Why Gurkhas Backed Britain in the 1857 Indian Mutiny

country. Not only do the geckos know this, but the the Bengal

seaport seaports know this, and they are not shy about showing

it either. It's a very much a symbol, a symbiotic, if that's

the right word, relationship of difference here. So you already

have that, then you add to that the fact that the Highlanders

of Nepal have very little in common with the the planesmen of

the Bengal, of Bengal and Hindu wider Hindustan. In fact, if

anything, they're the enemies of the plane. They, they don't look

like the people down there. They don't think like them. They have

different ways of doing things. They despise them as the each

despises the other is lesser. So there's a hefty bit of racism

here from the Himalayas down and back up. The geckos quickly, due

to this sort of exceptionalism that was just inherent in the in

how they were organized, fostered a very strong regimental

identity through traditions through 40 years from 1815 to

1857 ish, I believe, of service. And they, they, I mean, they

didn't, they referred to the they refer to the Bengal army as

the color log, which means black people, or the poor buyers,

which means people from the east, I believe. And these were

distinctive separate separating terms to show that we're not

like them. In fact, it got to the point by the Sikh wars in

the 1840s, that the European officers of the geckos, who are

still local battalions took pride in the fact they did not

have an eye after the regimental designation, and would be

insulted if they were ever called native infantry, it was a

matter of regimental pride that we're geckos, we're not native

infantry. They request now and again to be encamped nearer the

British. And when the when the when the cartridge crisis

occurred, for instance, they went out of their way, I think,

on one occasion, at least so regimental tradition states that

they, they return, because of the cartridge, remember, the

cartridge situation was resolved, and they issued new

cartridges, but the geckos gave back the reissued new

cartridges, and asked for the tainted ones back to show that

they didn't have a problem in the first place, with any

cartridge they were given to use, they thought it was

unsoldierly to be messing around with this, it's a cartridge, you

fire it, it's, you know, it is what it is. And so when the

mutiny came out, they had nothing in common with the

Bengal sepoys, they had no, unlike the rest of the army that

was able to through its masses and sort of through its own

regimental systems, spread the word quite quickly and have

these sorts of mutiny sort of little governments like the

ones that Mangal Pandey used and things like that. The good they

had no in with the geckos, but they didn't even speak the

language. Really, they would have to go through a different

route. And there was no and there was no door open to get

the geckos on their side. So the geckos stage with the British