Land Tenure and Classification in Nepal: Raikar, Guthi, Kipat, Birta and Jagir

For most of its modern history, land in Nepal was held not under a single uniform system of private ownership but through several overlapping tenures, each defining who controlled the land, who cultivated it, who collected its revenue, and whether it could be sold or inherited. The two foundational categories were Raikar and Kipat. Raikar rested on the theory of state landlordism: land ultimately belonged to the state, which let individuals cultivate it as long as they paid the land tax. Kipat, by contrast, was communal land held collectively by indigenous Kirat communities, outside the state revenue system.

From these foundations the state created derivative tenures by alienating revenue or ownership rights to particular groups. Birta lands were granted tax-free to nobles, priests and the royal family; Guthi lands were endowed for religious and charitable purposes; and Jagir and Rakam were temporary assignments given to officials and service workers in lieu of cash pay. These categories defined the social and economic hierarchy of pre-1951 Nepal, especially under the Rana regime (1846-1951), when a large share of cultivated and forest land was concentrated in the hands of the ruling elite.

A sequence of reforms after the fall of the Ranas progressively abolished the feudal tenures and converted them into Raikar — taxable private property held by the cultivator. Today Raikar is the dominant tenure for ordinary landowners, Guthi survives as the principal trust tenure, and historical categories such as Birta, Jagir, Rakam and Kipat are essentially extinct as legal forms, though their social legacies persist.

Raikar is the tenure on which almost all privately held land in Nepal now rests. Conceptually it derives from state landlordism: the state holds residual or 'eminent' title, while the registered holder enjoys broad rights to use, sell, inherit, transfer, divide and lease the land, subject to payment of the land tax (malpot). Regular payment of revenue, rather than a deed of absolute ownership, was historically the defining condition of holding Raikar land.

Because the post-1951 land reforms converted the other tenures into Raikar, it became the standard category for individual landownership. The holder's right is evidenced by the land-ownership registration certificate, the lalpurja, issued through the local Malpot (Land Revenue) Office under the Department of Land Management and Archive.

Birta (from the Sanskrit vritti, meaning 'livelihood') was land alienated by the state to priests, religious teachers, soldiers, nobles and members of the royal family so they could draw an income from it, generally free of land tax. It was the most widespread form of tenure favouring the aristocracy, and under the Rana regime the ruling family and its associates accumulated enormous Birta holdings — by some accounts the great bulk of the country's productive land was concentrated in elite hands before reform.

A policy to abolish Birta and convert it into taxable Raikar was declared after 1951 but became operative only with the Birta Abolition Act, 2016 B.S. (1959), passed under the first elected government. The Act ended the tax-free privilege, converted Birta holdings into Raikar, and vested untenanted forest and waste portions in the state. Its stated aim was to end revenue-free landholding by the elite and reduce inequality among classes.

Guthi is land (or other assets) endowed in trust to support religious and charitable purposes — temples, monasteries, festivals, rest-houses, feasts and the maintenance of monuments. Endowments could originate from the state or from private individuals, who often dedicated land to a deity in the belief that the offerings would bring welfare to the family. Guthi is central to the living heritage of the Kathmandu Valley, financing major Newar festivals such as Indra Jatra, Rato Machhindranath Jatra, and the Bisket Jatra of Bhaktapur.

Guthi is broadly divided into public guthis — managed by the state through the Guthi Sansthan (Guthi Corporation) — and private guthis run by families or communities. Under the Guthi Corporation Act, 2033 B.S. (1976), state-managed Raj Guthi takes forms including Amanat guthi (administered directly by the Corporation), Chhut guthi (run by an appointed shrine head under Corporation supervision), and the Act provided for converting Chhut guthis into Raj guthis with their assets devolving on the Corporation.

Guthi is the one major non-Raikar tenure that survived the conversions of the 1960s. A 2019 government bill that would have replaced the Guthi Sansthan with a new commission and brought private and community guthis under tighter state control triggered large protests, especially by Newar and indigenous communities; tens of thousands gathered at Maitighar Mandala in Kathmandu, and the government withdrew the bill in June 2019.

Kipat was a system of communal landholding practised mainly in eastern Nepal by Kirat communities — principally the Limbu, and also Rai and related groups, with some Tamang, Sherpa and other communities holding land on similar terms. Under Kipat, land was owned collectively by a lineage or community rather than the state, decisions were made on a communal, consensus basis, and the land could not be sold to outsiders who were not descendants of the original cultivators, though rights could pass within the lineage or by community-sanctioned transfer.

After the unification of Nepal, the Shah state initially recognised Kipat in the eastern hills (the Limbuwan region, covering districts such as Taplejung, Panchthar and Ilam). Over time, however, state policies — including the nineteenth-century practice that let non-Kirat cultivators acquire rights over Kipat land — eroded the system and turned many Limbus into tenants on their ancestral territory.

Kipat was formally dismantled through the Lands Act 2021 (1964) and its second amendment in 1968, which converted Kipat into Raikar, making the land taxable and saleable. The change opened Kipat land to sale and to acquisition by migrants, and is widely associated with significant land loss and displacement among Limbu and other Kirat communities.

Jagir was Raikar land assigned to civil and military officials in lieu of a cash salary. The assignment lasted only for the duration of service, ending at the holder's death or the termination of employment, and it allowed the government to pay its functionaries while conserving scarce cash. Jagir assignments were a major instrument of state finance from the late eighteenth century and were abolished early in the post-Rana reform period, around 1951-1952, with the lands reverting to the state and ultimately to Raikar.

Rakam was a related service tenure under which land was granted in return for specific manual labour or services — for example to carpenters, bricklayers, mail carriers, musicians and caretakers of religious places — rather than for office. Like Jagir, it was temporary and tied to service, and it too was abolished and converted into Raikar in the 1950s-60s. Together, Jagir and Rakam illustrate how land, rather than money, once underpinned both salaries and public services in Nepal.

The decisive instrument of land reform was the Lands Act, 2021 B.S. (1964), which came into force on 16 November 1964 and was published in the Nepal Gazette in 1964. Building on the earlier Jagir and Birta abolitions, it pursued the political slogan of 'land to the tiller', regulated tenancy, abolished intermediary tax-collection arrangements, and continued the conversion of remaining special tenures into Raikar — including, through its second amendment of 1968, the abolition of Kipat.

A central feature of the Act was a ceiling on landholdings, varying by region. As originally set, the limits were on the order of 25 ropani in the Kathmandu Valley, 70 ropani in the hills outside the Valley, and 25 bigha (later reduced) in the Terai and inner Terai, with separate smaller allowances for a house and homestead. Land held above the ceiling was to be acquired and redistributed, though in practice the reform's redistributive impact was limited.

Today a landholder's rights are recorded on the lalpurja, the land-ownership registration certificate issued by the Malpot Office under the Department of Land Management and Archive. The certificate identifies the owner, the plot (kitta) number, area, location and the registered class of the land, and serves as the primary legal proof of ownership for sale, mortgage, inheritance and dispute resolution.

Beyond tenure, contemporary law classifies land by intended use. The Land Use Act, 2076 B.S. (2019) requires local governments to classify and zone land into categories such as agricultural, residential, commercial, industrial, mining and mineral, forest, public use, cultural and archaeological, and water bodies (rivers, lakes and wetlands), with a residual 'other' category. The Act gives special protection to agricultural land — restricting its conversion and the commercial plotting of farmland without approval from the land-use authorities — and requires that any change of a parcel's classified use be authorised by the relevant land-use council.