Nepal's Caste System: History, Tribe Ranks and Occupations

In Nepal, the word caste is used to mean surname. This was a caste system where the tribe was known by the surname, and the rank was known by the tribe. It is a status system that divided people by each tribe based on the value of Varna (status given by a Hindu god), fixed their occupations, categorised them into ranks, and made them hereditary; it cannot exist without the Hindu faith. For that reason, oppression also occurred, which forced indigenous people to convert to Hinduism. This article explains in detail the history of such a Nepalese caste system, the hierarchy of the tribes, occupations for each rank, and the Dalit problem.

Basic Principle of the Caste System: Hierarchy of Varna (Rank)

The caste system is a system that classified people into four Varnas (ranks) and those who are not allowed into a Varna, and made this hereditary. First, the Varnas are described below in order of hierarchy.

1. Brahmin: The Varna that the god is said to have created from the mouth of a primitive man
2. Kshatriya: The Varna that the god is said to have created from the arms of a primitive man
3. Vaishya: The Varna that the god is said to have created from the thighs of a primitive man
4. Shudra: The Varna that the god is said to have created from the feet of a primitive man
5. Outside Varna: People who are not allowed into a Varna

As you can understand from the value that status was created by the god, it is, in other words, a set with the Hindu faith. Therefore, status did not change based on assets. Next, I will write the details of each Varna.

Tribes and Their Assigned Occupations in Each Rank

Brahmin (Bahun)

The Varna of priests and educators. They take on roles such as technocrats, the police, the armed police, scholars, politicians, researchers, teachers, and (sometimes high-ranking military officers). However, jobs were not infinite, and there were many poor farmers. If they obtained a job, they tended to become wealthy, and many people had connections to important positions, so it was easier for them to receive administrative procedures quickly. The Bahun Tribe falls under this Varna.

Kshatriya (Chhetri)

The Varna of warriors. Many are in military-related roles such as soldiers, royalty, and officials. Like the Brahmins, they also produced politicians. The Chhetri Tribe and Thakuri Tribe are in this Varna.

Vaishya

The Varna of farmers, merchants, and the self-employed, which is often interpreted as a business caste. It includes the Thakali Tribe, Gurung Tribe, Magar Tribe, Rai Tribe, Limbu Tribe, and others. In Hinduism, managing money itself was not something disliked; however, the act of "the greedy pursuit of wealth through trade without ethics," which is different in nature, was mainly carried out by the Vaishya, the merchant rank. Furthermore, the Gurkha soldiers who are active as foreign mercenaries in modern Nepal are, in fact, not from Kshatriya tribes, but are mostly comprised of mountain minority groups such as the Gurung Tribe, Magar Tribe, Rai Tribe, and Limbu Tribe of the Vaishya.

Shudra

The lowest Varna, which includes specialised fields essential to daily life, such as ironwork (including weapon makers), oil refining, the leather and leather shoe industry, musical craftsmen, laundry workers, pottery craftsmen, tailors, cleaners, and heavy labour. They were exposed to discrimination, such as being forbidden from sharing water, forbidden from handing over living things, forbidden from learning the law, and forbidden from entering Hindu temples.

Out of Varna

People considered to be the lowest rank who were not even allowed into a Varna.

Characteristics seen in the Varna system include the following.

• While many of the Bahun Tribe are in the police, many of the Chhetri Tribe are in the military.
• There is a sense of high and low status in occupations, and there is a concept of suitable occupations for each rank.
• Among the artisan ranks considered lower, many members of the castes that handle precious metals are wealthy.
• The lower ranks were considered impure, and the sharing of water and the handing over of raw food were forbidden.
• The lower ranks were forbidden from studying the law.

Among those counted in the Varna, the Shudra is the lowest rank; however, there is an Outside Varna (commonly called the outer caste) prepared below them who are not even counted as a Varna, and because the Shudra and people of the Outside Varna received discriminatory treatment, they are collectively called Dalit in the present day. Dalit is a new word created to avoid calling discriminated people by discriminatory names.

One point to note about occupations is that everyone in Nepal was engaged in self-sufficient farming. What the Varna and occupations represent is merely that if they were to take a job, they were supposed to take the occupations mentioned above; it does not mean that jobs were always provided without limit for each rank. In fact, even in the priest rank, most people lived a poor life through farming on a daily basis. Furthermore, because the concepts of purity and impurity exist, it still lingers in the subconscious today; for example, at parties or other places where various castes gather randomly, the food served is often prepared by the upper castes. Even now in the 21st century, there are still places in rural villages where wells are built separately by caste. Furthermore, not only the Dalit problem, but because occupations are fixed for each Varna, it can be said that even among the general public, there were many cases where talented people could not enter appropriate occupational fields because their Varna was different, or they could not even realise their own talent because educational opportunities were not provided in the first place. It can be said that this was a state where the potential of each citizen was sealed, and the opportunity for the country to find unknown possibilities was suppressed.

