Chronicle of Higher Education Articles on BORI and Mahendra U.

[Robert Goldman]

Dear Colleagues,

Today's web edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education has a report
on the recent assault on BORI.

Non-subscribers to CHE can, I am informed, access the article for the
next five days at the following site.

http://chronicle.com/temp/email.php?id=j0uyp43ittd4xns3crlmkzsjykaexwqk

Incidentally, the CHE ran an article by the same reporter, Martha Ann
Overland, on the destruction of
Nepal's Mahendra  Sanskrit University on Oct 3, 2002.

I do not have the entire piece any longer but the following are some
relevant passages. The report does not make any distinction between
books and manuscripts.


  "On a moonless night last May, hundreds of Maoist guerrillas
descended from the hills and surrounded Nepal's only
Sanskrit-language university. They cut the phone lines, ordered
everyone out of the buildings, and then went from room to room,
dousing  files and furniture with kerosene, and set them alight.
As the buildings burned, and flames consumed Mahendra Sanskrit
University's rare, ancient, and irreplaceable Hindu texts, the rebels
quietly slipped back into the surrounding forests.

Š a demand of the rebel leadership that resonates with many Nepalese
is the call for elimination of Sanskrit in the secondary schools.
Sanskrit is the language of the high-caste Hindu priests and scholars
who study ancient texts. The members of the low-caste groups and
those known as "untouchables" widely resent being required to learn
the language of the Brahmins, the group that has traditionally kept
them in servitude. Last year, rebels went to examination centers
where annual school tests were being held, grabbed the Sanskrit
sections, and publicly burned them."

Overland also quotes an informant as follows:

"One of my relatives was a high-school headmaster," says a
communications major at Pokhara University, who says he fears
reprisals if he gives his name. "The Maoists were asking for
donations. He had no money to give. They also wanted him to stop
teaching Sanskrit. They dragged him from the classroom, tied him to a
tree, strangled him with his own scarf, and then shot him to death.
All the students were crying."


--
Dr. R. P.  Goldman
Professor of Sanskrit
Department of  South and Southeast Asian Studies
7303 Dwinelle Hall MC #2540
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-2540
email: sseas at socrates.berkeley.edu
Phone: (510) 642-4089
Fax:     (510) 642.2409