Magar people

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Magar is an Sino-Tibetan ethnic group of Nepal and northern India whose homeland extends from the western and southern edges of the Dhaulagiri section of the high Himalayas range south to the prominent Mahabharat foothill range and eastward into the Gandaki basin. According to Nepal’s 2001 census, 1,622,421 people identified themselves as belonging to the Magar ethnolinguistic group, representing 7.14% of Nepal’s population and making them the largest indigenous ethnic group in the country. According to the 2001 census, 74.60% of ethnic Magar were Hindus and 24.47% were Budhists.

The Kham Magar who live in the rugged highlands of Rukum, Salyan, Rolpa and Pyuthan districts in Rapti Zone are thought to have migrated south from Siberia because of certain shamanistic practices and other cultural features. They claim to occupy the original Magar homeland in Nepal from whence migration to the south and east proceeded.

Of the 1,622,421 Magar people in Nepal, 770,116 speak a Magar language as their mother tongue. The Kham Magar of Rapti Zone speak Kham language. In Dolpa District, the Magar speak Tarali or Kaike language. The Magar languages are rooted in the Bodic branch of the Tibeto-Burman family.

In addition to shamanistic practices possibly brought from Siberia, the northern Magar practice Tibetan Buddhism in which their priest is known as Bhusal. The social process of Sanskritization has drawn southern Magar populations to develop a syncretic form of Hinduism that combines animist and Buddhist rituals. Hindu Magar villagers recognize three classes of priest; Rama, Jaisi and Dhami.

Generally speaking, Buddhist and Hindu practices are best developed among Magars living in contact with Tibetan Buddhists and Indo-Aryan Hindus respectively. They are less evident in Kham hinterlands particularly in rugged 3-4,000 meter ranges along the boundary between Rukum and Pyuthan-Rolpa districts. These hinterlands are geographically and therefore culturally isolated from the beaten tracks of transhimalayan trade routes and from rice-growing lowlands colonized by Hindu Indo-Aryans.

The Magar traditionally engage in subsistence agriculture, pastoralism, craftsmanship and day labor. The Magar are prominently represented in Nepal’s military, as well as in the British and Indian Gurkha regiments, along with the Gurung, Rai, and other martial ethnic groups from the hills of Nepal. Today, members of the Magar community are also employed as professionals in the fields of medicine, education, government service, law, journalism, development, and aviation.

Like other indigenous groups in Nepal, some members of the Magar community fought in the Nepalese Civil War, a Maoist insurrection launched in 1996 to topple Nepal's constitutional monarchy. On January 9, 2004, Maoist militants declared a revolutionary autonomous regional government, the Magar Autonomous Region, based in Rolpa District in west Nepal.