ABSTRACT
The chapter focuses on the feelings of those who are left behind by the lahure and the disruption of life in Nepal created by the long-term and uncertain absence. It explores the Gurkha institution as a symbol and return to the issue of the economic benefits versus perceived symbolic cost to the nation. The Gurkha Justice Campaign focused on the right to settle in the UK, but not on the right to equal pension. The British colonial politics of race and its conflation with caste and ethnic groups in Nepal, the colonial construction of the Gurkhas has, over time, also gained political importance as an identity marker for those ethnic groups that were originally defined as martial by the British. These ethnic groups have been referred to as adivasi janajati since the formation of Nepal Janajati Mahasangh in 1990. Native Nepali literary voices about the lahure provide a very different portrait than the stereotypical image that is constructed in postcolonial discourse.
