Caste/ethnicity in Nepal
According to Toni Hegon, the ethnic groups of Nepal can be classified into three communities:
- Original Nepalese tribes: Ethnic groups that exist in the country from very ancient period
- Major tribes: Newar, Rai, Limbu, Tamang, Gurung, Magar and Tharu. They are the hill people living in the hill region except for the Tharu who have been occupying the once malarial tropical terai plain since the unknown historical period.
- Minor tribes: Rajbansi, Satar, Sunuwar, Danuwar, Chepang, Kusunda, Thakali etc.
- Indo-Nepalese races
- Tibeto-Nepalese races
The promulgation of the National Code or Muluki Ain during Rana regime in 1854 determined the caste as a basis of people’s identity, social status and life chances. It laid out detailed codes for inter-caste behavior and specified punishments for their infringement. In this system, everyone was organized in terms of their relative ritual purity into the four broad varnas of the classical Hindu caste system: the Brahman priests, the Kshatriya kings and warriors, the Vaisya traders and businessmen and the Sudra peasants and laborers. Since its promulgation, the caste categorization in Nepal is taken as the primary organizing principle and the major determinant of social identity.
The dominant groups who spread throughout the country as landowners, priests, administrators, soldiers, and policemen, were the brahman and kshatriya castes. With them went associated low castes, principally blacksmiths, leather workers, and tailors. Together these groups are called parbatiyas (hill people) or pahadis. The tribal groups were in the middle, below the kshatriya, but above the “untouchable” artisans.
In 1963, the National Civil Code abolished caste-based discrimination. Since then, there have been numerous political decisions and policy measures to attempt to remove discriminatory practices. Nepal has implemented social inclusion and affirmative action policies to address gender, caste, and ethnic-based disparities by bringing poor and marginalized groups into the mainstream of development and launching the programs that target the most deprived and vulnerable groups.
The first people’s movement in Nepal in 1990 resulted the new ‘Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal 1990’ that defined Nepal as “a multi-ethnic, multilingual, democratic, independent, indivisible, sovereign, Hindu and Constitutional Monarchical Kingdom”. It stated that all citizens were ‘equal irrespective of religion, race, gender, caste, tribe or ideology.’ The constitution also gave all communities the right to preserve and promote their language, script and culture, educate children in their mother tongue and practice their own religion. The addition of words “multi-ethnic”, “multilingual” and “constitutional” was a genuinely new departure but the ethnic and religious activists were very disappointed that the word “Hindu” was still there.
People’s movement II (2006) also was driven not just for restoration of democracy, but more inclusive democracy and greater government attention to overcoming the persistent disparities between the dominant high caste and the rest of the country.
While dealing with the inter-cate inequality, the intra-caste inequality has been of lesser concern. The caste/ethnic based reservation quotas benefit mostly the Dalits and Janjatis from urban background, whose parents have already been the beneficiaries of the quotas in education and employment. Their parents are either civil servants or are working in the economically better private organizations in a more cosmopolitan setting than their rural counterparts. Thus, opportunities created by inclusive policies are also captured by the elites within the Dalits and Janjatis. Hence, social inclusion/exclusion still remains an unresolved issue in Nepal.