A small Sikkim museum tells the big story of an unusual Gurkha hero

“If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is a Gurkha,” reads a widely-circulated line attributed to Sam Manekshaw, the eighth chief of staff of the Indian Army and the first Indian to be elevated to the rank of field marshal. Sam Bahadur, as Manekshaw was fondly known among his men, was the first Indian officer to command a Gurkha battalion, following the departure of the British from the Subcontinent in 1947. And though it is not clear when and where he made the statement – could it be apocryphal?  – it is used everywhere, from Bollywood films to internet forums, and newspaper pages to political speeches, as a go-to adage to describe the martial prowess of the “Gurkha race”.

It is, therefore, not a surprise to find the quotation on display at the Ganju Lama VC Museum in Sangmo village in the Indian state of Sikkim, in the northeastern Himalaya. The museum is a tribute to the eponymous war hero. When he was barely nineteen, Ganju Lama fought in the Second World War as part of the Burma Campaign, where he displayed such feats of courage that, in the space of a month, he won two military awards. The second of these was the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award that anyone in the British and Commonwealth forces can receive. Ganju remains the only Indian from the Gurkha regiments to win the Victoria Cross; the other Gurkhas who have won the medal have been from Nepal.