Never had a country more faithful friends than you.
These words, written by Sir Ralph Lilley Turner — a former officer in the 3rd Gurkha Rifles — have become something of a niche shibboleth among those familiar with Britain’s colonial military history: a tribute both heartfelt and faintly haunted. They are now inscribed on the British memorial to the nearly 20,000 Gurkha soldiers who have died fighting over the course of their long and bloody service to the Crown in London, unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II on 3 December 1997.
The full quote shows the depth of feeling Turner felt for the Gurkhas, and since it is a view held by many of the Gurkha’s British officers, it is worth repeating in full;
As I write these last words, my thoughts return to you who were my comrades, the stubborn and indomitable peasants of Nepal. Once more I hear the laughter with which you greeted every hardship. Once more I see you in your bivouacs or about your fires, on forced march or in the trenches, now shivering with wet and cold, now scorched by a pitiless and burning sun. Uncomplaining you endure hunger and thirst and wounds; and at the last your unwavering lines disappear into the smoke and wrath of battle. Bravest of the brave, most generous of the generous, never had country more faithful friends than you.
Turner served with the Gurkhas from 1915 to 1919, by which time the British perception of their Nepalese allies was already well established: beloved, but stubborn and indomitable peasants.
This paternalistic view had its roots over a century earlier, when Britain first clashed with Gurkha forces during the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814–16. After years of Gurkha incursions into northern India, the British East India Company launched a campaign to expand into Nepal. But the Nepalese proved such formidable opponents that, once peace was signed in 1816, the British chose not to subjugate them but to recruit them.
Their reputation and status, however, were elevated by the effects of the Indian Mutiny. All Gurkhas regiments remained steadfastly loyal and were conspicuously gallant in the defence and recapture of British India; during the siege of Delhi Gurkhas famously held the strategically important defensive position of Hindu Rao’s house, just outside the city, for three months, despite staggering casualties of 327 casualties out of just 490 men. Fresh formations formed a key part of the force to recapture Delhi, as well as forming part of Havelock’s force that relieved the Siege of Lucknow.
The shock at the savagery of the Indian Mutiny reverberated across Britain, provoking not just horror at the violence, but an appetite for vengeance. A speaker at the Cambridge Union gave voice to the dark fury that gripped much of the British public
When the rebellion has been crushed from the Himalayas to Comorin; when every gibbet is red with blood; when every bayonet creaks beneath its ghastly burden; when the ground in front of every cannon is strewn with rags, and flesh, and shattered bone – then talk of mercy.
As the speaker suggests, one of the darkest results of the Indian Mutiny was the sudden increase in the use of “blowing from a cannon” as punishment for the Mutineers.
Another legacy of the Mutiny was the rise of the “martial races” theory, which became central to British recruitment policy in India. It held that certain ethnic, caste, or religious groups — typically rural, hardy and loyal — possessed an inherent aptitude for soldiering. In contrast, educated and politically aware groups, especially high-caste Hindus like the Bengalis, were labelled “non-martial” and excluded from service.
Because the Mutiny had been led largely by high-caste soldiers, British officers increasingly used the “martial races” theory to exclude the educated classes — particularly Bengalis — from military service, aiming to prevent future rebellion and ensure greater loyalty among Indian troops. As David Omissi notes, from the 1880s recruitment shifted steadily toward the Punjab and Nepal. The Gurkhas, in particular, emerged as a core “martial race” on which the British Raj came to rely.
Understand the martial races theory — and the Imperial hangover it still causes — and you begin to understand the attitude shown by our establishment to our recent Afghan allies. There are undoubtedly cases of Afghan translators who rendered real service, and who were placed in real danger. But the refusal of many politicians and journalists to apply appropriate — in some cases, any — scepticism to tenuous or unverified claims, and a preference for wholesale lionisation of all claimants, reflects a residual officer-class instinct within the British military and political establishment of subconscious “yearning to be benevolently paternalistic toward fierce but loyal warriors from far away”.
Politicians and journalists invoke the Gurkhas as a shorthand for honourable loyalty, creating a moral halo that is quietly extended to anyone who can plausibly occupy the role of “our ally.” The newly-discovered wave of self-proclaimed translators have been treated by many, not as applicants to be assessed, but as comrades-in-arms to whom Britain owes a sacred debt, and those who raise questions over verification, record or actual threat can be dismissed as unpatriotic. But it is a measure of madness to treat any foreign associate in a recent war as a loyal comrade by default, particularly given that they were not in fact, fighting for Britain, but for their own country alongside Britain.
The practical effect of the Gurkha Complex is to uncritically extend a moral halo to anyone who can plausibly be cast as “one of ours.” To reach for that legacy every time the West exits a warzone is sentimental to a dangerous level — particularly because the Gurkha Complex can take you far beyond gagging orders to prevent your population finding out how many erstwhile allies in no particular danger you can bring into the country. You might end up calling for the creation of an Afghan formation in the British Army, for instance.
A nostalgia for using foreign soldiers to fight Britain’s wars, is hardly a sound basis for arming refugees with no meaningful ties to Britain
Some might argue that the continued presence of the Gurkhas proves such recruitment can work. But hundreds of years of imperial history, and a nostalgia for using foreign soldiers to fight Britain’s wars, is hardly a sound basis for arming refugees with no meaningful ties to Britain. This is the Imperial hangover in action, and as anyone who’s suffered a bad hangover knows, it breeds complacency and laziness. Britons have become so reliant on Human Quantitative Easing as a catch-all solution to staffing problems that they can scarcely imagine any situation where it isn’t appropriate — even in the military.
Too often, the right dismisses discussion of the long-term effects of the British Empire as revisionism. But if our Imperial hangover leads us here, it might be time we get up off the sofa and worked it off.
