3 - Locating Love in the Gurkha Security Package

Summary

Our heritage is founded in the culture, expertise and values of the Brigade of Gurkhas of the British Army. As the Gurkhas say, ‘Hami Jasto Kohi Chhaina’ (There is nobody quite like us). We now employ more than 2,500 people including former Gurkhas as well as experienced security guards from around the world. They are united by a common commitment to IDG’s Code of Honour. The Code lays out our combined responsibility to the personal, familial and social welfare of all of our staff and ensures that only the very best security specialists wear the IDG badge.

In the previous chapter I explored how martial race histories came to matter in producing Gurkhas as racialised soldiers – valued for their martial prowess, their unfettered loyalty and, at times, their childlike and playful nature. I showed how these histories, within a hierarchy of men and masculinities, naturalise Gurkhas as perpetually the subaltern, causing them to be understood and valued in terms of how they measure up against the fully developed and professional white British military officer. In this chapter, I investigate how these histories underpin contemporary global security markets. Imperial encounters continue to be affectively felt in everyday security encounters between Gurkhas and their British Gurkha officers, now security company owners. In short, Gurkha histories are affectively lived in the present and this chapter explores how.

Affects of honour, duty and reciprocity manifest in ways that reinforce Gurkha recruitment and security company owners’ own self-imaginings as the liberal-minded and ethical guardians and custodians of Gurkhas, as well as the protectors of their heritage within security markets. These same affects, structured within the same shared colonial histories, alsocreate Gurkhas as dutiful security contractors. Such gendered and racialised tropes enable a seemingly timeless and clear division of labour and expertise that each of the two groups takes on and affectively invests in, being bound by a friendship marked through colonial military service. This chapter examines the affect of love and friendship, how it binds this community as a family, and the ways in which both British Gurkha officers and Gurkhas invest in and experience this relationship.