2 Traditional Land Tenure System in Nepal

The pre-reform landscape (M.C. Regmi's scholarship's terrain — the historian of Nepali land tenure):2.1 KipatThe communal lineage tenure of the eastern hills — the Limbu (and allied) communities' land held by the thibari lineage collectives: land inalienable to outsiders, self-governed, the community's autonomy embodied in land. Its fate: progressively eroded (the state's registrations and the Land Act 2021's conversion) into raikar (ordinary taxable individual title) — the extinction of the last communal tenure, remembered as both administrative unification and cultural dispossession (the indigeneity debates' land-history chapter).2.2 BirtaTax-free grants of land to individuals (the royal/military elite, Brahmins and religious beneficiaries) — the Rana state's patronage currency: the birtawat collecting the produce/rents owing nothing to the treasury. Abolished by the Birta Abolition Act, 2016 (1959) — all birta converted to raikar (the tax rolls and the state's revenue sovereignty restored) — the first great post-1951 land reform.2.3 JagirService-tenure land: assignments of land's revenue for salaries — the army's and officials' pay embodied in territory (the medieval iqta's cousin). Abolished with the Rana army/bureaucracy's dismantling (the 1950s' cash-salary reforms) — the state's pay detached from land.2.4 GuthiThe religious-endoled tenure: land endowed for temples, rituals, festivals, and charitable maintenance — the deity/santh's property managed by guthiyars; inalienable in principle, the produce funding the puja. Modern law: the Guthi Corporation Act's regime (above) — the…