Travelling Dwellers: Nepalese Lahure in Singapore
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TRAVELLING DWELLERS: NEPALESE LAHURE IN SINGAPORE HEMA KIRUPPALINI (B.History.(Hons),NUS) A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES PROGRAMME NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2010 Acknowledgements I would like to thank God for giving me the strength and enthusiasm throughout the period of my Masters. I would like to thank the South Asian Studies Programme at NUS for giving me the opportunity to pursue this research. Despite the sensitivities pertaining to the topic, I was encouraged to carry forth the research project, and the department staff never failed to provide constructive feedback. I am very fortunate to have had two experienced supervisors – A/P Kripa Sridharan and Dr Rajesh Rai. I would like to thank A/P Kripa Sridharan for her constructive comments, her flexibility in allowing me to develop my ideas, and her support to my various appeals. I would also like to thank Dr Rajesh Rai for his patience in walking through all my drafts page by page, and for his support in giving me the freedom to critically craft my ideas. I would like to extend my thanks to Dr Andrea Pinkney for patiently addressing all my queries, and enduring my endless questions on the technical aspects concerning the thesis. I am deeply grateful to all my informants. In Nepal, I am sincerely thankful to all the Singapore lāhure families who despite their unfamiliarity with me, warmly welcomed me into their homes and openly shared their stories with me. Without them this thesis would not have been possible. I would like to thank SGT Tulsi Prasad Gurung, who despite of his leg injury, went the extra mile to help me, and for continuing to encourage me via email after I returned to Singapore. I will always remember Tek Gurung and INSP Budhi Bahadur Gurung for taking me on their respective motorbikes and visiting the various people and places that were central to my thesis. I also want to express my gratitude to all the lāhure wives, and the Singapore bhānjās and bhānjīs for their warmth, hospitality and candid interviews. I am especially thankful to ‘anonymous bhānjā 1’ for all his help and support. I am also indebted to all the other Nepalese who furnished me with the relevant data. I would like to thank each and every executive committee member of the Nepalese Singapore Society for welcoming me to all their events, and for spending hours giving me an interview. I am grateful to all the other informants in Singapore for being forthcoming in their insights and feelings despite the extensive interview sessions. I would like to especially thank Uncle Tul Bahadur Thapa for taking me on a tour around Portsdown area, and patiently explaining the early history of the Gurkhas in Singapore. Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents K.Kiruppalini and K.Rajarani, and sisters Mukhila and Sivashangari, for their faith in my research, for supporting me in countless ways, and for reading through my drafts. I will be eternally grateful to Guru ji Laxminath Shrestha for his dedication in teaching me Nepali, for his commitment in translating several documents, and for his kind hospitality while I stayed with his family in Nepal. Also importantly, I would like to thank my all my friends, in particular Rajini Rai, Mamta Sachan Kumar, and Yogesh Mehta, for bearing the brunt of all my stress, for providing me with all the technical assistance, for editing my drafts, and for simply listening to the endless rattles throughout my research journey. i Table of Contents Introduction Prelude ............................................................................................................................ 1 The Lāhures of Nepal ..................................................................................................... 3 Situating the Thesis ......................................................................................................... 4 Literature Review............................................................................................................ 7 Methodology ................................................................................................................. 16 Structure of the Thesis .................................................................................................. 22 Chapter 1 - Quasi-Diaspora: A Unique “Settlement” in Singapore 1.1: Situating the Nepalese in Singapore’s Three-Pronged Foreigner Taxonomy ....... 24 1.2: Theoretical Insights from Transnationalism and Diaspora Studies ....................... 32 1.3: Situating the Nepalese in Contemporary Theoretical Frameworks ....................... 37 1.4: A Nepali Quasi-Diaspora in Singapore? ................................................................ 52 Chapter 2 - The Gurkha Contingent and their Contingencies 2.1: The Antecedents of Lāhure Migration................................................................... 59 2.2: Historicizing the Gurkha Contingent in Singapore................................................ 70 2.3: Policing the Foreigner Positionality of Gurkhas in Singapore The Development of the Mount Vernon Camp: Continuities and Changes .......... 87 ‘Disciplining’ the Gurkha Contingent ................................................................. 100 2.4: Repatriation to Nepal: Resisting the Resonance of Singapore Resettling in Nepal ............................................................................................... 106 Dissident Voices: “Crossing” the Neutrality Rhetoric of the State ..................... 109 2.5: From Campers to Citizens: The Anomaly of Singaporean Gurkha Families ...... 113 ii Chapter 3 - The Advent of the New Lāhures: A part or apart from Singapore? 3.1: Profile of the New Lāhures .................................................................................. 122 3.2: Historicizing the New Lāhures: State Polices, Social Networks and Agents Nepal’s State Polices: Liberalization towards Foreign Employment .................. 129 Singapore’s State Polices: Defining the New Lāhures Migration Pattern ........... 131 Social Networks in Ethnic Nepalese Restaurants ................................................ 136 Unscrupulous Agents and Nepalese ‘Foreign Students’ ...................................... 141 Nepalese Professionals as Self-Agents: Singapore’s ‘Foreign Talent’................ 146 3.3: A Nascent Nepalese Community in Singapore................................................... 149 Chapter 4 - Travelling Dwellers Traversing their Multiple Identities 4.1: Sustaining a Singapore Identity in Nepal Lāhures: Topophilic Bond towards Singapore ..................................................... 157 Lāhure Children: Embrace or Efface Dual Identities? ......................................... 162 Lahure Wives: “Part of me is still in Singapore...” .............................................. 168 4.2: Sustaining a Nepali Identity in Singapore Diversity in Conceiving Nepali-ness ..................... 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Negotiating a Misconceived Gurkha Identity in Singapore ................................. 174 Are you Chinese, Malay or Indian? : “Appearing” to Adapt ............................... 181 Integrating through Inter-Marriage ...................................................................... 184 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 188 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 198 Appendix 1: The British Army’s Brigade of Gurkhas in Singapore ............................. 216 Appendix 2 : ‘Illegal’ Recruitment of Gurkhas to Singapore ........................................ 219 Appendix 3 : Newspaper Articles on the Gurkhas ........................................................ 222 Appendix 4 : Gurkhas in Singapore and Malaysia: A Comparative Perspective ......... 226 Appendix 5 : Newspaper article on Inter-Marriage ....................................................... 228 iii Summary This thesis aims to historicize the Nepalese community in Singapore by examining the two distinct groups of Nepalese that “reside” in Singapore. In this context, community is defined as a group of individuals who hail from the same country, share the same nationality, have similar shared histories, and speak the same language albeit their different regional, sub-linguistic, ethnic, and religious orientations. The first group refers to the six decade long movement of the Nepali Gurkhas - lāhures - that is distinguished by a British colonial heritage. The second group refers to the recent arrival of the new lāhures - Nepali professionals, restaurateurs, middle-skilled workers, students - over the last twenty years. In general, there is a dearth of scholarly literature pertaining to this minority community. Formed under the Singapore Police Force, the Gurkha Contingent’s guarding role in Singapore is well-known. However, there is a considerable lacuna in the socio-political study of the Gurkha Contingent. The lahures have been historically represented as hardy, loyal and brave, and this has subsequently fed a discourse that extols a stereotypic image of them. In the process of conditioning the identity of the lahures, they have come to function as a gated community in Singapore and it is within this paradigm of thought that stories of heroism intersect with the anxieties of repatriation and transience. In light of the policy secrecy surrounding the data pertaining to the