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3rd Gorkha Rifles

regiment of the Indian Army

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJan 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ3630700 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 3rd Gorkha Rifles or Third Gorkha Rifles, abbreviated as 3 GR is an Indian Army infantry regiment. It was originally a Gurkha regiment of the British Indian Army formed in 1815. This regiment recruit mainly Magars and Gurung tribes. They were present at a number of actions and wars including the siege of Delhi in 1857 to the First and Second World Wars. After the Partition of India in 1947 the regiment was one of the six Gorkha regiments transferred to the Indian Army as part of the Tripartite Agreement signed between India, Nepal and Britain at the time of Indian independence. Prior to independence, the regiment was known as the 3rd Queen Alexandra's Own Gurkha Rifles. In 1950 the regiment's title was changed to 3rd Gorkha Rifles. Since 1947 the regiment has participated in a number of conflicts including the 1947 and 1971 wars against Pakistan.

History

Formation to 1885

The regiment was raised during the Gurkha War by Sir Robert Colquhoun on 24 April 1815 as the Kemaoon Battalion. It did not consist entirely of Gurkhas but of men from Kumaon and Garhwal.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “3rd Gorkha Rifles” is regiment of the Indian Army. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Gorkha, Rifles and regiment, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1815, 1857, 1947, 1950—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Gorkha, Rifles and regiment is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “regiment of the Indian Army” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3630700. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1815, 1857, 1947 and 1950.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Search vocabulary
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “3rd Gorkha Rifles”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 3rd Gorkha Rifles primary sources, 3rd Gorkha Rifles archive and Gorkha research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “3rd Gorkha Rifles” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.