Language, Education and Cultural Institutions in Nepal

Institutions in Nepal Language, education and cultural institutions in Nepal Mithila/Madhesh have never formed a single hierarchy. Maithili has long been a language of household life, ritual, literature, performance and cross- border communication, while Sanskrit, Nepali, Hindi, Urdu, Bhojpuri, Bajjika and English have occupied different institutional niches at different times. The modern state expanded schools, examinations, universities, academies and broadcasting, but it also attached unequal prestige and administrative power to languages. The historical problem is therefore not whether Maithili survived, but how institutions distributed literacy, credentials, public visibility and cultural authority among languages. This chapter treats language policy, schooling and cultural organisation together because each changed the social value of the others. 70.1 Linguistic plurality in the Nepal Tarai predates the modern school system The eastern and central Tarai/Madhesh were multilingual before mass schooling. Maithili dominated large parts of Saptari, Siraha, Dhanusha and Mahottari, but speech communities interacted with Bhojpuri, Bajjika, Urdu, Nepali, Sanskrit and Hindi through markets, courts, pilgrimage, marriage and religious instruction. A language could be dominant in the household and village while another carried administrative, scholastic or commercial prestige. The expansion of modern education therefore entered an already layered linguistic ecology rather than creating one from nothing. 70.2 Census language categories measure state classification as well as speech The 1952/54 census reported 918,211 persons under ‘Maithili and dialects’; the 1961 count was 1,130,402 and the 1971 count 1,327,242. Later censuses recorded 2.192 million Maithili mother-tongue speakers in 1991, 2.798 million in 2001, 3.093 million in 2011 and 3.222 million in 2021. These figures establish the large demographic base of Maithili, but they are not a simple time series of language shift. Census categories, dialect boundaries, enumerator practice and the treatment of Hindi, Bajjika and related speech changed over time. Figure 276 — Reported Maithili mother-tongue population in Nepal censuses, 1952/54–2021 715715 GAJENDRA THAKUR 70.3 Before mass education, learning moved through family, pathshala, monastery, mosque and apprenticeship Literacy and learning were historically distributed through institutions smaller than the modern school. Sanskrit pathshalas trained limited groups in grammar, ritual and scholastic texts; maktabs and mosque-based instruction supported Islamic literacy; temple establishments preserved liturgical and genealogical knowledge; merchant and scribal families taught account keeping; and women transmitted songs, ritual vocabularies, painting conventions and household knowledge outside formal curricula. These systems were unequal in access, yet they remind us that cultural reproduction cannot be measured only by school enrolment. 70.4 Rana-era education was narrow, and access to state-recognised schooling remained highly unequal The Rana state did not create universal public education. Elite schools and a small number of language pathshalas expanded selectively, while most rural households relied on local or informal learning. Nepali gained importance as the language associated with the central state, and English became a route into elite administration. In the Tarai, this left a gap between the language of everyday life and the languages rewarded by formal institutions. That gap became more consequential once certificates and examinations began to govern public employment. 70.5 The political opening after 1951 converted education into a national development project After the end of Rana rule, education expanded rapidly in both aspiration and institutional reach. New schools, teacher training, curricula and national planning were expected to create citizens as well as skilled workers. For Nepal Mithila/Madhesh, this expansion offered unprecedented access to schooling, but it also raised a fundamental language question: whether a Maithili-speaking child would enter literacy through the familiar language of home or through Nepali, the language tied to state-wide administration and national integration. 70.6 The 1956 National Education Planning Commission placed Nepali at the centre of national schooling The National Education Planning Commission report of 1956 treated a common national language as an instrument of integration and recommended Nepali as the principal medium of instruction. Mother-tongue use, where acknowledged, was framed mainly as a bridge toward Nepali rather than as an equal long-term institutional medium. This approach had lasting consequences because school expansion linked educational success to command of Nepali. For Maithili-speaking communities, learning Nepali could increase mobility while simultaneously narrowing the institutional space available to Maithili. 70.7 The 1957 attempt to prescribe Nepali as school medium exposed regional resistance Language policy did not move from Kathmandu into the plains without contest. Scholarship on Nepal’s language politics records that the K. I. Singh government in 1957 prescribed Nepali as the medium of school education and encountered resistance, including in the Tarai. Political instability limited the directive’s HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II durable implementation, but the episode is important because it shows that educational language was already understood as a question of citizenship and regional dignity, not merely classroom technique. 