This paper is aimed at understanding the position of the migrant Nepali labourer in colonial India with special reference to the hill station of Darjeeling. In the popular domain the image of migrant Nepali labourers in India remains to be that of a “joyous” lot, with ‘khukeries tuck in their belts’, ‘more than half intoxicated’, and yet “they are even in their dirt picturesque”. Enthralled by such populist imagery we often forget the significant contribution of these labourers towards the economy, infrastructure, security, and culture of the subcontinent. No other phenomenon highlights their contribution better than the birth of the hill stations in the Himalayas. Hills stations which have always acted as a crucial part of the economic, and political lives of both colonial and independent India, were indeed the products of the labour of these Nepali migrant workers. They were the ones who transformed the hills into a space that could be used as a sanatorium, a summer place, a centre for a thriving plantation economy, and even as provincial capitals. This is more clearly encountered in the case of colonial Darjeeling. It was these migrant labourers who were responsible for laying the railway lines, building the roads, and other infrastructure, working the tea plantations, and even serving the seasonal sojourner at the hotels. In other words, it was they who made Darjeeling into what it was by the end of the 19th century. However, despite such a crucial role played by them, they had to face systematic and systemic erasure from the narrative of the region. Their existence was reduced to mere picturesque elements in a picturesque landscape. This is where the paper intervenes. It tries to look at the long-term lived history of labour migration from Nepal and locate the migrant Nepali labourer within the broader narrative of Darjeeling. In order to do so, this paper will focus on three interrelated processes. First, through the exploration of colonial archives it will uncover the pivotal role of the Nepali labourer in building the town and the plantation economy centred around it. Second, it tries to understand the reasons and the strategies used by the different elite positions in colonial society to invisiblize the presence of these labourers. For the purpose, this paper is going to focus on two sections of Darjeeling’s elite population – the colonizer, and the upper middle- class Bengali bhadralok. This section will be relying on a critical examination of guidebooks, newspaper articles, memoirs, and other creative literature written by the colonizer and the Bengali bhadralok. Besides those literary evidences it is also going to examine the visual representations of the Nepali worker, emanating from these elite sections. The final section of the paper will be dealing with how these labourers over time reclaimed their relationship with the product of their labour – the town of Darjeeling- in the face of constant alienation of labour. This will be based on a critical reading of stories, literature and music produced and reproduced by these migrant labourers and/or their descendants.