Gurkha community of Bangladesh: Fought for an empire, settled for a nation, forgotten by both
The Gurkha community, celebrated across the world for its fierce soldiers, has never found its rightful place in Bangladesh, nor a place in its history
In Contractor Para, a small neighbourhood on Jail Road in the hill town of Rangamati, lives Manoj Bahadur Gurkha, a well-known cultural activist and musician who was born and raised here.
"Including my granddaughter, we are now the seventh generation living in this region," Manoj says.
"Kayar hunu bhanda marnu ramro", which translates to, "It is better to die than live like a coward", is a well-known Nepali phrase. It's the motto of the Gurkha soldiers, widely regarded as some of the fiercest fighters the world has produced. Their reputation endures even today; from the Gurkha Rifles of the Indian Army to the United Kingdom's Brigade of Gurkhas, or Singapore's Gurkha Contingent, these soldiers have served in the elite forces of several nations.
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The battlefield has carried these warriors from one end of earth to another. In much the same way, this military community once arrived in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), and a small part stayed behind, eventually becoming an enduring part of the region.
"But there is a fundamental difference between us and the other hill communities here," Manoj notes.
"While other groups have lived here for centuries or migrated from neighbouring areas due to local conflicts and personal needs, the Gurkhas did not come here of their own accord. Instead, a valid government brought our ancestors here to serve its own purposes," he explained.
Yet this community, celebrated across the world, has never found its rightful place in Bangladesh, nor a place in its history.
How Gurkhas arrived in CHT
The story began with the Anglo-Nepalese War, fought between 1814 and 1816. Having conquered most of India, the British turned their sights north toward the Himalayas to expand their territory. They marched into the mountains expecting a swift victory, but instead stumbled into a brutal, bloody conflict against the Gurkha Empire.
The campaign proved so difficult and costly that the British grew to deeply respect their opponents, choosing to recruit these formidable hill fighters into their own army before the war had even ended.
Exhausted and outmanoeuvred after two years of fierce mountain warfare, Nepal finally signed the Treaty of Sugauli in 1816 — a bitter peace that stripped the Gurkhas of a third of their empire, including prized territories such as Shimla and Darjeeling, and fixed the modern borders of Nepal as we know them today.
In the years that followed, Gurkhas became a backbone of the British Indian Army, serving as frontline assault troops in campaigns across Burma, Afghanistan and Malta, among others.
On the eastern frontier, British expansion into Bengal began in earnest following the Battle of Plassey in 1757. As they consolidated their hold over Chattogram, their attention turned toward the rugged, forested region tucked between the Chattogram port, Tripura, and Arakan, known as the Karpas Mahal — a name the Mughals gave it because the local indigenous Jumma people grew cotton.
Before British rule, the area was largely self-governing. Even the Mughal rulers did not directly govern the hills; instead, they collected a trade tax exclusively in the form of raw cotton from the indigenous chiefs. The name 'Chittagong Hill Tracts' itself came later, given by the British colonial administration when it annexed and separated the hilly region from the greater Chattogram district in 1860.
Before that, the hills were the ancestral ground of the Kuki, Lushai and other indigenous tribes, who lived largely undisturbed by the politics of the plains — until conflicts in Arakan sent waves of displaced communities into the hills. This rapid growth in the resettled population created ethnic tension across the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
The earliest inhabitants, among them the Kuki, Lushai and Senduj, found their traditional jum lands shrinking as the newcomers expanded, and the result was a decades-long cycle of violence. Between 1837 and 1854, nearly twenty major raids were recorded, targeting the newly settled populations and British establishments to challenge colonial authority.
The British military faced immense practical difficulties in this environment. Their soldiers were trained for the open terrain of the plains and struggled with the steep, densely forested hills. The Kuki people were far more comfortable in the jungle, using the landscape to their advantage. After several unsuccessful attempts to quell the rebellion, the British authorities realised their regular forces were ill-suited for mountain warfare. They needed a force naturally adapted to the environment.
"The British had no experience fighting in the hills and jungles back then," Manoj Bahadur Gurkha explains. "In their heavy leather boots, they were useless on the slippery mountain clay. They fell into the Kukis' traps and were easily outmanoeuvred. To fight fire with fire, the British decided to deploy the 2nd Gurkha Regiment from the British Indian Army."
"There is a fundamental difference between us and the other hill communities here. While other groups have lived here for centuries or migrated from neighbouring areas due to local conflicts and personal needs, the Gurkhas did not come here of their own accord. Instead, a government brought our ancestors here to serve its own purposes."
Captain T H Lewin, the first Deputy Commissioner of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, provided a first-hand account of Gurkha soldiers in his book A Fly on the Wheel. He described the 1871-72 Lusai Expedition, where the 2nd Gurkha Regiment, commanded by Colonel H. Macpherson, arrived at Kassalong (now a reserved forest in Rangamati) to address the rebellion.
Lewin was struck by the efficiency of these soldiers, describing them as 'splendid little fellows' who operated with a quiet, disciplined intensity. Their fighting style was unlike anything the local tribes had encountered. Raised in the rugged mountains of Nepal, the Gurkhas were masters of the forest. They would climb high into the branches of trees and wait for hours in silence, observing enemy movement.
