewritten history and deeply rooted in outdated ideas of the nineteenth century, picked up and practised by British officers in school and recycled in military literature. Furthermore, he claims that, while the Western perceptions of the Gurkha are superficially positive, they are so bound up with the prejudices of the nineteenth century that the picture we have of the Gurkha from military literature is in fact a demeaning and patronising one.
Creating a People
Whereas the term Sherpa (capital ‘S’) denotes a specific group popularised by generic descriptors, Caplan notes that the opposite is true of the Gurkhas. The term – a British creation, with no equivalent in any language in Nepal – simply refers to those Nepalese men recruited to the British army over the past two centuries. This is not to say that ethnicity is irrelevant to their identification. Indeed the British traditionally selected only men from certain ethnic groups, namely the Magars and Gurungs (generally the poorer working castes) to the exclusion, for example, of the “NBCs” (Newars, Brahmans and Chetris). But it is to say, for Caplan, that our perception of the Gurkhas as a people is wrongheaded, given their ethnic, linguistic, geographic and other diverse attributes; a diversity which he claims the British officer was ignorant and Western authors unwilling to note in order to preserve the myth of the Gurkha.
Caplan’s analysis here is shaky. It is something of a stretch to claim, as a factual matter, that the British officers who came into contact with the Gurkhas – poor, working men all from the middle hills of Nepal – could not have made legitimate general observations as to their character and habits, at least as opposed to the British themselves and other peoples (such as the Indians). More importantly though, a central contention of the book is that the British moulded the Gurkhas in their own image (as brave young gentlemen, interested in sport and hunting, honourable and loyal to the British army). Yet, however misguided this exercise might have been, and whatever prejudice it exposed, it is entirely plausible that the Nepalese men who served all their lives in the Gurkhas might have adapted to imitate or at least bear resemblance to the ways of the British officers who commanded them. By way of example, the fact that the Nepalese had no real history of hunting or sport before the arrival of the British army (a point noted by Caplan), does not in any way question their enjoyment or aptitude of sport once it had become a part of their daily lives as members of British regiments.
In other words, Caplan fails to appreciate that what might have begun as imaginary may have become real over time – and it is no less real because it was once imagined.
Who Invented the Gurkha?
Whether or not the Gurkhas are capable of general description, Caplan’s central thesis is that the British had a broadly uniform view of the Gurkha character that took shape in early military literature and has remained fixed over time; a view which Caplan claims is highly derogatory and continues to underpin modern writings.
As to what it means that the Gurkha was created in the image of the nineteenth century British officer, Caplan explores the mindset of the average British officer in the nineteenth century. He notes that public schools educated virtually the whole of the English upper and upper-middle class throughout the colonial period and that it was assumed that only the public schools could produce the right kind of officer, socially and morally. Imperialism, he suggests, was the dominant national ideology and the public schools educated boys to share the assumptions prevailing throughout this period about the Anglo-Saxon destiny as a governing race.
He writes: “British officers who served with and wrote about the Gurkhas during the late-nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries emerged from the same social backgrounds… attended the same schools, read the same adventure stories as well as the same poets of imperialism, and generally were subjected to similar kinds of cultural influences, thus sharing these feelings of patriotism and empire.” This, he argues, led to a confluence of attitudes towards other peoples, including the Nepalese, which became firmly entrenched in the British mindset as those views were recorded and repeated in early military literature.
So, to return to the question ‘Who invented the Gurkha?’, Caplan’s answer is that it was a product of the imagination of a close-knit, public school educated, upper class of British men serving in the colonial military, sharing strong feelings of empire and patriotism and whose attitudes towards foreign peoples were determined in large part by dogmatic theories of biological determinism.
For an author disinclined to generalise character traits in a class of Nepalese people – albeit from different ethnic backgrounds – this is fairly strong stuff in respect of the British.
Inventing the Warrior Gentlemen
Caplan argues that the qualities attributed to the Gurkhas in Western literature were not so much observed as they were assumed to be found – that is to say imagined – by the British officers who commanded them, as a result of those officers’ prejudices and views. In particular, he notes the widespread acceptance amongst the nineteenth century military establishment of martial race theory, which has at its core the notion that certain peoples make better soldiers than others due to their race and environment. Caplan notes that the hillmen of Nepal were regarded by the British as of martial race, a designation which out of which derived the British perception of the Gurkhas as brave and loyal natural warriors. It was this perception which, he argues, drove the British affection for the Gurkha, because he was believed to share similar qualities to the British.