70.8 The 1962 Constitution elevated Nepali within a more centralised national order The Panchayat-era constitution declared Nepali in Devanagari the national language. This constitutional hierarchy reinforced the association between Nepali, administration and national belonging. Other languages continued to thrive in homes, markets, literature, song and ritual, but they did not possess comparable state authority. In education, the result was a strong incentive for families to acquire Nepali even when their everyday linguistic world was Maithili. Language competence increasingly became a form of institutional capital. 70.9 Panchayat language policy strengthened a monolingual national ideal without eliminating multilingual practice The Panchayat state is often summarised by the slogan of one language, one dress and one country. Its institutions privileged Nepali in administration, schooling and national media, but actual society remained multilingual. Teachers translated informally, pupils discussed lessons in familiar languages, markets operated through mixed repertoires, and Maithili literary and ritual life continued. The historical effect was therefore not the disappearance of Maithili but a widening separation between the language of everyday cultural reproduction and the language most rewarded by state credentials. 70.10 The National Education System Plan deepened curricular centralisation The National Education System Plan of the early 1970s standardised curricula, examinations, school organisation and teacher preparation across Nepal. Centralisation made educational provision more legible to the state, but it also made language choice less locally negotiable. A common curriculum could expand access and comparability while reducing space for regional history, local literature and mother-tongue pedagogy. In Nepal Mithila/Madhesh, the institutional gain of more schooling therefore coexisted with the cultural cost of a narrower official linguistic repertoire. 70.11 Ramswarup Ramsagar Multiple Campus made Janakpur a durable centre of higher education Ramswarup Ramsagar Multiple Campus was established in Janakpur in 1957 and later became a constituent campus of Tribhuvan University. Its importance was larger than its course list. It enabled students from the eastern and central Tarai to pursue higher education without relocating permanently to Kathmandu or India, created a local teaching profession, supported libraries and debating societies, and helped make Janakpur a regional intellectual centre. Higher education also produced a bilingual and often multilingual public whose academic credentials were largely Nepali- or English-mediated while social life remained strongly Maithili. 70.12 Tribhuvan University connected regional campuses to a national credential system The establishment of Tribhuvan University in 1959 created a national framework for higher education, examinations and academic disciplines. Affiliated and constituent campuses brought Janakpur and other Tarai centres into that system. This integration expanded social mobility but also reinforced linguistic 717717 GAJENDRA THAKUR hierarchies because many high-status disciplines operated through Nepali and English. Maithili could be studied, written and researched, yet the language of institutional advancement often differed from the language of cultural belonging. That duality became characteristic of educated Madhesh society. Figure 277 — Major language-and-education policy turns in Nepal, 1956–2018 70.13 Sanskrit learning persisted alongside modern secular education Modern schools did not simply replace Sanskrit institutions. Pathshalas, religious schools and private teachers continued to transmit grammar, ritual and classical texts, while Sanskrit remained important to temple culture and certain scholarly lineages in Mithila. Nepal later created a dedicated Sanskrit university in 1986, institutionalising Sanskrit at university level. For Nepal Mithila/Madhesh, this produced a three-level knowledge environment in which Sanskrit carried classical authority, Nepali and English carried much modern credential power, and Maithili remained central to regional cultural communication. 70.14 The Nepal Academy created a national institution for language, literature and culture in 1957 The Nepal Academy traces its establishment to 1957 as a state-supported body for literature, art and scholarship. Its later remit explicitly includes the languages, literatures, cultures, social sciences and philosophy of Nepal. National academies can broaden recognition by commissioning dictionaries, histories, editions and research, but they also select what enters the national canon. The institutional history of Maithili in Nepal must therefore be read through both inclusion and scale: recognition by a central academy does not by itself guarantee equivalent publishing, staffing or educational use across languages. 70.15 Cultural institutions include periodicals, theatre, radio, festivals and associations as well as academies A narrow institutional history would miss the organisations that actually sustained Maithili public culture. Literary periodicals, dramatic groups, festival committees, temple trusts, libraries, student unions, women’s art organisations and local associations created audiences and trained writers, performers and organisers. Radio and later television and digital platforms added new circuits. These institutions often worked across the India–Nepal border, drawing on books, performers and intellectual networks from Bihar while producing specifically Nepali forms of Maithili public life. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 70.16 Maithili print in Nepal developed within a Devanagari-dominant technological environment Maithili possessed older manuscript traditions in Tirhuta/Mithilakshar, but twentieth-century publishing in Nepal increasingly relied on Devanagari because printing, type availability, schooling and state administration were organised around it. This shift should not be misread as proof that Tirhuta lacked cultural value. Script choice was partly institutional and technological. Devanagari lowered printing costs and connected Maithili to school and newspaper infrastructures, while Tirhuta survived in manuscripts, ritual memory, specialist learning and later revival efforts. 