Caste System of Nepal: Muluki Ain 1854 to the 2015 Constitution

The Muluki Ain (literally 'law of the country', or National Code) of 1854 AD (1910 Bikram Sambat) was Nepal's first comprehensive written legal code. It was commissioned by Prime Minister Jung Bahadur Rana after his 1850-51 tour of Britain and France, and enacted a few years into the Rana autocracy that ruled Nepal until 1951. For the first time, a single state document attempted to bring the entire population of the newly unified Nepal, both Hindu caste groups and the many non-Hindu ethnic (Janajati) communities, under one hierarchic civic order.

The code did far more than settle property or criminal disputes. It graded every community into a ritual hierarchy and then attached different legal rights, punishments, food-and-water rules, and marriage restrictions to each rank. The severity of a punishment for the same offence could depend on the caste of both the offender and the victim. In this way the Muluki Ain fused Hindu notions of ritual purity and pollution with the coercive power of the state, turning caste from a social custom into enforceable law.

The Austrian anthropologist Andras Hofer analysed this code in his landmark 1979 study 'The Caste Hierarchy and the State in Nepal: A Study of the Muluki Ain of 1854', which remains the standard scholarly reference for understanding how the system was structured. Because the code was drafted from the standpoint of the Khas-Arya (hill Hindu) rulers, it universalised their caste model across dozens of communities that had never previously seen themselves in those terms.

The Muluki Ain arranged society into a graded ladder that is usually described as five broad tiers, defined chiefly by two boundaries: the sacred thread and the sharing of water. Groups from whom orthodox Hindus could accept water (pani chalne) ranked above those from whom water was not accepted (pani nachalne). The two Matwali categories were distinguished by whether their members could legally be enslaved for certain offences.

At the very top sat the Tagadhari, the 'wearers of the holy thread' (janai), comprising the twice-born castes such as the Bahun (Brahmin), Thakuri, Chhetri, and the high Newar castes like the Rajopadhyaya Brahmin. Below them came the Matwali or 'liquor-drinkers', mostly the Tibeto-Burman hill peoples, split into the Namasinya Matwali (non-enslavable, including Magar, Gurung, and the Kirat Rai and Limbu) and the Masinya Matwali (enslavable, including Tamang, Chepang, Bhote and others). This intermediate placement is the origin of the widely searched phrase 'tagadhari matwali pani nachalne'.

The lowest two tiers were both 'water-unacceptable' (pani nachalne). The higher of the two, Pani-nachalne chhoi-chhito halnu naparne, were impure but not untouchable, meaning contact did not require ritual purification. The lowest, Pani-nachalne chhoi-chhito halnu parne, were the untouchables from whose touch a higher-caste person had to sprinkle water to cleanse themselves. This bottom rung held the artisan and service castes, such as leather-workers, blacksmiths, tailor-musicians and sweepers, who today are collectively known as Dalits.

Under the Muluki Ain, caste rank was not an abstract label; it decided how a person could be treated by the law. Enslavable Matwali groups could legally be sold into bondage for offences that would earn a Tagadhari only a fine. Inter-caste sexual relations, especially between a lower-caste man and a higher-caste woman, carried heavy penalties and could 'degrade' a person and their descendants to a lower tier permanently.

The purity of water and cooked food organised much of everyday interaction. A Tagadhari could not accept boiled rice or water from a pani-nachalne person without losing status, and untouchable castes were barred from temples, public wells, tea shops and the homes of the higher castes. These rules were not merely religious etiquette; violating them was an offence the state could and did punish.

The system also policed conversion and mobility. Slaughtering a cow, the sacred animal of Hindus, was among the gravest crimes, and even higher-caste offenders faced severe consequences. Because the code tied taxation, land tenure, and access to state service to caste, it locked communities into their assigned economic roles for generations, entrenching the disadvantages that Dalit and Janajati communities still confront.

The Rana regime fell in 1951, and after a decade of political change King Mahendra promulgated a wholly new National Code, the Muluki Ain of 1963 AD (enacted on 1 Bhadra 2020 BS). This new code replaced the 1854 version and, crucially, removed the caste-graded legal hierarchy. It declared all citizens equal before the law regardless of caste, and for the first time made caste-based discrimination and untouchability a punishable offence rather than a legal requirement.

The 1963 reform was a genuine turning point on paper: the law would no longer prescribe different punishments for the same crime based on the caste of those involved, and the formal categories of enslavable and unenslavable communities disappeared. It aligned Nepal with the equality principles that its 1962 Panchayat-era constitution had begun to articulate.

In practice, however, the abolition changed the statute books far faster than it changed society. Untouchability, occupational segregation and social exclusion of Dalits continued across much of rural Nepal, because deeply rooted custom and economic dependence were not dissolved by a single legal act. This gap between legal equality and lived reality is the central theme of every reform that followed.

Nepal declared itself an 'untouchability-free nation' in 2006, and after the monarchy was abolished the Constituent Assembly passed the Caste-Based Discrimination and Untouchability (Offence and Punishment) Act on 24 May 2011 (2068 BS). This is Nepal's most detailed dedicated law against caste discrimination. It outlaws untouchability and caste-based discrimination in both public and private spheres, including denial of access to shops, temples, public services, workplaces and inter-caste marriage, and it criminalises inciting others to discriminate.

The Act makes such discrimination a state case, meaning the state prosecutes it rather than leaving it to the aggrieved individual, and it provides for compensation to victims from the perpetrator. Penalties were strengthened by a 2018 amendment: under the amended law an offender may face imprisonment of three months to three years and a fine of NPR 50,000 to NPR 200,000, with enhanced punishment where the offender is a public official.

The Act closed several gaps left by the 1963 code by naming specific discriminatory acts and setting clear penalties. Human-rights monitors, however, note that conviction rates remain low relative to reported incidents, and campaigners continue to push for stronger enforcement, victim protection and awareness so that the law is not merely symbolic.

The Constitution of Nepal, promulgated on 20 September 2015 (3 Ashwin 2072 BS), gives the strongest constitutional protection against caste discrimination in the country's history. Article 18 guarantees the right to equality and permits special provisions for the protection and advancement of Dalits and other marginalised groups. Article 24, the Right against Untouchability and Discrimination, prohibits untouchability and discrimination in any private or public place on grounds of caste, origin, community or occupation, and declares any such act a 'serious social offence' punishable by law, with a right to compensation for victims.

Article 40, the Right of Dalits, goes further by guaranteeing group-specific entitlements: proportional participation of Dalits in all state bodies, reservation in public employment and other sectors, free education with scholarships up to higher levels, health and social security, land for landless Dalits, and housing for the homeless. Alongside these, Article 42 guarantees the right to social justice and inclusive representation for Dalits and other under-represented communities.

Together these provisions convert Dalit inclusion from a policy choice into a constitutional obligation of the state. According to the 2021 National Census, Dalits number about 3.9 million people, roughly 13.4 percent of Nepal's population, split between Hill Dalit castes (such as Kami, Damai and Sarki) and Madhesi Dalit castes of the Tarai. The constitutional framework is now widely regarded as progressive; the enduring challenge, acknowledged by the government and civil society alike, is turning these guarantees into everyday equality.