BBC NEWS | South Asia | Battle in Nepal's schoolrooms

By Charles Haviland
BBC News, Salyan district, western Nepal

Nepal's Maoist insurgency has been fought across the country with skirmishes reported nearly every day. But now it has also entered the classroom, affecting schools, teachers and pupils.

This is an ideological as well as a physical battle. The Maoists, said to control over two-thirds of rural Nepal, regularly order school closures and bomb educational institutions.

They also say they want to remove class privilege from schooling - while the royal-led government tries to make the syllabus more pro-monarchy.

The rebels have just finished training the first batch of teachers to introduce what they call a new revolutionary syllabus, 'pro-people education', into Maoist-controlled schools.

The BBC was given access to them at a secret location in Salyan district, several days walk from the nearest significant road.

The old educational system is a farce - it's all about praising kings and gods

At dawn in this rebel hideout in the hills, drizzly clouds cap the peaks and women plant rice seedlings far below.

Twenty-four trainee teachers perform their daily drill, to the commands of a Maoist soldier: knee-flexing, eye-rolling, jumping and more, capped by the Maoist greeting 'Lal Salaam!' (Red Salute).

Ranging from their 20s to their 40s, the trainees come from villages across Nepal's three most Maoist-dominated districts. Some were already teachers under the traditional system; all say they are now committed to the Maoists.

They are spending a month here and will work as volunteers when they return home to bring this new syllabus to some of the 40-odd schools the Maoists now run in Nepal.

After a simple communal breakfast, each person does his or her own washing-up.

Soon they are sitting cross-legged on the floor in a mud house, training to teach a maths lesson with a difference. The instructor is using graphs - to show the types of weapons seized by a Maoist attack last year.

'Benefit of the poor'

There are other sessions like military science - how to protect your school if it is attacked.

Children in Nepal Maoists schools
The Maoists say their education syllabus is practical

The trainees will soon be teaching this to children as young as six.

"The old educational system is a farce - it's all about praising kings and gods," says 36-year-old Rajan Roka.

"Our new system is practical - if you want to do farming, it helps you do farming. It's about making a community without class or caste.

"I used to earn 5,000 rupees a month as a teacher," says 42-year-old Bimala Sharma. "Now I'm teaching pro-people education I get no money, but I'm happy because the lessons are completely for the benefit of the poor."

Some trainees, like Bimala, say they became committed Maoists because they were victimised by the army. Others may have been pressured into taking up the ideology, but it is impossible to tell.

The Maoists are only slowly introducing their methods.

Just up from the training site, local children still go to an ordinary school, packed into classrooms. Traditional lessons are still taught; the rebels have not yet imposed their system here, or in most of Nepal's 19,000 primary schools.


This year's exam results were terrible. The teachers said it was because of these constant abductions
Hari Gautam,
district education officer

But schools are now a crucial element in their battle to control society. They want to spread their philosophy - and where they control territory, it should not be hard for them to do so.

In the headquarters of neighbouring Rolpa district, the government's district education officer, Hari Gautam, is concerned. He says the rebels forcibly abduct pupils and teachers for days, to attend indoctrination sessions.

"Here and all over Nepal, the Maoists take teachers and students away from their schools," he says.

"This year's exam results were terrible. The teachers said it was because of these constant abductions. But they're also terrified officials will punish them if they admit attending Maoist programmes."

The rebels are also notorious for ordering schools to close, such as private or foreign-owned ones, or bombing them.

The Royal Nepalese Army sets up barracks in schools. They arrest any children who express the slightest support for us

At a Maoist political show in rural Rolpa, I put it to their senior education official, Comrade Santosh, that the guerrillas were hurting society's most vulnerable targets. He instead blamed the government side.

"The Royal Nepalese Army sets up barracks in schools," he says. "They arrest any children who express the slightest support for us."

He admitted there have been military clashes near schools, even that "some students fear us a little". But, he said, "we've never initiated violence in such places".

The army does indeed use some schools as barracks. A school in eastern Nepal was recently destroyed after heavy fighting there.

But Hari Gautam says Maoist actions in particular have created deep fear.

"Parents tell me how frightened they are about their children's safety," he says.

"They worry - will our children come home after school? Will they be bombed or taken away, or get caught in military clashes? Children in school suffer psychological terror."

The Maoists, however, see schools as a laboratory for their revolution. They have begun with just a committed few, but their intention seems clear: to impose their strongly militaristic schooling on more and more people. Sphere: Related Content