Each cast is reflected into the person’s surname in their IDs, so I had the question on why Mustangis do not have it in their names. Rigzin Gurung Lama told me it’s because when Nepal government assigned the territory to Nepal it gave it the cast “Gurung” for some reason I still need to find out.
It seems that it’s a requirement for each ethnic group to be reflected into a cast and have that cast reflected in the name of the individual.
Rigzin does not know but after speaking to some monks it seems it might be a twofold political reason. But they are not too sure either, so don’t take this as true:
- The Gurung cast is large and very nationalistic for Nepal, so there might be an interest for Nepal to claim them as a strongly Nepali cast. Remember that Nepal conquered Mustang after all!
- If you give it a small cast, China could swallow it up, since it’s in the very border.
So to me it feels like a twofold blessing-and-curse for Mustangis. One thing is for sure that they take healthy pride of being Mustangis, they don’t say a vague “Oh, Gurung is fine, whatever.”