Cham people in Khanh Hoa

Numbers

The census of 2019 counted 178,948 Cham in Vietnam, against 161,729 at the census of 2009^[1]. The national survey of the 53 ethnic minorities carried out on 1 April 2019 recorded the same total, with 87,838 men and 91,110 women, and 83.8 percent of the population living in rural areas^[2]. In 2019 the Cham were recorded in 56 of the country's 63 provinces and cities^[1].

Vietnamese Wikipedia sets the provincial figures under a sentence carrying its 2019 national total, but the list itself is footnoted to the full results of the 2009 census, so the provincial figures are those of 2009: Ninh Thuận 67,517, or 41.6 percent of all Cham in Vietnam; Bình Thuận 39,557, or 21.4 percent; Phú Yên 22,813; An Giang 11,171; Ho Chi Minh City 10,509; Đồng Nai 8,603; Bình Định 6,364; Tây Ninh 4,014; and Bình Dương 2,358^[1]. The two percentages it gives reconcile with neither total: against the 2009 total of 161,729 they come to 41.8 and 24.5 percent, and against the 2019 total of 178,948 to 37.7 and 22.1 percent. Neither reading reproduces the published 21.4 percent for Bình Thuận, so the percentages are reported here as published rather than recomputed^[1].

Because Ninh Thuận merged into Khánh Hòa on 1 July 2025^[3], the province that results holds the largest Cham community in Vietnam. No fetched source gave a Cham figure for the former Khánh Hòa province or a combined figure for the merged one.

Regional groups

Vietnamese Wikipedia divides the Cham of Vietnam into three communities by place of residence, religion and regional culture^[1]. The Chăm Panduranga, also called the Eastern Cham or the Cham of Phan Rang, are those of the former Ninh Thuận and Bình Thuận provinces and number about 119,000, roughly 72,000 in Ninh Thuận and 47,000 in Bình Thuận, and form the community of the present Khánh Hòa^[1]. The same page puts them at about 67.60 percent of all Cham in Vietnam, a share that fits neither of the totals it gives: 119,000 is 66.5 percent of the 2019 total of 178,948 and 73.6 percent of the 2009 total of 161,729, and 67.60 percent would imply a total of about 176,000^[1].

The Chăm H'roi, about 33,000 people, live scattered in the uplands of Gia Lai, Phú Yên and Bình Định^[1]. The Chăm Nam Bộ, about 37,000 people, live mainly in An Giang, Ho Chi Minh City, Tây Ninh and Đồng Nai^[1]. The three rounded figures come to about 189,000 between them, which is more than the 2019 national total of 178,948 given on the same page, so they are reported here as published rather than reconciled^[1].

Religious communities

The Chăm Panduranga are divided into two religious communities. The Chăm Ahiêr follow the tradition shaped by Brahmanism, and the Chăm Awal, also called Chăm Bàni, follow the tradition shaped by Islam^[1]. A smaller group of Chăm Bàni turned to orthodox Sunni Islam in the 1960s through contact with the Cham of the south^[1].

Nhân Dân describes the position in the same terms: the Cham of Ninh Thuận and Bình Thuận follow Brahmanism, with a smaller part following the Bà ni tradition, while the Cham communities of the south follow Islam^[2]. Vietnamese Wikipedia records that the Bàni or Ăwal practice, called Ni Tục under the Nguyễn, prays on Fridays and keeps a shortened Ramadan, and that disagreement exists between it and Sunni practice^[1].

The Cham language belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian group of the Austronesian family^[2].

Temples and the Kate festival

The principal Cham temples of the province are the tower group of Po Klong Garai above Phan Rang and the tower of Po Rome at Hậu Sanh^[6][7]. The village of Hữu Đức in Phước Hữu keeps a shrine of Po Inư Nưgar with three main places of worship, holding the images of Po Bia Apakal, Po Bia Dara and Po Bia Tâh, and a small southern structure used in rites to the fire deity^[6].

Kate, the principal festival of the Cham who follow Brahmanism, is dated by the Department of Cultural Heritage to the 30th day of the sixth month and the first to the tenth day of the seventh month of the Cham calendar, a span it places in September, October or November in the Gregorian calendar^[7]. The first day is kept at the temple towers, the second at the communal house of the village, the third at the house of the head priest, and the remaining days in family homes^[7].

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism recognised the Kate festival of the Cham of Ninh Thuận as national intangible cultural heritage; VOV reported the announcement on 20 October 2017^[8]. Hữu Đức also keeps the Yuer Yang and Cambur observances^[6].

Pottery and craft villages

On 29 November 2022, at its seventeenth session in Rabat, the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage inscribed the art of pottery-making of the Chăm people on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding^[4][5]. It was the fifteenth Vietnamese element on a UNESCO intangible heritage list and the fourth recognised in 2022^[4].

The craft is carried on by women, who shape the clay by walking around the piece rather than using a wheel, and produce household vessels, ritual objects and decorative work such as jars, pots, trays and vases^[5]. The pieces are not glazed; they are fired in the open with wood and rice straw at about 800 degrees Celsius for seven to eight hours^[4]. The villages named in the nomination reporting are Bàu Trúc, Bình Đức and Xuân Quang, with the clay pit about 3 km northwest of Bình Đức^[4].

UNESCO recorded the practice as being at risk because urban growth has reduced access to raw material, the craft has adapted slowly to the market economy and few young people take it up^[4].

Historical background

The Cham are the people of Champa, whose southernmost region, Panduranga, covered the ground of the former Ninh Thuận and Bình Thuận provinces^[7]. Vietnamese Wikipedia records that Cham settlement historically extended from the central provinces south to the area of Ninh Thuận and Bình Thuận and into the northern part of Bà Rịa-Vũng Tàu and the central highlands^[1].

Under the emperor Minh Mạng the domain of Thuận Thành was abolished and became the prefecture of Ninh Thuận^[1]. From the seventeenth century onward Cham communities also formed in Cambodia and, from 1755 and again under Minh Mạng and Tự Đức, in Tây Ninh and the southern provinces of Vietnam^[1].