70.17 Census simplification during the Panchayat decades makes linguistic decline difficult to interpret The number of language labels reported in Nepal’s censuses contracted sharply during the Panchayat period and expanded again after 1990. Part of this pattern reflects classification rules and political visibility rather than biological or cultural disappearance of speech communities. Historical analysis should therefore avoid reading every census change as spontaneous language assimilation. For Maithili, Bhojpuri, Bajjika and Hindi especially, overlapping labels and changing enumeration practice affected what the state counted. Language statistics are evidence about administration as well as about speakers. 70.18 The 1990 Constitution marked a constitutional turn toward linguistic recognition The Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal, 1990 retained Nepali in Devanagari as the national and official language, but it also recognised other mother tongues as national languages. It guaranteed communities the right to preserve and promote their language, script and culture and allowed communities to run schools providing primary education in the mother tongue. The shift was significant because cultural rights became constitutional claims. Yet the burden of establishing and operating schools largely remained on communities, so formal recognition did not automatically produce a Maithili-medium public-school system. 70.19 The 1994 language-policy recommendations broadened the agenda from recognition to planning The National Languages Policy Recommendation Commission of the 1990s proposed a more systematic approach to Nepal’s linguistic diversity: documentation, dictionaries, orthographies, textbooks, mother- tongue education and institutional research. Its importance lay in treating minority and regional languages as objects of public planning rather than private survival. Implementation remained uneven, but the report helped shift the policy vocabulary from tolerance toward preservation and development. For Maithili, the challenge was no longer only legal recognition but the institutional capacity to create teachers, materials and sustained domains of use. 70.20 The 2007 Interim Constitution made multilingual citizenship more explicit The Interim Constitution declared all mother tongues spoken in Nepal to be national languages, retained Nepali in Devanagari as the official language, and protected the use of mother tongues in local bodies subject to official translation. It also recognised the right of communities to basic education in their mother tongue and to preserve language, script, culture and heritage. These provisions were a major symbolic break with the monolingual Panchayat ideal. Their practical effect, however, depended on curricula, teacher supply, local budgets and school-level decisions. 719719 GAJENDRA THAKUR Figure 278 — Institutional ecology of language, learning and culture in Nepal 70.21 The 2015 Constitution widened the legal space for provincial and mother- tongue institutions The Constitution of Nepal, 2015 states that all mother tongues are languages of the nation. Nepali in Devanagari remains the federal official language, while provinces may by law designate one or more additional languages spoken by a majority within the province for official use. Article 31 protects the right of communities to education in their mother tongue and to establish educational institutions; Article 32 protects language, script, culture and heritage. This framework transformed language policy from a single national hierarchy into a potentially federal negotiation. 70.22 The Language Commission institutionalised research and recommendation after federalisation Article 287 of the 2015 Constitution required a Language Commission, and the Language Commission Act of 2017 defined its statutory basis. The commission studies Nepal’s languages, recommends criteria for official-language recognition, documents linguistic resources and advises on development. This is historically important because language expertise acquired a dedicated constitutional institution. For Madhesh, commission recommendations provide evidence for the public weight of Maithili, Bhojpuri, Bajjika and other languages, but recommendations and enacted provincial practice must be kept analytically distinct. 70.23 The 2018 education law translated constitutional language rights into a clearer statutory framework The Compulsory and Free Education Act defines mother-tongue education and provides for education through a community’s mother tongue, including the possibility of schools or educational institutions established for that purpose. It also recognises mother-tongue-based multilingual education. This moved policy beyond a purely symbolic right. Yet statutes do not produce classrooms on their own. A school still requires teachers who can teach subject content, suitable textbooks, assessment arrangements, administrative support and parental confidence in the educational value of the chosen medium. HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II 70.24 The implementation gap is now better documented than the absence of policy UNESCO, UNICEF and Nepal-based research consistently identify a gap between multilingual policy and classroom practice. Obstacles include shortages of trained teachers, limited reading materials, mixed- language classrooms, weak local planning, insufficient funding and uncertainty over assessment. These constraints matter in Maithili-speaking areas because a language can be demographically large yet still lack full institutional depth across mathematics, science, administration and teacher training. Speaker numbers alone do not determine the strength of an educational medium. 