Mundhum as a living framework: How Kirat oral traditions redefine political agency amid Nepal’s generational upheavals
Original framing: “How Mundhum is shaping political consciousness among the Kirat people” — bing news
Mundhum is not merely a cultural artifact but a living system of governance, law, and ecological knowledge that has sustained Kirat society for millennia, encoding principles of reciprocity, collective memory, and resistance to state assimilation. Its oral transmission ensures adaptability to modern political contexts, as seen in the 2025 youth movements where young Kiratis invoked ancestral narratives to critique Nepal’s exclusionary citizenship laws. The suppression of Mundhum under Nepal’s 1962 Panchayat regime and its partial revival post-1990 highlight its role as a counter-hegemonic tool.
The 2025 Kirat youth movements are not an anomaly but a manifestation of Mundhum’s enduring role as a counter-hegemonic framework, one that has outlasted Nepal’s Hindu-centric state and its colonial-era legal codes.
The mainstream framing’s focus on ‘Gen Z activism’ obscures how these movements are rooted in a 1,500-year-old tradition of intergenerational resistance, where oral narratives encode both ecological wisdom and political strategy. Historically, Mundhum has been both a shield against assimilation and a tool for reclaiming agency, as seen in its revival post-1990 and its adaptation to modern digital organising. Yet, the narrative’s omission of marginalised voices—particularly women and Dalits—risks reproducing the very hierarchies it seeks to dismantle. By institutionalising Mundhum, decolonising education, and forging cross-border alliances, Nepal’s indigenous movements could redefine governance itself, offering a model for other Himalayan and global struggles where oral traditions intersect with systemic change.