Storytelling in prison: oral performance of a Gurkha prisoner of World War I

Abstract

Among the non-European military forces that fought on the European continent during World War I, the Gurkhas from Nepal emerged from the conflict having achieved wide renown for their bravery. In fact, it was not only on the battlefield where they demonstrated all their powers of endurance. A considerable number of Gurkhas were captured by the Germans while fighting for the British and were made prisoners of war. Though many of them succumbed to the harsh living conditions in foreign climes, some of them managed to leave behind memorials of their lives and their country in the form of voice recordings for German scholars who had a keen interest in collecting source material for their research into foreign cultures and languages. This paper briefly reviews the results of these scholarly activities regarding one Gurkha prisoner of war, Ait Singh Gurung, who was sent to Halbmondlager (Half Moon Camp). He never returned home but bequeathed to posterity a story and a poem that he recorded for the Germans. After a review of what we know about his life history, the two texts are examined to see what they reveal about Ait Singh’s personal experience and the history of Nepali literature and its print culture.