On February 16, a third-year woman student from Nepal was found dead by suicide in the Bhubaneswar-based Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT). Initial investigation by the police revealed that harassment from a fellow male student had led the student to take her own life. Other students from Nepal carried out a protest stating that the university had ignored the consistent complaints made by the female student about the harassment. This led to KIIT halting academic activities and ordering students from Nepal to vacate the campus. This move caused widespread outrage, with the Nepali government also getting involved. KIIT eventually withdrew the order and resumed the academic session.
This piece intends to shed light on some necessary but seldom discussed issues affecting students from Nepal in India.
Foreign student enrolment in India
The latest available All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) data reveals that during 2021-22, 46,878 foreign students from 170 nations were enrolled in various institutes of higher learning in India, and that the highest share of foreign students came from Nepal (28%). The percentage share of foreign students from Nepal had been the highest (21% when the figure for total foreign student enrolment was 34,774) even in 2012-13, as per AISHE data. It is thus evidenced that while the number of foreign students enrolling in India has been on the rise over the years, majority of them came from Nepal. Table 1 gives us a brief overview of the enrolment of students from Nepal studying different courses offered by almost 180 Indian universities and institutes.
These students are spread across the nation — from Kashmir University in the north to Kerala University in the south, from North Eastern Hill University (NEHU) in the east to Gujarat Ayurveda University in the west. While the enrolment is highest in the undergraduate category, enrolment in higher categories like PhD displays a steady increase, although it is far from being impressive. Students from Nepal display an increasing attraction to Indian institutes offering training and degrees in engineering and technology. As a matter of fact, their presence in IITs (Delhi, Kanpur, Roorkee, Guwahati among others), the Indian Institute of Science (IISc Bangalore), and other private institutes like KIIT, has been substantial.
An academic relationship
Nepal’s academic relationship with India and Indian academic institutions in particular illustrate a rich history. Paying a cursory look at that historical tapestry, as shown by scholars like Pratyush Onta or Rhoderick Chalmers, would help us recognise the contribution of Banaras and Darjeeling in shaping Nepali public sphere from both within and outside Nepal. However, unlike the colonial legacy associated to the ‘Gorkhas’, the cultural linkage between Nepal and India, which epitomised India as an educational hub for the Nepalis, is as old as the gurukul system. Since the days of the Rana regime when education in Nepal remained exclusively an elitist affair, places in India like Banaras, Patna, Dehradun, Gorakhpur and Darjeeling opened up opportunities to those who could afford to send their wards to India for education.
Further, when it comes to the history of the ‘modern’ formal education system in Nepal, a cursory glance will reveal that not only is it not very old, but it also displays intricate connections with India. It is said that the western-style of education began in Nepal with the establishment of the Durbar High School in 1854, although accessible only to the children of the royal family and courtiers. In 1901, some steps were taken for the benefit of the public, as schools, such as the Bhasa Pathshala (Language Schools), were opened up with Nepali (then known as Gorkhali/Khas) as the medium of instruction. The Tri-Chandra College was established in Kathmandu in 1918 and was initially affiliated to Calcutta University which later shifted to Patna University, India. As per this affiliation, the responsibility of the college lied only with the teaching part while the overall academic programme, including courses, textbooks, pedagogy, examinations, award of degree, were run by the affiliating Indian institute.
Letting go of colonial influence
Thus, without even being colonised, the colonial legacy of Nepal’s education system was established through two routes: first, by affiliating the first college in Nepal to universities of colonial India, thereby, diminishing any opportunity to premise pedagogy around Nepali roots and branches (except language); and the second was through college instructors, all of whom had received their master’s degrees from Indian universities, and therefore felt secure in following the same content. Before the establishment of the Tribhuvan University in 1959, there was no provision for postgraduate instruction in the country, and higher education was limited to the undergraduate level. Social science teaching, followed by science, was introduced in Nepal only in the 1940s, starting with economics and geography, while sociology and anthropology came a little while later in the 1950s.
In summary, until the 1950s, the colonial legacy of British India strongly influenced Nepal’s education, even when attempts were undertaken to ‘Nepalise’ the education system. Towards this end, the Gandhian model of education was valorised as a reference point albeit with certain tweaks. Finally, in 1954, the government constituted the National Educational Planning Commission (NEPC) to give recommendations across all aspects of education, having declared that the goal is to make education relevant to ‘national need’. Later, with the introduction of the New Education System Plan (NESP) in 1971, the entire machinery was revamped. Nepal began her independent journey in the sphere of higher education, even though students from Nepal continued to enrol themselves in Indian higher education institutions. Major players within the intellectual field post-1950s Nepal, were trained in India, and with the passage of time the numbers kept on rising, even amidst ups and downs in diplomatic relations between these two nations.
Cultural capital
Higher educational training, even though available as a commodity, still embeds avenues that register learning experiences as impactful memories which shape future lives and proclivities. These memories, among other things, are potential sources of South Asian cultural capital that grows spontaneously when nurtured with care. And when this process involves the category of ‘foreign students’, it becomes the responsibility of the host institution to prevent the process from turning into a pedagogy of the oppressed.
Students are students, no matter where they are from. Creating categories within studenthood and offering differential treatment is an act of institutionally sponsored ragging that devalues the institution, renders the educational ambience volatile, and most importantly, propagates a culture of misanthropy, thereby nullifying the core of education in itself, no matter where the institution appears on the charts of national or international grading systems.
Moreover, the KIIT instance, when viewed in the light of the Indo-Nepal Peace Treaty of 1950, appears to be a case that is in direct conflict with Article 6 (confirms national treatment to be offered to the nationals of either country) and Article 7 (confirms reciprocal privileges of residence, ownership of property, participation in trade and commerce, movement to the nationals of one country in the territories of the other) of the said Treaty, and thereby has the potency to affect bilateral ties between India and Nepal.
Swatahsiddha Sarkar teaches at the Centre for Himalayan Studies, University of North Bengal.
Published – March 07, 2025 08:30 am IST
