Rumours about the Gurkhas in the Malvinas/Falklands War. An anthropological enquiry into the representations of the Gurkha enemy in Argentina [full version in Nepali]

HÉCTOR PEDRO MUNARETTO

Tin Farak Vishaya

Shikha Books

Lugar: Katmandú; Año: 2023; p. 20 - 30

Since the beginning of my research on the Malvinas/Falklands war in 2013, the ethnicity of the soldiers of the armed forces in that conflict has occupied an increasingly important place in my academic agenda. Particularly because Argentina is still a country where the identities of indigenous peoples remain at a hidden backstage, both in the public and academic arenas. Even in a discipline such as social anthropology, which owes its origins to native peoples around the world (but, most certainly, not just that), the thematic diversification of research is clearly biased against indigenous issues. As far as the war is concerned, progress can be seen in certain activist organisations, which have begun to bring the issue to the fore. In spite of the Argentine government?s gradual improvement of pensions and social benefits, many indigenous ex-combatants3 find it twice as hard ─if they succeed at all─ to obtain what their non-indigenous peers have obtained: access to housing, provincial pensions, work posts, not to mention the racial discrimination they still face.Event though 38 years have passed since the outbreak of the conflict, the wounds can still be seen in the lives of the men and families who still carry them. It is from these questions and journeys that I wonder about the mirror of this subject and peoples: what happened in analogous terms on the British side?4 While in every war it is usual for victors and vanquished to each have their own version of events, I have always been struck by the underlying ─but unstoppable─ wave of rumours surrounding the quintessential otherness within the British armed forces: the regiments of Nepalese serving the Crown, better known as Gurkhas5.The methodology implemented for this text was based on qualitative ethnographic work using in-depth interviews, participant observation and archival work, both in Argentina and the UK6. The aim will be to present glimpses of what people in Argentina think, feel and know about the Gurkha of the Malvinas/Falklands War only in an exploratory fashion, so as to provide the reader with triggers for further questions from which to pursue the task of in-depth research. The field data will be structured in three moments: the pre-war, the war process, and the post-war period up to the present day.