Kham Magar

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Kham Magar is a minority ethnic group in Nepal, living in highland areas of Rapti 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 to Hindi. 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 3-4,000' meter ranges about 50 kilometers south of the main Himalayan 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.