१८५४ को मुलुकी ऐन
"मुलुकी ऐन" को अर्थ हो "मुलुकको कानुन"। सन् १८५४ (वि.सं. १९१०) मा प्रधानमन्त्री जंगबहादुर राणाको पहलमा जारी भएको यो नेपालको पहिलो लिखित तथा व्यापक कानुनी संहिता थियो, जसले फौजदारी, देवानी र पारिवारिक कानुनलाई एकै ठाउँमा समेट्यो। तर यसले जातीय विभेदलाई पनि कानुनमा राखेको थियो।
The Muluki Ain of 1854
"Muluki Ain" literally means "law of the country" (मुलुक = country, ऐन = act/law). Promulgated in 1854 AD (1910 BS), it was Nepal's first comprehensive, written legal code — and it remained the backbone of the country's legal system for over a century.
Who created it
The code was drafted and promulgated at the initiative of Prime Minister Jung Bahadur Rana, following his return from a visit to Europe. For the first time, laws that had previously been scattered across custom and royal orders were collected into a single, systematic text.
What it covered
The Muluki Ain was remarkably wide-ranging for its time. A single code governed:
- The organisation of the state, courts and administration
- Criminal law — murder and other offences and their punishments
- Civil and family law — marriage, the joint family, and property
- Customary, religious and purity-related rules of the time
An honest look at its limits
The 1854 code also wrote the caste hierarchy into law. It prescribed different rights and punishments depending on a person's caste and gender. This made the law systematically unequal — a feature that later reforms would have to undo.
The Muluki Ain shows both sides of legal history: it was a landmark act of state-building and codification, and at the same time it entrenched discrimination that Nepal spent the next century working to remove.
