The State's Strategic Policy: Magar, Gurung, and the Crisis of 'Kirat' Identity

The crisis of the 'Kirat' identity was not a natural evolutionary process. It was a structural division strategically engineered by the contemporary state to serve its military expansion, martial needs, and the exercise of power. While the Magars' and Gurungs' choice to undergo Sanskritization to get closer to the state was a historical compulsion for their survival at the time, the state deliberately alienated them from their ancestral umbrella by turning the word 'Kirat' into a symbol of barbarism and rebellion. Until Nepali historiography ruthlessly dissects this strategic and psychological 'divide and rule' policy of the Gorkhali state, the true face of the obscured, broader Kirat history will never fully come to light.