By Akhilesh Pillalamarri
200 years ago today, the legendary Gorkha rifles were formed.
The famed Gorkha Rifles, the renowned Nepalese warriors who formed an important part of imperial British and then modern Indian forces, were first formed two hundred years ago on April 24, 1815.
The origin of the Gurkha warriors in the British army dates back to the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-1816. At this time, the British East India Company (EIC) was expanding its territories in the subcontinent and had recently acquired what is today’s Uttar Pradesh, bringing it to the borders of the Gorkha or Nepali state. Nepal originated from the medieval Gorkha state in west-central Nepal. Prior to the 18th century, what is today’s Nepal was a patchwork of independent hill states, many of which were tributary to their larger neighbors in India or Tibet. In the wake of disintegration of the Mughal Empire, Prithvi Narayan Shah, king of Gorkha, conquered most of the Himalayan region of South Asia and began to expand outwards into the plains of northern India. The conquest of Kathmandu in the Newar or Nepal valley in 1768 gave the kingdom a new capital and eventually the Gorkha kingdom was named Nepal after the valley where its capital was located. Prior to this, the term Nepal only referred to a series of kingdoms in the Kathmandu valley.
Under future kings, an expanding Nepal came into conflict with this also-growing British and Sikh empires. In the west, in the modern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, the Sikhs bested the Gorkhas at the giant fort of Kangra in 1809. Kangra was the main fort in the western Himalayan region of South Asia. Soon after, the British became concerned that there was no delineated boundary between their territories and the territories of their ally, the Nawab of Awadh (Oudh) and Nepal. This led the EIC Governor-General to declare war on the Gorkhas in 1814. The war ended well for the British in 1816, though they met stronger resistance than expected. This allowed Nepal to remain independent and resist incorporation into British India, either directly or as a princely state, though it remained largely under the sphere of British influence and a British residency was established in Kathmandu. The 1816 Treaty of Sugauli ceded some Nepali territory to the British. Much of this territory is part of the Indian states of Uttarakhand and Sikkim today.
Read the full story at The Diplomat