Britain | Mountains to climb

What happened after thousands of Gurkhas moved to an English town?

After a bumpy start, Aldershot’s Nepalese are finding their feet

Why Aldershot? Because it’s there
|ALDERSHOT

“LITTLE KATHMANDU” is how some locals refer to Aldershot, south-west of London. A walk down the high street shows why. Some signs have been translated into Nepalese. Shopfronts bear notices in the same language, including Namaste Travel and Tours, which advertises cheap shipping to the Himalayas. The quiet Hampshire town and its surroundings are home to more than 6,000 Nepalese, mostly the families of former Gurkhas, recruited from Nepal by the British army.

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The Gurkhas have fought for Britain for more than 200 years. In that time they have lost more than 50,000 men in combat and earned 26 Victoria Crosses, the highest award for gallantry. Widely regarded as fearsome and skilled soldiers, 3,300 serve in the British army; others soldier for Brunei, as well as Nepal.

Many of those in Aldershot arrived following a successful campaign in 2009 to let Gurkhas who had retired before 1997 move to Britain with their families. The campaign’s figurehead was Joanna Lumley, an actress whose (British) father was a colonel in the 6th Gurkha Rifles. Since the campaign’s aim was achieved, the number of Nepalese-born people in Britain has more than doubled, to 65,000. Many have made a beeline for Aldershot, which has been the base for the Gurkha Brigade since 1997, when Hong Kong, its previous home, was handed back to China.

It has not been easy going. With no previous experience of Britain, some Nepalese were thrown by everything from the weather to traffic lights. Locals who were once enthusiastic about the Gurkhas became less keen as their numbers increased. Two years after the influx began, Aldershot’s MP at the time, Gerald Howarth, warned that it had placed “very considerable burdens” on local services. Complaints and rumours were spread via Facebook groups with names like “Joanna Lumley has fucked up Aldershot and Farnborough”. Some Nepalese have grown disillusioned, too. “After my children have finished their education, I think I will move back to Kathmandu,” says one ex-Gurkha.

But there are signs that Aldershot’s Nepalese are settling in. The Centre for Nepal Studies UK, a research organisation run by Nepalese in Britain, reports that the community in Aldershot is “charting the pathways” of social mobility. “There is an obvious improvement,” believes Chandra Laksamba, co-author of a study of the community in nearby Farnborough. He found that second-generation Nepalese were increasingly getting managerial-level jobs and places at university.

There has been more cultural integration, too. Tanka Rana, who owns a grand local restaurant, the Palace, is from a family of Gurkhas. After living in England for 18 years, he and his family have adopted local customs, swapping Nepalese dress for jeans and T-shirts, and celebrating Christmas. Each year Mr Rana’s uncle and aunt roast a turkey for the family—they taught themselves to cook it properly, he says, with all the trimmings.

Fighting between gangs of Nepalese and British teenagers used to be common. In 2007 Alderwood school, attended by many Nepalese children, was considered by the schools inspectorate to be merely “satisfactory” (translation: it “used to be a dump”, in the words of one local parent). It is now judged “outstanding”. The school says that the performance of Nepalese students has improved and that racist incidents between pupils have become rarer. In 2013 there were ten such incidents; in the past year there have been three.

Sport has helped to bring residents together. A few years ago Richard Cooper, a local social worker, created United Rushmoor, a group for residents of all nationalities in the borough to play football. The group has since disbanded as it is no longer needed, Mr Cooper says. An annual football tournament in Aldershot, the Gurkha Cup, also aims to promote integration. Yoz Gurung, a volunteer, claims that it attracts around 15,000 spectators a year, most of them Nepalese.

Not all is rosy. In July 2017 Gamar Gurung, a 78-year-old who had retired from the Gurkhas in 1969 and moved to Aldershot in 2010, committed suicide. The inquest heard that he had felt homesick. Some British locals are still hostile to the newcomers. Last year a sticker reading “We’re having a party when Lumley dies” was left on a train. Yet the council says such incidents are rarer. Aldershot’s new MP, Leo Docherty, says that despite “teething problems” his Nepalese constituents represent a “tremendous success story”. Britain’s retired Gurkhas may be marching towards better days.

Correction (November 27th 2018): This article previously stated that road signs in Aldershot had been translated into Nepalese. Although the town has many signs in Nepalese, no official road signs have been translated. This has been corrected.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Mountains to climb"

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