Socio-Economic Status of a Magar Community:A Case Study of Birendranagar VDC, Chitwan, Nepal

Abstract

Socially and culturally Magars are considered to be far lagged behind because ofdifferent factors, which are definitely rather dynamic in nature and the condition ofthese people is also changing, though all the changes do not take the positive trend.Magars who have written its own history through their bravery in many wars andhave been honored the image of honesty. These people live primarily in the jungle ornearby the jungle establishing own community. They use the resources found in thejungle and they celebrate many ceremonies worshipping the nature. These people arevery simple and honest who do subsistence farming for their livings and they mostlyuneducated, besides some portions of new generation, and they do not have know-howfor being commercialized. They have no gender discrimination, which sometimesseems to raise a question, why could not the Hindu acculturation affect their attitudeson genders? As such, the present study attempted to discover the interplay of different variables fordeciding the socio-economic status of Magar (Pun) of the study area, BirendranagarVDC, Chitawan, it also tried to illustrate some peculiarities culturally to other ethnicgroups and helped seekers to understand the historical background (origin) and themythology of Magars (Pun). For the study, survey was done at threewards, 5, 8, and9 and households surveyed were 15, 20, and 15 in a random sampling respectively.For the part of mythology and culture, different people were interviewed for thepurpose of cross validation and for the part historical background secondary sourceshave been taken. Coded and analyzed the data taken, interpretation was done throughdifferent sophisticated statistical tools. The results were not the exact as it had been assumed; they were found to have goodawareness level and for the awareness level, access to the media is the main reasonbehind. Their economic level was found to be very dependent upon interveningvariables like rain falling, fertility of the lands, geo-physical of the land et cetera sothe condition of thepeople, though sufficient for the majority, was found to be verysensible. At the time of the survey, many fields were found without plantation and thereason was no rain fall which means there will be low sufficiency of food that year.Religion has beenseparately discussed and due to the missing of the history, theycannot be claimed to be aboriginal Hindus; Buddhists neither.Social status was alsofound to be good because the awareness level found to be good and the real practiceswere enough to validate their responses. Other social aspects of the community werefound to have some pitfalls which contributed for the present status of Magar peopleunder domination of Brahmanism; these were because of the loss of own identity interms of language factor and cultural factors (religion and many ceremonies) so thatthe dominant factor never realized in practice the community to be different than them(for example, Newar community of Kathmandu valley has its own identity). Ethnic conflict might be possible infuture, if all ethnic groups are not well-addressed.Through the research, a kind of against-feelings towards the Brahmans and Chhetriswas found and might become full fledged because these people are simple and mostlyuneducated and deprived so they caneasily manipulated. Pokhareli people have beennearly shaping into full-fledged.