When Jang Bahadur started Durbar High School in 1854 the curriculum was highly influenced by the British model
The world today is consumed with issues like plummeting oil prices, wrath of North Korea, unceasing migrant flow, and other typically western concerns. However, for students like myself we have something seemingly trivial to ponder about, like, let's say, our relationship with the English language.When the British enacted the East India Company Act in 1813, it was generous enough to persuade us to revisit our images of brutal and ruthless British colonizers. Apart from gaining the power to extract tax from the locals, the British government, through the Act, also sought to 'reform' the education system of India. The UK parliament allocated a yearly budget of InRs 100,000 to upgrade Indian education, which was, to a utilitarian in the parliament like John Stuart Mill, "obscure and worthless." The parliament vigorously debated the trajectory Indians were to follow; Evangelicals lobbied for educational transformation of India using Christianity.
Thomas Macaulay staunchly argued for reforms, reasoning that "a single good shelf of European library was worth the whole native literature of the India and Arabia." In a short period of time, the colonizing power organized many events under the veil of 'educational reforms.' But all that the reforms did was increase the fondness for English among the Indian subjects.
Rebuffing the requests of Orientalists to make Sanskrit, Arabic and Hindi the medium of teaching, Macaulay's faction lobbied for English as the medium of language. Macaulay's demand was approved by the British government in 1835, in what was called Bentinck Reform. An influential linguist and one of the instrumental actors in the establishment of University of Punjab in British India, Gottleib Wilhem Lietner, was skeptical of these reforms. He believed that it harmed local educational institutions like madrassas, maktabs, pathshalas, Gurumukhi and mahajanis.
As Atiyab Sultan writes in The Mirror and the Lamp: Colonial Educational Reform in 19th Century Punjab, the teachers could not teach well in the alien language. Lack of supervision further worsened the state of these institutions. The scurry of such 'reforms' aimed at creating pro-British, loyalist bureaucracy, which lowered the cost of British government and stripped the native Indians of their respect for the vernacular languages.
Against this backdrop, let us now look into Nepal's relations with English language. A couple of decades after the Indian reform programs started, Jang Bahadur Rana in 1854 established the elite Durbar High school which taught only members of the Rana lineage. The curriculum was highly influenced by the British model. It included lessons on British Isles and British history and English language was given special attention. As Cadel quotes Dor Bahadur Bista from Fatalism and Development, this led to the "debasement of ethnic heritage".
Rana elites were anxious about the repercussions of widespread education on their rule. Thus Dev Shamsher was quickly ousted following his decision to open education to all Nepali citizens. Thus the elites have always made a push for English, be through Bentinck Reforms of 1835 (in India) or the establishment of Durbar High School (in Nepal).
This eulogizing of English language made colonized countries and satellite states like Nepal a machine to produce low-self esteemed youth determined to serve the "superior" English strata, as were the Ranas for the Queen. Nepal these days is the 16th largest source of International students for the US, contributing an annual $301 million to the US economy (Open Door Fact Sheet Nepal, 2013/14). Similarly, in the fiscal year 2013-14, the Ministry of Education recorded 28,124 Nepali students who took 'no objection certificates' to study in Australia.
The English medium private schools in Nepal create a burgeoning human capital class that can read, write and communicate in English. Tests of English language proficiency like TOEFL and IELTS are apparent guarantors of student visas. Very few of these students come back to their native countries.
Now we know why government schools in Nepal are so infamous among parents. It is because they lack 'good English teaching,' in turn, closing their children's door to English speaking countries. Meanwhile, Nepali is no longer mandatory for Grade 11 science students. Nepali language professors are treated with no regard and Sanskrit Bishwovidyalaya stands forlorn at Gaushala.
The author is a student at Kathmandu School of Law, Bhaktapur