Musahar or Mushahar[1] (Nepali: मुसहर जाति) are a Dalit community found in the eastern Gangetic plain and the Terai.

[4][clarification needed] Risley thinks that Musahar is the name that their Hindu masters gave them because of their non-Aryan and unclean habit of eating field mice.

Modern genetic studies have found Musahars cluster very closely with Munda peoples like the Santhals and the Hos, and demonstrate similar haplogroup frequencies for both maternal and paternal lineages.

However, unlike the Musahar, the Baiga remained isolated from Brahminical society at large and so were seen as a tribe rather than a caste.

[2] Musahars also have their own rituals like the kul pooja, in which participants bathe in boiling milk to worship ancestors.

In the rural areas, Musahar are primarily bonded agricultural labourers, but often go without work for as much as eight months in a year.

By some estimates, as many as 85% of some villages of Musahars suffer from malnutrition and with access to health centres scant, diseases such as malaria and kala-azar are prevalent.

[7] Mushahars from the Chota Nagpur Plateau were transported by the British to the Sylhet region where they were made to work in tea plantations.