All 142 Caste & Ethnic Groups of Nepal — Complete 2021 Census List

Nepal is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse countries in South Asia, and its official record of that diversity comes from the National Population and Housing Census (NPHC). The 2021 census — conducted on the reference date of 25 November 2021 (BS 9 Mangsir 2078) and published in stages by the National Statistics Office (NSO), formerly the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) — enumerated 142 distinct caste and ethnic groups. That is up from 125 groups in the 2011 census, an increase of 17 newly listed communities.

The count matters because Nepal's constitution, electoral law, reservation quotas and inclusion policy all rest on these categories. When people say 'Nepal has 142 castes', they mean the 142 named caste/ethnicity codes on the census questionnaire that respondents self-identified with. Alongside the 142 named groups, the report also records a residual 'Others' category, plus 'Foreigner' and 'Not stated' responses, which is why some summaries loosely cite a figure of around 146 lines in the published table.

No single group is a majority in Nepal. The largest, Chhetri, is 16.45% of the population; the ten largest groups together account for well under two-thirds of the country. This fragmentation — dozens of small janajati (indigenous nationality) and Madhesi communities each under 1% — is exactly why a complete, per-group table is more useful than a top-20 snapshot, and why hundreds of small-group searches currently have no authoritative English source.

The top of the table is dominated by the Khas Arya hill castes and the two largest hill janajati. Chhetri lead with 4,796,995 people (16.45%), followed by Hill Brahman with 3,292,373 (11.29%). Magar (2,013,498; 6.9%) are the largest of the Adivasi Janajati, ahead of Tharu (1,807,124; 6.2%) — the largest Terai group — and Tamang (1,639,866; 5.62%).

Bishwokarma (1,470,010; 5.04%), the community historically recorded as 'Kami', is the largest Hill Dalit group and the sixth-largest overall. It is followed by Musalman (Muslims, 1,418,677; 4.86%), Newa/Newar (1,341,363; 4.6%) and Yadav (1,228,581; 4.21%), the largest Madhesi caste. Rai (640,674; 2.2%) round out the top ten.

After the top ten, populations fall away sharply. Groups ranked 11 to 20 — Pariyar, Gurung, Thakuri, Mijar, Teli, Yakthung/Limbu, Chamar/Harijan/Ram, Kushwaha, Kurmi and Musahar — each sit between roughly 265,000 and 566,000 people, or about 0.9% to 1.9% of the country. Everything below rank 20 is under 0.9%, and the long tail of small communities begins.

Although the census reports 142 separate groups, Nepal's inclusion policy sorts them into a handful of broad social categories used for reservations and analysis. The Khas Arya hill castes — Chhetri, Hill Brahman, Thakuri and Sanyasi/Dasnami — are the single largest cluster, at roughly 30% of the population. Adivasi Janajati (indigenous nationalities) of the hills, mountains and Terai together form the next-largest bloc, at around 30% when Newar is included.

The Madhesi and Terai caste groups — Yadav, Teli, Kushwaha, Kurmi, Kalwar, Sonar, Kanu, Hajam, Kayastha, Terai Brahman, Rajput and many others — make up roughly a fifth of the population and carry strong cross-border cultural ties with the Indian plains. Muslims (Musalman) are counted as a single religious-ethnic category at 4.86%.

The Dalit categories cut across both hill and Terai society. Hill Dalit communities — Bishwokarma, Pariyar and Mijar — are about 8.6% of Nepal, while Madhesi Dalit groups such as Chamar, Musahar, Dusadh/Paswan, Dom, Khatwe and Halkhor are historically the most excluded. The 2015 Constitution of Nepal explicitly protects Dalits against caste-based discrimination and untouchability and reserves proportional representation and public-service quotas for Dalits, women, Adivasi Janajati, Madhesi, Tharu, Muslims, backward classes and remote regions.

The headline change in NPHC 2021 was the addition of 17 caste/ethnic groups that had never appeared as separate codes before, lifting the total from 125 to 142. These were added on the recommendation of experts and on the basis of how respondents self-identified, giving several long-overlooked communities their first standalone national figures.

