Dipak Tuladhar’s language preservation campaign

Here is Dipak Tuladhar in his office with Newar curriculum that he developed.

It was fascinating and inspiring to meet Dipak Tuladhar, who founded the Modern Newa English School in Kathmandu in 2003. It was the first minority language preschool in Nepal. At the time when he started, children were forbidden from speaking anything but Nepali in school, and could be punished for speaking their mother tongue. There was one incident in which his niece came home with a bloody hand, and when they asked her why she didn’t seek medical attention, she said that she didn’t know the words in Nepali. Many Newar kids apparently drop out of school because they’re not getting anything out of the lessons, since they only learned their mother tongue at home and not Nepali. He considers this a violation of human rights.

Dipak Tuladhar had been a businessman. In 2003 he decided to take a risk on starting a pre-school. He was on the hook for everything — the building costs, the teacher’s salaries, everything. He needed 12 students in order to make it sustainable. At first, nobody signed up. He despaired. But eventually, people started signing up. He reached his maximum capacity of 25 for the youngest cohort (called “play groups”). Eventually it grew to the point where there are four play groups with different ages, ranging from 3 years old to 6 years old. Some students spend four years there. He designed much of the curriculum himself, creating learning materials that allow students to learn both about and in their native language. It was successful! And all without any government funding. Teachers are paid fairly, and receive a bonus on the holidays that they celebrate. (Most teachers are of Newar ethnicity and celebrate Newari holidays, but when I visited on August 25th, 2025, there was one whose holiday was the next day, so she got her bonus that day.)

He went to Kritipur, a Newar-majority town, and started a school there. He helped to start a total of 10 private Newar-immersion pre-schools throughout the country, each with their own leader. He has also lobbied municipality mayors to include local languages as part of the school curriculum. The constitution of Nepal had changed in 2015 to consider every mother tongue a national language, but there was no meaningful practical support for this. But due to the introduction of federalism, a political change that gave more power to local governments, local leaders got the power to implement changes in educational policy at the local level. He has successfully convinced political leaders in many different municipalities near Kathmandu to include instruction in the local mother tongue, and has worked to produce instructional materials not only for Newar but also for other local languages too, including Tamang, Maithili, and Awadhi.