Nepali Times reporter Alisha Sijapati spent a month retracing the Gorkha expansion beyond the Mahakali River more than 200 years ago to Garhwal, Kumaon and beyond. The Gorkha Empire was on a warpath, and the British East India Company saw it as a threat to its own expansionist ambitions.
This five-part series looks at the bravery of the Gorkhali troops under its legendary generals to defend the newly-conquered territory, but also the historical memory among the local people of an oppressive rule.
This is the third of a five-part report. The first and second episodes are in the Nepali Times archives. The fourth part will appear on 16 October in this space.
The road from Subathu to Jaithak in Himachal Pradesh of India will remind any Nepali of the highway from Bharatpur to Mugling. In the monsoon, there are frequent rockfalls and landslides.
This year’s monsoon saw heavier than unusual rainfall across the Himalaya, and especially here in these rugged mountains where more than 200 years ago the invading Gorkhali army was facing an imminent threat from the East India Company.
The expansionist Gorkha Empire was headed for a headlong clash with the equally belligerent British who were extending their influence across India.
The deep valleys are lush and green this time of year, as the rain sweeps in on the monsoon winds from the east. It was also from the east that the Gorkhalis came in the early 1800s, sweeping across 1,500km of the Himalayan foothills in a blitzkrieg.
It was among these mountains that the sound of cannons must have echoed, along with the battle cries, and the rivers ran red with the blood of the dead and wounded. One of the bloodiest encounters of this offensive occurred at Christmas in 1814 at Jaithak Fort, as the British launched an offensive all along the western front, the centre and east of what was then not yet Nepal.
Unlike other forts, the Gorkhalis held on to Jaithak for five months, and was unconquered, until they had to give it up because of the loss of the nearby fort at Malaun.
The Empires Strike
The Anglo-Gorkha war began in October 1814 when the British troops proceeded to take over Nalagarh, the present-day gateway to Himachal Pradesh. Within the next four months, the Gorkhalis had already lost Khalanga, Nalagarh, and Ramsheher passes.
The Gorkhali general Amar Singh Thapa, devastated after the defeat by the Sikhs at Kangra and the treaty with Maharaja Ranjit Singh, had moved to Arki Fort, while many Gorkhalis went on to join the Khalsa army at the Lahore camp, giving rise to the term Lahurey — which even today denotes anyone migrating abroad for work.
Amar Singh Thapa knew about the strength of the British and their mighty cannons, and he did not want to engage with the East India Company, advising restraint against any provocation. However, back in Kathmandu, the Mukhtiyar General (prime minister) Bhimsen Thapa had ambitious plans to preserve the influence he had hitherto contrived for his family and preferred assertive action against the British.
On the other hand, the East India Company, with expansionist ambitions of its own, was swiftly moving across India and took the Gorkhali advance in the north as a threat. There was another reason at play as well: cotton export from India was dwindling because of the burgeoning textile industry back in England and the Company needed a trade route across the Himalaya to Tibet to access the valuable shatoosh wool (pashmina) which was prized in England.
Historians say that if the British had had enough time to instigate their troops for taking over the Gorkha, they would have done it quickly and easily, considering their numerical superiority and modern weapons.
The rivalry between the Gorkhalis and the East India Company actually began much earlier. The Malla kings of Kathmandu Valley in 1767, facing an imminent Gorkha invasion, sent an SOS to Calcutta for help. The British sent an expeditionary force led by Captain Kinloch which was met by the Gorkhali defenders at Sindhuli Garhi fort. Battling malaria, wild animals and the fierce Gorkhali defence, the British and their Indian fighters retreated.
In 1795 there was another dispute over the Tarai frontier lands. The British wanted to define the borders in Morang and Purnea districts but were deterred by thieves and fugitives in the area.
Amar Sing Thapa's residence atArki Fort. Photo: CREATIVE COMMONS
In 1804 Sano Kaji Amar Singh Thapa (not the same general in Kangra) conquered Palpa and expected to receive rents from Butwal and Gorakhpur. However, he did not know then that the Nawab of Oudh had already ceded Gorakhpur to the Company. The negotiations around the territory took a turn for the worse when the Company flatly refused it to Kathmandu.
That bitterness was festering when in 1813, Major Paris Bradshaw, who joined the East India Company as Chief Commissioner, produced land documents as evidence to back the Company’s claim on the villages in the Makawanpur border and Butwal. Historians say that Bradshaw’s ‘haughty’ manners did not sit well with the Gorkhalis, and this escalated the matter further.
The Gorkhalis were given until 22 April 1814 to surrender Butwal and Siuraj. On the day, the Magistrate of Gorakhpur sent 17 Companies to take possession of the land. The Gorkhalis had withdrawn since it was the malaria season. A month later, however, they returned to attack the police posts in Butwal resulting in the death of one policeman.
Meanwhile, Francis Rawdon Hastings joined the East India Company in Calcutta as the new Governor-General. Hastings was a sensible man and did not want to start a full-scale war with the Gorkha Empire for a small piece of land that merely got the Company Rs15,000.
But war was inevitable. A precursor to the Kumaon-Garhwal-Himachal war was that Bradshaw had occupied 22 villages in Saran and captured a Gorkha police post. Following this, when Chandra Shekhar Upadhaya, an agent from Kathmandu was sent for diplomatic negotiations, the Company announced it did not want any more talk.
Meanwhile, in the territory newly conquered by the Gorkhalis in Garhwal, General Amar Singh Thapa claimed Sirmaur and Hindur. British Gen David Ochterlony, who was then based in Ludhiana countered the claim. Thapa wrote to Kathmandu and was eventually successful in invalidating Ochterlony’s claims. The failure to secure Sirhind for the Empire and the Company greatly embittered Ochterlony towards Amar Singh Thapa.
According to Jyoti Thapa Mani, the author of the book The Khukri Braves, Ochterlony and Amar Singh Thapa were rather frenemies. To keep an eye on each other, these two opposing generals even made their sons mit friends.
“Both Ochterlony and Thapa understood each other’s expansionist ambitions and loyalties to their respective countries,” Thapa Mani says.
Diary of a Nepali soldier in France, Shree Bhakta Khanal
Despite his reluctance to go to war with the British, Amar Singh Thapa knew that the war with the East India Company was inescapable. The Gorkhali’s ties with the Khalsa army of Punjab was weakening after the Sikhs were subdued with the Treaty of Perpetual Friendship with the Company. Amar Singh Thapa knew that a war would come at a hefty price for the over-extended Gorkhalis.