This combination of mountain-hardened endurance and specialised tactics eventually brought the conflict to an end. The Lusai, realising they could not win against a force that was as comfortable in the jungle as they were, agreed to a treaty. Peace was established in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
However, the British administration did not fully trust that the peace would hold, so they devised a plan to use the Gurkhas as a permanent protective barrier. In the conclusion of his book, Lewin explains that he sought permission to bring emigrants from Nepal to colonise the frontier wastes.
In early 1873, these Gurkha colonies were established in the Myinee Valley, a northern tributary of the Karnaphuli River. This area had previously been uninhabited because people feared Kuki and Lushai raids. By settling the courageous Gurkhas there, the British created a buffer zone to protect the Mong Raja's kingdom and other settled areas from the independent tribes to the east.
The importance of this settlement was later solidified in the Chittagong Hill Tracts Act of 1900. Under this act, the British designated the Myinee Valley as a special area, keeping it free from the administrative control of local chiefs. This ensured that the Gurkha settlement remained a distinct, strategic government outpost.
But the Gurkhas who had helped the British establish an administration in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and who had helped secure a peace that held for years, were themselves gradually forgotten — left out of the history, the recognition and the memory of the region.
The community today
"We were brought here by the first British administration to keep the peace for the local people; our ancestors did not come here for their own benefit," Manoj says. "Because of that, there is a lingering sense of hurt within our community. Naturally, when your ancestors have made such a heavy contribution, you expect some level of recognition. We came here, we shed blood, and we helped bring peace. Yet today, barely anyone in Bangladesh even knows a Gurkha community exists here."
For decades, the Gurkhas of Bangladesh have faced systematic marginalisation. "We do not have civil servants or high-ranking government officers among us," Manoj explains.
"We do not receive the same socio-economic benefits and quotas that other indigenous communities in the hills enjoy because, for a long time, we were not even officially recognised. It was only in 2018 that the Ministry of Cultural Affairs finally listed us among the 50 recognised indigenous groups in the country. Even now, we have no representation on the Hill District Council, the Regional Council, or any local administrative bodies."
With limited state patronage and a small population, the Gurkhas in the hill districts are gradually losing their language and customs. Struggling against an adverse environment, maintaining their heritage has become increasingly difficult. A lack of widespread formal education has also hindered the growth of a strong sense of national identity within the community.
Along with education, economic survival remains a critical challenge. However, following their official recognition in 2018, finding employment has become slightly easier, and Gurkhas are increasingly finding work in both government and private sectors.
"Some are involved in school teaching, some hold government jobs, and others work in the private sector," Manoj says. "My daughter works at the World Health Organization (WHO), and my other son runs a business. Beyond that, we Gurkhas have a deep, natural interest in culture, music, and art, which is why there are plenty of musicians, singers, and even actors among us."
Today, besides Rangamati, Gurkha communities live in several other parts of Bangladesh. "There are Gurkha community people in many districts of Bangladesh, including Bandarban, Dhaka, Mymensingh and Kushtia," says Manoj Bahadur. Rangamati itself is now home to about thirty Gurkha families, numbering close to three hundred people, in Bandarban there are around 10 to 12 families, and rest are spread across districts like Dhaka, Kushtia and Mymensingh. "There was a time when our people were everywhere, across Assam Basti and Majhi Basti in Rangamati," he says.
"But during the Partition in 1947, many returned to Nepal, while others crossed over to India. Another major reason for our dwindling numbers is intermarriage with other communities. Some marry Bengali Hindus, some marry into other indigenous communities, and some even marry Bangali Muslims," Manoj explains. "But due to similarities in religion and customs, a lot of Gurkhas marry Assamese."
Then he said, "But I do not want to blame others. There has been a severe lack of awareness within our own community about our culture and heritage. Most of our youth no longer speak our language; they speak Bangla, which is natural because our education and daily lives are entirely dependent on Bangla."
Over generations of isolation, the Nepali spoken by the Bangladeshi Gurkhas has blended with Bengali, evolving into a distinct local dialect, though they still write using the Devanagari script. While they practice Hinduism and worship the same deities as Bengali Hindus — such as Kali, Durga, and Saraswati — their rituals and customs remain distinct.
Manoj notes, "Even our religious customs differ from those in modern Nepal. Over there, things have modernised. But here, we still follow the same traditional rules and rituals our ancestors brought with them over two centuries ago." Nevertheless, their daily diet and lifestyle are now largely indistinguishable from those of their Bangali neighbours.
Manoj Bahadur has been trying, through his own effort, to keep the culture alive. Since 2018, every year on the birth anniversary of Bhanubhakta Acharya, Nepal's first poet, he has organised Bhanu Jayanti at his music school, Surniketan. Alongside this, he also hosts events celebrating the Bengali literary giants Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam. A long-time artist with Bangladesh Betar's Chattogram station, Manoj writes and composes songs in Bengali, Nepali, and the regional Chattogram dialect, and has even translated the works of Tagore and Nazrul into Nepali.
Reflecting on the future of his people, Manoj remains grounded. "We no longer expect much," he says quietly. "We are largely to blame for our current situation. But we are finally working to change things. Perhaps we are a little late, but I remain hopeful that the next generation will take up the mantle and keep our identity alive."
