What is Janajati (Adivasi Janajati)?

Adivasi Janajati (आदिवासी जनजाति) is the official Nepali term for the country's indigenous nationalities — distinct ethnic communities that have their own mother tongue, traditional customs, a separate cultural identity, a distinct social structure, and a written or oral history of their own. 'Adivasi' means 'original inhabitant' and 'Janajati' denotes an ethnic group, nationality or tribe; together they describe peoples regarded as descendants of Nepal's earlier settlers who lived in the country before the formation of the modern Hindu state and who fall outside the four-fold Hindu varna caste hierarchy.

The legal definition comes from the National Foundation for the Development of Indigenous Nationalities (NFDIN) Act, 2002, which characterises an indigenous nationality as a community that possesses its own mother tongue and traditional rites and customs, a distinct cultural identity, a distinct social structure and a written or unwritten history. The Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NEFIN) and government task forces add practical criteria often used to identify these groups: communities with their own pre-Hindu (often animist or Buddhist) traditions and an ethnic language other than Nepali; descendants of the area's earliest inhabitants with a documented history; peoples who were politically and culturally non-dominant within the state; societies traditionally organised on relatively egalitarian rather than rigid caste lines; and groups officially gazetted as adivasi/janajati.

Janajati are one of the major social clusters used in Nepali public life and law, alongside Brahmin/Chhetri (Khas-Arya), Dalit, Madhesi and others. They are not a single people but an umbrella of dozens of separate ethnicities spread across the high Himalaya, the mid-hills and the Terai plains, each with its own language, dress, religion and customs.

The Government of Nepal officially recognises 59 Adivasi Janajati groups, the schedule fixed when Parliament passed the NFDIN Act in 2002. Earlier and later reviews proposed different totals — an earlier government task force had identified a slightly different count, and a later task force recommended adding further groups — but the official schedule has remained at 59. Among the largest are the Magar, Tharu, Tamang, Newar, Rai, Gurung and Limbu — each numbering in the hundreds of thousands to well over a million. By region, the 59 groups are commonly grouped as mountain, hill, inner-Terai and Terai peoples.

To target development and affirmative action, NEFIN classified the 59 groups into five tiers based on a composite index of factors such as literacy, housing, landholdings, occupation, language and population size. The tiers, from most to least disadvantaged, are: Endangered (e.g. Kusunda, Bankariya, Raute, Surel, Hayu, Raji, Kisan, Lepcha, Meche); Highly Marginalized (e.g. Chepang, Majhi, Thami, Santhal/Satar, Bote, Danuwar, Baramu); Marginalized (e.g. Tamang, Tharu, Sunuwar, Bhujel, Kumal, Rajbansi, Dhimal); Disadvantaged (e.g. Gurung, Magar, Rai, Limbu, Sherpa, Yakkha, Jirel, Yolmo); and Advanced (Newar and Thakali).

Geographically the groups span three ecological belts: mountain peoples such as the Sherpa, Thakali and Bhote of the high Himalaya; hill peoples such as the Newar, Rai, Gurung, Tamang, Magar and Limbu of the mid-hills; and Terai and inner-Terai peoples such as the Tharu, Dhimal, Rajbansi and Dhanuk of the southern plains. Indigenous nationalities form a majority of the population in a number of Nepal's districts.

In everyday and official Nepali usage, 'Janajati' marks a person's identity for census, policy and inclusion purposes. The 2011 census recorded 125 caste and ethnic groups and 123 languages; indigenous peoples account for much of Nepal's linguistic diversity, since most Janajati languages belong to the Tibeto-Burman family rather than the Indo-Aryan Nepali (Khas) language. Together the recognised Janajati make up about 35.8% of Nepal's population (2011 census), though indigenous organisations argue the true figure is higher.

The category drives a wide range of affirmative-action measures. The Constitution of Nepal (2015) lists Adivasi Janajati among the groups entitled to proportional and inclusive participation in the civil service, security forces and other state bodies, and provides for proportional representation in elected assemblies. Reservations in public-service examinations, scholarships, and special programmes for the most marginalised nationalities all use these classifications. NFDIN, a government foundation created by the 2002 Act, channels development, language-preservation and welfare programmes specifically to these communities.

The most marginalised groups receive targeted support: tiny 'endangered' peoples such as the Kusunda (whose language has very few remaining fluent speakers), the Raute (Nepal's last nomadic forest-dwelling community), and the Bankariya number only small populations and are the focus of dedicated survival and welfare schemes.

The marginal position of many indigenous groups was entrenched by the Muluki Ain (Civil Code) of 1854, which arranged Nepal's peoples into a single Hindu caste hierarchy. Most Janajati were classified as 'Matwali' (liquor-drinking) castes, placed below the Brahmin and Chhetri elites — a legal ordering that shaped land, status and opportunity for over a century until caste-based discrimination was formally abolished in 1963.

Recognition of indigenous identity advanced after the 1990 democratic movement: the 1990 Constitution declared Nepal a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual nation. The decisive legal step was the National Foundation for the Development of Indigenous Nationalities Act, 2002, which both defined indigenous nationalities and created NFDIN as the statutory body for their development, listing the 59 recognised groups in its schedule. In 2007 Nepal ratified ILO Convention No. 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples — the first country in Asia to do so — and it also endorsed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that year, committing the state to consultation and self-determination principles.

Advocacy is led by NEFIN, the Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities, founded in 1991 as the autonomous umbrella organisation of the indigenous nationalities; it works alongside bodies such as the National Indigenous Women's Federation. The 2007 Interim Constitution and the 2015 Constitution carried indigenous rights further, with the 2015 charter establishing an Indigenous Nationalities Commission to safeguard and promote the rights and welfare of Adivasi Janajati.

Janajati should not be confused with caste. Dalits (so-called 'untouchable' caste communities) face caste-based exclusion within the Hindu social order, whereas Janajati are indigenous ethnic groups who historically stood outside that varna system altogether. A person can be disadvantaged for different structural reasons depending on which category they belong to, and Nepal's inclusion policies list Dalits and Adivasi Janajati separately.

Janajati is also distinct from Madhesi. 'Madhesi' refers to communities of the Terai plains with close cultural and linguistic ties to northern India (speakers of Maithili, Bhojpuri and similar languages); it is primarily a regional-cultural category that includes various castes. Some Terai indigenous peoples, such as the Tharu, are Janajati and may or may not identify as Madhesi — a frequent point of confusion in Nepali politics.

Finally, 'Adivasi Janajati' is the full, formal phrase; 'Janajati' alone is the common short form, and English texts render it variously as 'indigenous nationalities', 'indigenous peoples' or 'ethnic groups'. The word 'nationalities' here does not imply separate nationhood — it translates the Nepali 'janajati' in the sense of distinct peoples within the single Nepali state.