The newly enumerated groups are Ranatharu, Bhumihar, Bankariya, Surel, Chumba/Nubri, Phree, Mugal/Mugum, Pun, Rauniyar, Baniyan, Gondh/Gond, Karmarong, Khatik, Beldar, Chai/Khulaut, Done and Kewarat. Several are sizeable: Ranatharu — a distinct western-Terai Tharu community concentrated in Kailali and Kanchanpur — number 83,308 (0.29%), Bhumihar (a Terai landowning caste) 32,199, Rauniyar 27,258, Baniyan 53,655 and Kewarat 8,809.

Others are tiny and highly endangered. Bankariya, a forest-edge hunter-gatherer community of Makwanpur district, were recorded at just 180 people. Surel, of the Dolakha hills, numbered 318. Being counted separately for the first time gives these communities visibility in policy, targeted welfare and, on this site, their own per-group detail page rather than being folded into a larger category.

The bottom of the 142-group table is a roll-call of Nepal's most endangered communities. The single smallest is the Nurang, with just 36 people recorded in 2021 — making them, on census figures, the smallest ethnic group in Nepal. Above them sit the Bankariya (180), the Kusunda (253) and the Surel (318).

Several of these appear on the government's list of officially recognised 'endangered' (lopunmukh) indigenous nationalities, which qualify for a special endangered-ethnicity allowance. That list includes the Kusunda, Raute (566), Hayu (3,069), Kisan (1,479), Meche (5,193), Bankariya, Surel, Raji (5,125), Lepcha (3,578) and Kushbadiya (Patharkatt). The Kusunda are especially notable: their language is a linguistic isolate unrelated to any other in South Asia, with only a handful of fluent speakers left.

Other very small groups include the Nubri/Chumba, Lhomi (355), Walung (481), Topkegola (642), Koche (847), Phree (921) and Kalar (931) — mostly high-Himalayan or Terai-margin communities whose small numbers reflect both isolation and, in some cases, ongoing assimilation into larger neighbouring groups.

Between the 2011 and 2021 censuses Nepal's total population grew from 26,494,504 to 29,164,578 — an average annual growth rate of about 0.92%, the slowest in the country's recorded census history, driven partly by falling fertility and large-scale foreign labour migration. Against that slow overall growth, the relative shares of the largest groups shifted only modestly.

The category count rose from 125 to 142 mainly through disaggregation rather than any sudden demographic change: communities such as Ranatharu and Pun, previously merged into Tharu and Magar respectively, were counted separately, and several small Terai and Himalayan groups were given their own codes. This is why the 'increase' should be read as improved recognition and finer-grained data, not new populations appearing.

For context, Nepal also recorded 124 living mother-tongue languages in 2021 (up from 123) and 10 religious categories, with Hinduism at 81.19%, Buddhism 8.21%, Islam 5.09%, Kirat 3.17% and Christianity 1.76%. Caste/ethnicity, language and religion are published together by the NSO precisely because in Nepal they overlap so heavily — many janajati groups map closely onto their own mother tongue and, for the Kirat and Buddhist communities, their own faith tradition.

Census caste/ethnicity data is self-reported, so the figures reflect how people chose to identify on a single night, not a fixed biological fact. Some communities are undercounted because members identify with a larger umbrella group; others are contested, with activists arguing that additional distinct groups still deserve their own code. The census total of 142 is therefore best understood as the current official ceiling, not a final word.

Names also vary. This site follows the census spellings but notes common alternates — for example Bishwokarma is the community's chosen umbrella name for what earlier censuses called 'Kami'; Mijar for 'Sarki'; Pariyar for 'Damai/Dholi'; and Newa for 'Newar'. Where the census merges names with a slash (such as 'Chamar/Harijan/Ram' or 'Dusadh/Paswan/Pasi'), those are treated as one enumerated group.

Finally, the broad-category totals quoted here (Khas Arya ≈30%, Janajati ≈30%, Madhesi ≈20%, Dalit ≈13% combined, Muslim ≈4.9%) are analytical groupings layered on top of the 142 codes; different institutions draw the category boundaries slightly differently, so small variations between sources are normal. All population and percentage figures on this page are the final published NPHC 2021 counts from the National Statistics Office.