- Kham Magar
Kham Magar is a minority ethnic group in
Nepal , living in highland areas ofRapti Zone .Due to their oral mythology and certain shamanistic practices the group is believed to have originally migrated from
Siberia to Nepal, but to have lived in their present location for a long time.Their unwritten
Tibeto-Burman language is called "Khamkura" (Kham talk) which is actually a collection of about five dialects. "Khamkura" exists in a duality with "Khaskura", which is an archaic term for Nepali, an Indo-Aryan language closely related toHindi . The Karnali-Bheri basin to the west of the Kham highlands are the original home of the Khas in Nepal who eventually colonized the more productive lands to the east as well.Kham Magars have always been geographically isolated by living mostly in the basin of the
Rapti River which rises in 3000 to 4000 meter ranges about 50 kilometers south of the mainHimalayan Range . The Karnali-Bheri basin to the west and the Gandaki basin to the east both have multiple tributaries cutting through the highest Himalayan ranges, and have always been conduits for transhimalayan trade and discourse, funneling these valuable influences away from the Kham highlands.Similarly, the ruggedness of this region and possibly the fierceness of its inhabitants funneled away to the north and south, the west-to-east movement of Khas peoples who have come to dominate Nepal.
Despite all of this, the Kham Magars have a robust oral history and a sense of past greatness which has created grievances and made them receptive to the "maoist" (maobadi) movement that has opposed the Shah government, as well as the multiparty democracy that the Shah's have toyed with.
Development in the Rolpa and Rukum districts in Rapti Zone has been neglected by the Shah Government - even by Nepalese standards and so perhaps it is not surprising either that Rolpa became the base of the maobadi movement, or that Kham Magars are largely the rank and file of the movement's paramilitary forces.
External links
* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90421 Ethnologue profile]
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