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Kham Magar is a minority ethnic group in Nepal, living in highland areas of Rapti Zone and in adjacent parts of Bheri, Dhaulagiri and Karnali Zones.
Due to their oral mythology and distinctive shamanistic practices the group is thought to have originally migrated from Siberia to Nepal, but to have lived in their present location for a long time. The more Hinduized Magar ethnic group appears to have split off and followed the precursors of the Shah regime as they migrated east into the Gandaki basin (notably the petty kingdom of Gorkha) and from there conquering and unifying all of Nepal.
The unwritten Tibeto-Burman language of Kham Magars is called Khamkura (Kham talk) which includes about five local dialects. It exists in duality with Khaskura, which is an archaic term for Nepali, just as Kham Magars originally formed a duality with Khas who are indo-european peoples living further west in the Karnali-Bheri basin. However the Khas went on to dominate modern Nepal while the Kham fell into relative obscurity.
Kham history is largely one of isolation. The Rapti basin begins in rugged 3000 to 4000 meter ridges some 50 kilometers south of the Dhaulagiri range. Transhimalayan trade and discourse funneled to the west along the Karnali-Bheri or to the east along the Gandaki. Both river systems have historic trade routes along tributaries cutting through the highest Himalaya ranges. Similarly the ruggedness of the Rapti highlands and perhaps also the fierceness of the people deflected the eastward migration of Khas people that became so central to Nepal's history. The easiest routes would have been to the south along the less rugged Mahabharat Range or or to the north by going up Dhorpatan valley, over a low pass and down the Myagdi river to its confluence with the Kali Gandaki.
The Khas had already achieved political dominance in the Karnali basin but they were drawn eastward beyond Kham lands to the Gandaki basin because it was closer to the Bay of Bengal which meant more summer rainfall, erosion down to lower average elevations over time on the geological scale and better soil. For all these Gandaki lands were better suited to cultivating the rice that was the Khas dietary mainstay. The Khas then gained political ascendancy in the Gandaki basin. Parallel Gandaki and Karnali confederations developed. The Kham highlands became a buffer zone between them; an impoverished and remote area hardly worth contesting. Kham isolation only accelerated after a Khas ruler of the Gorkha principality named Prithvi Narayan Shah consolidated both confederations and others into modern Nepal and moved the political focus to Kathmandu more than a week's journey east of the Kham homeland. Shares of Prithvi's spoils went to ethnic groups that made up his armies, notably Gurungs and the more eastern Magars. Kham Magars were marginal to his campaigns and did not benefit.
Kham isolation, official neglect, underdevelopment and poverty essentially continued through the 19th and 20th centuries. The main export was manpower as Gurkha merceneries to the British and Indian armies, or whatever other employment opportunities could be found for largely uneducated and unskilled labor. Population growth led to chronic food deficits that were addressed by grain imports bought dearly with distant work at low wages. As economic development brought schools electricity, motor roads, hospitals and a wider range of consumer goods to surrounding areas, few benefits trickled up into the highlands and contrasts became even more invidious. Instead, motor transport diminished porterage employment. Cultivating hemp and processing it into charas (hashish) lost standing as an income generator after international pressure persuaded the national government to abandon its monopoly drug business and close government stores where those so inclined could freely purchase what was illegal in most of the world. There were initiatives to replace the indigenous hallucinogen industry with cultivating a range of subtropical-to-temperate fruit and produce. Unfortunately transport infrastructure reaching the Kham highlands was too crude to carry perishable goods to market. Kham Magars also traditionally practiced transhumance by grazing cattle, sheep and goats in summer pastures in subalpine and alpine pastures to the north and working their way down to winter pastures in the Dang-Deukhuri valleys. This produced some income from ghee, wool, hides and goats sold on the hoof to be butchered locally, but cheesemaking possibilities were not developed. In any case the carrying capacity of pastures accessible to the Kham was finite.
Despite adversity Kham Magars retained a robust oral history and a sense of past greatness which created grievances and made them receptive to the Maobadi (Maoist) movement that opposed the Shah regime in the Nepalese Civil War and even the multiparty democracy that the Shahs toyed with. Rolpa district in the center of the Kham homelands became known as the "heartland" of the movement and Kham Magars were prominent as footsoldiers of its guerilla forces.
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