The History of the Caste System in Nepal

It is believed that the caste system spread to the land of Nepal along with the settlement of Hindus in ancient times. Of course, that was an era when neither the current country of Nepal nor the concept of territory yet existed. In the foothills of the Himalayas, which could be described as a safe and remote region in the sense that it was relatively difficult for enemies to invade, various powers formed small nations or regional alliances in different places, and there were many tribes who practised faiths other than Hinduism, such as Buddhist tribes and Kirat tribes, but it is natural that the long-term, dispersed settlers of Hindus from the southern plains side became the largest population.

Even if Hindu people had their own hierarchical system called the caste system in the early stages, for other ethnic groups, they were merely people with different customs, and no matter how much the Hindu side looked down on others, such local rules had no effect and nobody listened to them. However, when the number of Hindu people gradually increased and they became surrounded, the situation changed. Considering that other ethnic groups, who intended to remain outside the Hindu group, found themselves as good as inside Hindu society before they knew it, and finally the Hindu people became the rulers of the land and announced that the caste system was the rule of the country, it must have been a nuisance for the other ethnic groups.

The Gorkha Kingdom, a Hindu state located deep in the mountains of central Nepal, repeatedly invaded to the west and east during the 18th century, subjugating the surrounding Magar Tribe and the Newar Tribe of the Kathmandu Valley, and founded the Kingdom of Nepal, which occupies the current territory, in 1768. The Gorkha King, a Hindu believer, seemed to have a particularly strong emotional attachment to Hinduism (partly due to the situation where Islamic forces of the Mughal Empire had become the rulers in the northern half of the Indian subcontinent at that time), and when he founded Nepal, he went so far as to boast that "this is now truly the last land where Hindu doctrine is practised," and forced a stratified society based on Hindu legal codes upon the subjects. Since then, time passed, and in 1854, even as the world situation was modernising, the caste system was actually explicitly stated in the Muluki Ain, the constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal.

Jang Bahadur Rana (the Prime Minister), the central figure who created the Muluki Ain of 1854 (the Constitution of Nepal at that time), was a person who had also conducted an inspection of Europe and must have encountered the new concepts of "nationals" and the "state", but in the newly created constitution, he explicitly stated the caste system instead of its abolition. Because caste is tied to faith, it seems that even after inspecting Europe, he could not break free from the thinking of perceiving the structure of society through caste and race.

Incidentally, around 1854, under the situation where the West was sweeping the world, let us also look at Japan as an example of a country that was making contrasting movements. At that time, Japan was in the final years of the Edo period. Witnessing the advanced nature of the Great Powers, people began to emerge who imitated the new systems of "nationals" and the "state". Shown the state of a world oppressed by Europe and America, and presented with the powerful military strength of the West, they harboured a sense of crisis that it could be their own fate tomorrow, while at the same time showing interest in the potential for national growth by introducing modern systems. Consequently, they avoided internal conflict, achieved the Restoration by returning political power to the Emperor and surrendering Edo Castle without bloodshed, and the ruling class themselves brought the samurai society to an end. The way of perceiving the global situation differs this much depending on the country.

Further Unofficial Caste Systems Exist within Each Tribe

Now, apart from the official version of the caste system for the whole of Nepal, there are also unique caste systems within each ethnic group. Even among the minority Thakali Tribe and Gurung Tribe, groups based on surnames existed and there was a hierarchy. Among them, those who had relatively large populations and held minutely subdivided caste systems were the Newar Tribe and the Hindus of the Terai plains (Madhesi). For example, although the Newar Tribe belongs to the middle-class Vaishya in the caste system of Nepal, there are ranks such as Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra, and outer-caste that are valid only within the Newar. Since the population of the indigenous Newar people is large in Kathmandu, one often encounters them, and it tends to be confusing when in Kathmandu, but even if there is a Newar person who says he is a Brahmin, he is referring to the rank within the Newar Tribe, and there is no compatibility with the caste system of Nepal as a whole. The hierarchy of the Madhesi people of the Terai plains is similar. Because each ethnic group in Nepal has a strong sense of tribal identity, such intra-tribal caste hierarchies exist to this day.

