Fw: Maoist Rebels Set Fire to Sanskrit-Language University in Nepal

[Alkistis Fleischer]

Article from The Chronicle of Higher Education

>
>   Tuesday, May 14, 2002
>
>
>
>   Maoist Rebels Set Fire to Sanskrit-Language University in
>   Nepal
>
>   By MARTHA ANN OVERLAND
>
>
>
>   Maoist rebels set fire Saturday night to Nepal's only
>   Sanskrit-language university, located in the Dang district in
>   the western part of the country, destroying administration
>   buildings and damaging the university's valuable collection of
>   ancient texts. The rebels, who are fighting to overthrow the
>   country's constitutional monarchy, are demanding that the
>   government stop teaching Sanskrit, the language of Nepal's
>   aristocracy.
>
>   According to an administrator in Mahendra Sanskrit
>   University's office in the capital, Kathmandu, rebels entered
>   the campus anddoused two buildings with kerosene. The fire,
>   which police officials say took all night to extinguish,
>   consumed the offices of thevice chancellor, the registrar, and
>   the controller of examinations.  All of the student records,
>   kept since the university opened, were destroyed.  The
>   university official, who asked not to be named, said that an
>   unknown number of Sanskrit books had been lost in the fire.
>
>   This was the second time this year that Maoist rebels, who
>   want to install a communist government, have attacked Mahendra
>   SanskritUniversity. In December they set off a crude bomb in
>   the vice chancellor's office. After the attack, Purna Chandra
>   Dhungel, the vice chancellor, moved to the relative safety of
>   the capital.
>
>   The campus lies in close proximity to the Rolpa district in
>   western Nepal, where, last week, rebel and army forces engaged
>   in some of the most intense fighting in the history of the
>   six-year insurgency.
>
>   Since the start of the so-called People's War, one of the
>   major demands of the rebels has been to drop the requirement
>   thatall government-aided schools must teach Sanskrit.
>   Sanskrit was thelanguage spoken by Hinduism's elite Brahmin
>   caste in ancient times. Even though few people speak it today,
>   it's still a compulsory class for students up to the eighth
>   grade.
>
>   Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world and has one
>   of the lowest literacy rates.  Discrimination based upon
>   casteremains strongly entrenched. There are also deep language
>   divisions, with more than 100 languages and dialects.
>
>   Low-caste Hindus and the groups known as "untouchables" resent
>   that they must learn the "archaic language of the privileged
>   class, while their own mother tongue is ignored," said Krishna
>   Bhattachan, a professor of sociology at TribhuvanUniversity,
>   Nepal's oldest and largest university.  He said the Sanskrit
>   proficiency requirement is one of the reasons that on average
>   only about 1 percent of low-caste Nepalis graduate from high
>   school and as few as 0.01 percent graduate from college.
>
>   "If there was a compulsory test on Latin, what would be the
>   performance of American kids?" asked Mr. Bhattachan.
>
>
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>  Copyright 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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