ABSTRACT
Reports on Nepali education, particularly English language education (ELE), have mainly blamed the Rana regime (1846-1950 AD) for the way they introduced the English language to Nepal, for keeping it exclusively for themselves for so long, and for depriving the average Nepali of its benefi ts. A number of articles, especially in the last three decades, have criticised the controversial segregative role English has played in the Nepalese community in favour of the ruling elites and the hegemonic
control it has provided for them over Nepalese society in general and education in particular. I do not dispute the malevolence of their restrictive ELE policy, nor do I support the control they exercised over education, but these reports, by either fault-fi nding or criticising the much-condemned autocratic regime for their restrictive ELE policy, are either naïve or inaccurate. I argue that the so-called “democratic” governments have not done much for educational development either. The system of education, for example, remains to date as old-fashioned, product-or knowledgebased, teacher-centred and examination-dominated as it was some 50 years ago. The concept of educational development, in the modern sense of the term, did not exist then, nor does it exist now. It is high time Nepalese academia stopped blaming the Rana regime or the governments thereafter, broke through the (internal) colonial mentality or the infrastructure of the arrogant eliticism, and worked towards developing an educational system which is based on the social, economic and occupational demands of the nation and the region.
