| Total population |
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| 10,000,000 (estimated) |
| Languages |
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Indian Gorkha is a term used to describe the Nepali/Gorkhali-speaking citizens of India. This term tries to make a distinction between the citizens of Nepal and the Indian citizens of Gorkha ethnic group.
In the introduction to the book Gorkhas Imagined (2009), Prem Poddar makes an important point about the Gorkhas in Nepal versus the Gorkhas in India: "the word ‘Gorkha’ (or the neologism ‘Gorkhaness’) as a self-descriptive term ... has gained currency as a marker of difference for Nepalis living in India as opposed to their brethren and sistren in Nepal. Gorkhaliness then becomes synonymous with Indian Nepaleseness but invests only degrees of differential commonalities with Nepali Nepaliness and diasporic Nepaliness."[1]
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The Gorkhas of India are citizens of India as per the Gazette Notification on the issue of citizenship of Gorkhas of India.[2] However there are many Nepalese citizens of Nepal living in India as per the Indo-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship (1950) that permits "on a reciprocal basis, the nationals of one country in the territories of the other the same privileges in the matter of residence, ownership of property, participation in trade and commerce, movement and other privileges of a similar nature."[3]
It is estimated that there are about 10,000,000 Gorkhas in India but a true count will be possible after the India Census (2011) that is enumerating castes for the first time. In the Darjeeling district of West Bengal there is an estimated 900,000 Gorkhas. The Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal has about 400,000 Gorkhas. There are an estimated 500,000 Gorkhas in Sikkim - the only state in which a majority of the population are Gorkhas. In Northeast India (states of Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh), there are several million Gorkhas. A considerable number of Gorkhas also live in the north Indian states of Himachal Pradesh (200,000), Uttarakhand (600,000), Punjab (100,000), Jammu and Uttar Pradesh. Gorkhas also live in many Indian cities such as Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad.
The Gorkhas of India are a mixture of Indo-Aryan castes and Mongoloid-featured clans. Among the Indo-Aryan castes include the Bahun (Brahmins), Chhetri, Thakuri, Kami, Damai, Sarki, etc, and among the Mongoloid/hybrid group is a heterogenous mixture of various clans and ethnic groups, including Magar, Newar, Tamang, Gurung, Thami, Bhujel (Khawas), Rai (Khambu), Limbu (Subba), Sunuwar (Mukhia), Yakkha (Dewan), Sherpa, Yolmo, etc. Although each of them have their own language (belonging to the Tibeto-Burman or Indo-Burman languages which is rarely used at present), the lingua franca among the Gorkhas is Nepali language with its script in Devnagari. The Nepali language, which is one of the official languages of India, is the common binding thread of all Gorkha castes and clans.