The Tharu people (pronounced [tʰaru] ) are an ethnic group living in the Terai in southern Nepal and northern India. They speak Tharu languages. They are recognized as an official ethnicity by the Government of Nepal. In the Indian Terai, they live foremost in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The Government of India recognizes the Tharu people as a scheduled Indian tribe.
Etymology The word थारू (thāru) is thought to be derived from sthavir meaning follower of Theravada Buddhism. The Tharu people in the central Nepali Terai see themselves as the original people of the land and descendants of Gautama Buddha. Rana Tharu people of western Nepal connect the name to the Thar Desert and understand themselves as descendants of Rajputs who migrated to the forests in the 16th century. Possible is also that the name is derived from the classical Tibetan words mtha'-ru'i brgyud, meaning the 'country at the border', which the Tibetan scholar Taranatha used in the 16th century in his book on the history of Buddhism.
Distribution
In 2009, the majority of Tharu people were estimated to live in Nepal. There are several endogamous subgroups of Tharu that are scattered over most of the Terai:
Rana Tharu people in the Kailali and Kanchanpur Districts of the far western Nepali Terai; also in India, in Udham Singh Nagar district, Uttarakhand and Kheri district of Uttar Pradesh. As of 2020, Rana Tharus are no longer considered a subgroup of Tharu people but a separate ethnicity of their own by the Government of Nepal. Kathariya Tharu mostly in Kailali District and in Lakhimpur Kheri, Pilibhit, Bahraich districts of India; Sonha Tharu in Bardia, Kailali and Kanchanpur; Dangaura Tharu in the western Terai: Dang-Deukhuri, Banke, Bardia, Kailali, Kanchanpur, Surkhet, Rupandehi and Kapilvastu Districts; Chitwan Tharu in central Terai: Makwanpur, Chitwan and Nawalparasi Districts; Kochila Tharu in eastern Terai: Morang, Sunsari, Saptari, Bara, Parsa, Rautahat, Sarlahi, Mahottari and Udayapur districts; Danuwar in eastern Terai: Sindhuli, Udayapur, Saptari and Morang Districts; Lampucchwa Tharu in Morang and Sunsari District. Smaller numbers of Tharu people reside in the adjacent Indian districts Champaran in Bihar, Gorakhpur, Basti and Gonda districts in Uttar Pradesh, and Khatima in Uttarakhand. As of 2011, the Tharu population in Nepal was censused at 1,737,470 people, or 6.6% of the total population. The percentage of Tharu people by province was as follows:
Sudurpashchim Province (17.3%) Lumbini Province (15.3%) Madhesh Province (5.3%) Koshi Province (4.1%) Gandaki Province (1.7%) Bagmati Province (1.6%) Karnali Province (0.4%) The percentage of Tharu people was higher than national average (6.6%) in the following districts:
Bardiya District (53.3%) Kailali District (41.9%) Dang District (29.7%) Kanchanpur District (25.8%) Parasi (18.4%) Banke District (15.8%) Kapilvastu District (12.3%) Sunsari District (12.1%) Nawalpur District (11.8%) Saptari District (11.5%) Chitwan District (11.0%) Bara District (10.5%) Rupandehi District (9.7%) Parsa District (7.6%) Udayapur District (7.6%)
History According to Alberuni, Tharu people have been living in the eastern Terai since at least the 10th century. The Rana Tharus in western Nepal claim to be of Rajput origin and to have migrated from the Thar Desert in Rajasthan to Nepal's Far Western Terai region after the defeat of Maharana Pratap against a Mughal emperor in the 16th century. Some scholars refute this claim. Another claim posits that the Tharu people are descendants of the Shakya dynasty, who propagated Mahayana Buddhism in Nepal from the late 1st century BC to the early 1st century AD.
13th to 20th centuries The Tabaqat-i Nasiri chronicle of the Islamic world contains records of an expedition by Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji into Kamrup region between Gauda and Tibet in 1205 AD and refers to the resident people as Kunch, today's Koch people, Mej/Meg today's Mech people and Tiharu as having similar appearances. These people impressed the Turkic peoples who had similar features as them, like slanting eyes, snub noses, high cheek bones, yellow complexion of the Mongols and who spoke a different language than in the rest of the subcontinent. Following the unification of Nepal in the late 18th century, members of the ruling families received land grants in the Terai and were entitled to collect revenue from those who cultivated the land. The Tharu people became bonded labourers in a system also known as Kamaiya. In 1854, Jung Bahadur Rana enforced the so-called Muluki Ain, a General Code, in which both Hindu and non-Hindu castes were classified based on their habits of food and drink. Tharu people were categorized as "Paani Chalne Masinya Matwali", i.e., touchable enslavable alcohol drinking group, together with several other ethnic minorities. In the late 1950s, the World Health Organization supported the Nepalese government in eradicating malaria in the forests of the central Terai. Following the malaria eradication program using DDT in the 1960s, a large and heterogeneous non-Tharu population from the Nepali hills, Bhutan, Sikkim and India settled in the region. In the western Terai, many Tharu families lost the land, which they used to cultivate, to these immigrants and were forced to work as Kamaiya. In Chitwan, after the eradication of malaria, the U.S. government joined forces with the Nepali government in a project to build a new road, schools and health clinics, and distribute land to migrants from the hills. They invited Tharu people to take land but many Tharus preferred staying "voluntarily landless", as they worried that taking land would make them vulnerable to exploitation from Nepali governmental tax collectors and to attacks from wild animals. They preferred to stay as tenants for large Tharu landlords, who were often relatives. When the first protected areas were established in Chitwan, Tharu communities were forced to relocate from their traditional lands. They were denied any right to own land and thus forced into a situation of landlessness and poverty. When the Chitwan National Park was designated, Nepalese soldiers destroyed the villages located inside the national park, burned down houses, and beat the people who tried to plough their fields. Some threatened Tharu people at gun point to leave.
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