Dhangadi, May 29

Many children of Hausalpur in Kailari Rural Municipality, Kailali, are compelled to go to school across the border in India due lack of school in their locality.

The nearest school in their area is across a river with no bridge over it. So to avoid the risk, many children have joined a school in India.

There are 28 Tharu families in Hausalpur, and as there is no school in the village, the kids here go to Saraswoti Shishu Mandir in Belaparasuwa, on the Indian side of the border for education. These kids here know Hindi and can sing the Indian national anthem, but haven’t ever heard about their own national anthem.

“As ours is an Indian school, we only know the Indian national anthem, the one we sing every day during the morning assembly,” eighth-grader Bimala Chaudhary said in Hindi. “As that’s an Indian school, we can speak Hindi. We can speak Tharu language too as it is our mother tongue, but we do not know the Nepali language,” said the girl.

In fact, even adults can’t speak and understand Nepali here, and it’s not surprising given how they are cut off from the rest of the country and have been depending on India for every other thing, including education for their kids.

Sohanlal Chaudhary, a local, said they had no option but to send their kids to the Indian school as there was no school in their locality, and the school in the adjoining settlement Rampur was a long way across the river,” he said.

Hausalpur village leader Narbendra Kathariya said, “The school where our kids are now studying runs classes up to Grade VIII, and is one-and-a-half kilometres away. Once they pass Grade VIII, they go to another school in the same village, which is 3-km away from here.”

Talking about the problems faced by children in the village due to lack of school, Kailari Rural Municipality Chair Lajuram Chaudhary informed that the municipality was preparing to set up a school in the village from next year.

“A school couldn’t be established here in the past as there were very few kids. We’re thinking of running a school in the village from next academic session irrespective of the number of students,” he said.