Chepang people

With increasing populations, lack of arable land and few irrigation options, malnutrition has been a historic problem for the Chepang despite forest supplements. The Chepang have often been characterized as the poorest of Nepal's poor. Forced teenage pregnancies are common. Chepang men and women are basically egalitarian and no social ranking exists as it does in caste Nepalese society. Many Chepang cannot read and write due to a lack of education beyond elementary school, and this illiteracy stands in contrast to the great gains Nepal has been making in reducing illiteracy. They are mostly located in Bagmati Province (Dhading District, Chitwan District, and Makwanpur District) and Gandaki Province (Gorkha District and Tanahun District).

Over the past two or three generations, the Chepang have begun to slowly shift from a semi-nomadic (slash-and-burn) lifestyle to a more settled way of life, relying increasingly upon the production of permanent fields of maize, millet and bananas. The severe topography, however, has made permanent farming difficult (and usually insufficient), and the forest has remained an important (although decreasingly so) source of food for the Chepang. Historically, the collection of wild yams and tubers, fish caught from nearby rivers, bats and wild birds, and periodically wild deer hunted from nearby forests, have supplemented their need for carbohydrates and protein.

According to the 2011 Nepal Census, there are almost 70,000 Chepang in the country, of which 65% were Hindu and 25% were Christian and 10% were animist. The Chepangs themselves follow Animism, although they are strongly influenced by both Hinduism and Buddhism, which came from the Tamangs just north of them. They observe all the Hindu festivals of Dashain, Tihar and Sakranti besides their own tribal festival Nwagi or Chhonam, which is performed on a Tuesday during third week of Bhadra (some day in August and September). Chhonam is the auspicious day for eating a new crop. Before the celebration of this festival, eating certain agricultural products is prohibited.

The language is also known as Chepang but is called by the people themselves. These people are also called Praja meaning "political subjects". The people speak 3 different dialects of this Tibeto-Burman language that is closely related to Raute and Raji, two undocumented languages spoken in western Nepal. Chepang is one of the few languages which uses a duodecimal (base 12) counting system rather than the decimal (base 10).