Bhaktapur's Demography: Newars And Hindu Newars

We shall present in later chapters other demographic characteristics of the population of Bhaktapur—its ethnic, religious, and social composition and aspects of household size and composition. It is essential to emphasize, however, that less than sixty households among Bhaktapur's more than 6,000 households are, by criteria that we will discuss in the next chapter, not Newars. That is, the city is almost entirely a Newar city. It is, in addition, almost entirely a Hindu Newar city. In the 1971 census 92 percent of the Newar population called themselves "Hindus"; the rest, the remaining 8 percent, identified themselves as "Buddhists." It is this great preponderance of Hindu Newars who are at the center of our treatment of Bhaktapur's symbolic organization. Some individuals in the other groups are, in fact, involved in that organization—in sometimes illuminating ways—but their involvement is peripheral, and they themselves are most centrally related to other centers of community and of identity.