70.25 English-medium expansion has created a new hierarchy alongside the older Nepali–Maithili tension Since the 1990s and especially in the twenty-first century, English has expanded as a language of private schooling, higher education, migration aspiration and perceived economic mobility. Public schools have also adopted English-medium programmes in some areas to compete for enrolment. Maithili-speaking parents may therefore face a three-way decision: cultural familiarity in Maithili, national institutional access through Nepali, and imagined global opportunity through English. This is not simply language abandonment; it is a response to unequal labour-market rewards attached to different educational codes. 70.26 Teaching Maithili as a subject is institutionally different from using it as a medium A curriculum may include Maithili language and literature while mathematics, science and social studies remain in Nepali or English. The distinction is crucial. Subject teaching preserves literacy and literary knowledge, but medium-of-instruction status builds technical vocabulary, teacher competence and everyday academic use. Nepal has developed mother-tongue curricular materials in several languages including Maithili, yet implementation varies widely. Historical claims about ‘Maithili education’ should therefore specify whether Maithili is a subject, a classroom support language or the principal medium. 70.27 The 2021 census confirms Maithili’s national scale while also revealing a multilingual society The 2021 census reported 3,222,389 Maithili mother-tongue speakers, about 11.05 percent of Nepal’s population, making Maithili the country’s second-largest reported mother tongue after Nepali. The same census records large Bhojpuri, Tharu, Bajjika, Avadhi and Urdu populations, among many others. Maithili’s demographic strength gives it unusual institutional potential among Nepal’s non-Nepali languages, but scale does not remove the need for local planning because Madhesh classrooms and municipalities are themselves multilingual rather than linguistically uniform. 721721 GAJENDRA THAKUR Figure 279 — From constitutional language right to classroom practice 70.28 Madhesh Province demonstrates why federal language policy cannot be reduced to one regional language Official provincial data show Maithili as the largest language in Madhesh Province, alongside very large Bhojpuri and Bajjika populations and substantial Nepali, Tharu and Urdu use. The Language Commission has recommended Maithili, Bhojpuri and Bajjika for provincial official use, with other languages relevant in specific domains. Such recommendations recognise demographic reality, but federalism requires legislation, administrative capacity, translation and staffing. A multilingual province therefore faces the harder task of building institutions that recognise several languages without simply replacing one hierarchy with another. 70.29 Cultural life remains polycentric across Janakpur, Kathmandu, local governments and transborder networks No single academy or university defines Maithili culture in Nepal. Janakpur’s campuses, publishers, temples, festivals, art organisations and media form one centre; Kathmandu-based universities, academies and national broadcasters form another; municipalities and schools constitute a third; and cross-border intellectual exchange with Bihar remains a fourth. Digital publishing has added a fifth. This polycentric structure can be resilient because cultural production does not depend on one institution, but it can also fragment resources and create uneven standards, archives and opportunities. 70.30 Conclusion: language vitality depends on institutional depth, not constitutional recognition alone The history of language and education in Nepal is a movement from strong central privileging of Nepali toward constitutional multilingualism, but the institutional transition is incomplete. Maithili has demographic strength, a deep literary and oral tradition, a regional urban centre in Janakpur, higher- education institutions and increasing legal recognition. Yet educational medium, teacher preparation, publishing, administration and labour-market incentives remain uneven. Cultural citizenship is strongest when household transmission, schools, universities, media, archives, local government and creative institutions reinforce one another rather than operate as isolated domains. Table 70.1 — Evidence domains for reconstructing language, education and cultural institutions Evidence domain What it can establish Principal limitation HISTORY OF MITHILA, VAJJI & ANGA — VOLUME II Evidence domain What it can establish Principal limitation Population censuses reported mother tongue, second categories and enumeration language, regional distribution practice change; mother tongue and long-run changes in does not measure literacy, classification medium of instruction or competence Constitutions and statutes formal hierarchy of languages, legal recognition does not education rights, provincial demonstrate implementation, powers and institutional budgets or everyday use mandates Education plans and medium-of-instruction policy, plans may state intentions not curricula centralisation, teacher training, achieved in classrooms; local textbook production and practice can diverge sharply reform objectives School and university institutional expansion, courses, records privilege formal records enrolment, campus formation, education and understate credential pathways and local household, oral and informal academic centres knowledge Academy, Language research programmes, language central institutions can include Commission and cultural documentation, a language symbolically without bodies recommendations, publications providing equivalent resources and cultural recognition or domains Ethnography, media and actual language choice, local evidence is selective and community evidence translation, cultural cannot automatically establish associations, family strategies, national prevalence festivals and informal multilingual practice 723723