Reasons why caste awareness does not disappear in Nepal

The fact that long-standing caste systems have ingrained customs with different lifestyles for each rank, to the extent that it is still necessary to have a certain amount of knowledge when people from different former ranks interact, is the reason why caste awareness does not disappear. In other words, despite the fact that people who view caste for discriminatory reasons have significantly decreased in Nepal, the reason why caste awareness itself shows no sign of disappearing at all is that the way of living differs depending on the caste. Because the tribes did not mix due to the caste system, 123 languages still remain in Nepal today; for example, the Tamang Tribe and Magar Tribe each have their own calendars and celebrate the New Year on different days from other castes, or the Bahun Caste do not eat buffalo or pork, while the Newar Tribe eat buffalo and drink their own alcohol without worrying about public gaze; that is to say, unlike for discriminatory meanings, knowledge of the other person's caste is necessary for socialising. In the first place, since there are unique surnames for each tribe, people can know the tribe and even the rank of the other person by their surname. The situation where having prior knowledge about caste is no exaggeration to call common sense is the reason why caste awareness does not decline at all in Nepal.

Specific examples of Dalit discrimination in Nepal

The caste system was officially abolished in 1964, but as evidence that it continued to remain in society, there is the fact that discrimination against Dalits (the discriminated class) became illegal in 2011, about half a century after the abolition of the caste system, and I think you can see how much this status system lingers on. Severe discrimination and violence against the people collectively called Dalits, who were once forced into low ranks, still occur occasionally today.

In fact, the word Dalit itself is not a discriminatory term, but a new word created in order not to call the discriminated class by discriminatory names. Dalits were considered "outside the hierarchy" and were not granted equal rights. Specifically, they were exposed to severe discrimination such as the following.

• Dalits, who were prohibited from sharing water, were also forbidden from touching public wells used for daily living; incidents of lynching frequently occurred if they were forced to use them.
• Despite being Hindus, they were not permitted to enter Hindu temples.
• Marriage with members of other varnas was strictly prohibited.
• Lower-caste individuals faced severe punishment or lynching if they were found to have been involved with women from higher castes.
• "Untouchability" literally meant that physical contact was forbidden. If contact occurred, members of higher classes would perform purification rituals, such as bathing or washing the area where the person had sat. Even occupying the same space was met with aversion, often leading to reprimands or the higher-caste person physically distancing themselves.
• In contrast, higher-caste men often engaged in physical contact with lower-caste women, a dynamic frequently seen in specific marginalized groups designated for exploitation.
• Dalit women were frequently subjected to sexual violence and experienced numerous forms of mental and physical violations.

Well, when it reaches this point, it goes beyond being ridiculous to a level where it causes hindrance to the lives of both parties. Because the caste system adjusted punishments according to status, unreasonably demoted people, gave rise to prejudice, left them neglected with indifference, or harshly oppressed them and trapped them in a negative spiral, it continues to cause the alienation of people's hearts and the stagnation of social advancement even today.

Policies and trends towards the eradication of Dalit discrimination

Discrimination and violence against Dalits still happen sometimes and become news, but progress can be seen in the fact that these are now viewed as problems. To solve the issues of Dalits, who were not treated as humans and were exposed to further violence for centuries with no one to help even when they were hurt or collapsed, the government and international organisations are now taking action. According to a survey in 2011, the Dalit population in Nepal was 3.6 million, but it is thought that the actual number is even higher. Since the population of Nepal is 29 million, 3.6 million is a very large proportion, and the eradication of Dalit discrimination is seen as a major challenge.

Preferential measures for Dalits

Dalits are now protected under the law, and various preferential measures are being taken such as equal education, the provision of grants, and exemption from medical costs, so Dalit discrimination has faded considerably in urban areas where awareness has improved. In the countryside, there are still places where discriminatory attitudes are deep-rooted, but there will likely be some time lag as the change spreads from the city to the rural areas.

Changes in caste awareness through education

New education is being provided to children in schools, and as they get younger, their sense of discrimination and class consciousness is becoming weaker, but as long as they live in Nepal, they will eventually witness the differences in customs for each caste, so it is inevitable that they will get to know about caste to some extent by the time they reach adulthood. Still, the intent to discriminate is decreasing considerably.

Abandoning Hinduism and the Anti-conversion Law

People who are not saved by Hinduism, which placed them in a lower caste even if they believed in it, are gaining spiritual relief through Christian doctrines. I feel that the number of Christians is increasing remarkably in Nepal at present. Also, there seem to be cases where minority ethnic groups, who were oppressed in the past and converted to Hinduism, are returning to Buddhism or nature worship which they originally practised. Nowadays, churches are being built everywhere in Nepal. Churches explain how one's conscience should be through the Bible and also provide material relief as charitable activities. Although some people criticise this as buying faith with money, supporting disadvantaged people with clothing and money necessary for living is better than doing nothing, and it also serves as an opportunity for Hindus themselves to change their thinking. Similarly in Buddhism, monks come from Thailand and Tibet for charity to provide material support and learning opportunities for children. Different religions seem to be helping the vulnerable people of Nepal both directly and indirectly. Perhaps due to this situation, there are reportedly movements to restrict the act of converting others or religious proselytising. A simple timeline is written below.

Background to the Anti-conversion Law

That concludes the explanation of the caste system in Nepal.