He suggests that, to the British, the Gurkhas were similar, but they were not equal. They were in effect a pale reflection of their British officers. Indeed, he argues that, putting together the various character traits and habits identified by military authors, Caplan argues that the Gurkha concept was essentially made in the image of the British officer qua gentleman. “Their courage, along with a sense of humour, good breeding, honesty, sportsmanship, courtesy and relaxed attitude to religious practice, taken together, added up”, he claims, “to a portrait of the Gurkha soldier as a young gentleman. Indeed in the way he is depicted [in most of the literature] the Gurkha conjures up an image of a late-nineteenth and early twentieth century British public school boy.”
But, crucially for Caplan, what this meant was that the Gurkhas were similar, but not equal. Distance and hierarchy with the British were maintained by disallowing the Gurkhas the status of full adulthood. “The Gurkhas remain forever boys, playful but simple, needing the firm hand of control and leadership…. They can be gentlemen – with the requisite qualities of courage and refinement – but remain forever juveniles and thereby subordinate.”
No primary evidence is used to support this contention, but the literature quoted does appear to lend some credence to this notion. This is not ground breaking stuff. That the British created worlds abroad as they imagined them at home, and sought to make their subordinates in their image to some extent – bound up as they would be with the prejudices and attitudes of the day – is a well-documented feature of colonial life. Which is not to say this is not an interesting angle; simple that it is not new.
The Ghurkas as Courageous and Loyal
The most confusing part of the book is Caplan’s assertion at the outset that he does not in any way seek to question the objective validity of the characteristics attributed to the Gurkhas, but rather to expose such attribution as creative (rather than descriptive) and derogatory. We can take his discussion of the courage and loyalty of the Gurkha – two commonly noted characteristics – as examples.
Caplan argues that whatever courage and loyalty the Gurkhas were considered by the British to possess was perceived to be of a lower quality than that held by their British officers. Reviewing the literature, Caplan argues that, in respect of the Gurkhas’ loyalty, this was not perceived to be the same kind of honourable loyalty a British soldier showed the Crown, but a more base sense of allegiance by a men respectful of those who exercised firm control over them. He writes: “Implied in the description of Gurkhas – and other martial groups – as simple, uncomplicated warriors was the notion that they are apolitical and unquestioning in their allegiance.”
So too with the Gurkhas’ legendary bravery, Caplan argues that this was viewed by the British not as the courage of a noble, thoughtful officer, but as the animalistic, passion-driven bravery of a simpleton or child. “Most descriptions of Gurkha courage in combat conform to the model of the solder who attacks in a violent frenzy, risking almost certain death to rush forward and kill the enemy… When others use rifles and more sophisticated weapons, the Gurkhas seem to draw only their khukuris – short curved knife – which is a general utility instrument in the Nepalese countryside, but is represented in the discourse as the national weapon.”
In so far as the book merely makes observations as to how writers on the Gurkhas expose Western prejudices in their depiction of them, there is little to criticise, given how extraordinarily well-researched it is. But Caplan goes further and questions not only the prejudices underlying the perceptions, but the validity of the perceptions themselves. In respect of the Gurkhas’ loyalty, for example, he attempts to evidence a lack of loyalty in the Gurkhas to the British (citing, for example, the trouble the British initially had in recruiting from the Nepalese and the fact that the majority of the Gurkhas chose to join the Indian army after the Second World War). Equally, in respect of the Gurkhas alleged extraordinary bravery, he looks to evidence of medals collected and cites the diaries of certain officers who commented on acts of cowardice of the Gurkhas.
The point of this is not clear. Perhaps Caplan took the view that discrediting the notion of the Gurkhas as a warrior people, endowed with courage and loyalty, would strengthen his argument that this depiction of the Gurkhas must have been originally imagined (rather than observed), but it is poorly considered and confuses the message of the book. It is one thing to suggest that the British may have been predisposed to an image of the Gurkhas, and one thing to argue that any generalisations as to character may be inappropriate, but another entirely to question their validity without serious research, of which there is little here. For entire books to have been written studying the officer-soldier relationship, and the loyalty it generates, it is not enough to dismiss as fraudulent the notion of Gurkha allegiance by reference to one or two historical facts relating to their recruitment and retention.
Conclusion
There is far too little space to explore the myriad of complex ideas in Warrior Gentlemen, a book that takes time and patience, but is well worth the read for anyone interested in the subject and open to new perspectives on it. This is an unabashedly pro-Nepal blog and whilst previous reviews have favoured summary over critical analysis, the comments offered above are necessary to balance what can be read as a highly insulting account of a part of the British armed forces that has contributed so much over the past 125 years.
Rating: 3 out of 5
