KATHMANDU, JANUARY 8
People of Sonaha community from Kailali, Kanchanpur and Bardiya submitted a memorandum to the prime minister demanding that they be incorporated in the list of endangered tribes.
Representatives of Sonaha community met with Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba at his residence and submitted the memorandum to him, said Laxman Sonaha today.
According to the 2011 census, Nepal is home to 1,205 people from Sonaha community.
Sonaha people have been living at Bardiya's Rajpur and Gairuwa rural municipalities.
Likewise, they live at Kailali's Chisapani and Kanchanpur's Airi.
Sonaha Development Bardiya Chair Shanti Sonaha said they had met the prime minister as their pleas to be included in the list of endangered castes had gone unheeded in the past.
Prime Minister Deuba pledged to take stock of Sonaha people's circumstances and do the needful. Sonaha people live by extracting gold from rivers and fishing.
The Supreme Court had issued a verdict making the Nepal government a defendant, directing it to include Sonaha people in the list of endangered tribes six years ago. The government, however, is yet to execute the verdict.
The community says that Sonaha people have their own mother tongue, a separate cultural identity, social structure and unwritten history.
A version of this article appears in the print on January 9, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
