Kathmandu, Nepal
Maoist rebels set fire Saturday night to Nepal’s only Sanskrit-language university, located in the Dang district in the western part of the country, destroying administration buildings and damaging the university’s valuable collection of ancient texts. The rebels, who are fighting to overthrow the country’s constitutional monarchy, are demanding that the government stop teaching Sanskrit, the language of Nepal’s aristocracy.
According to an administrator in Mahendra Sanskrit University’s office in the capital, Kathmandu, rebels entered the campus and doused two buildings with kerosene. The fire, which police officials say took all night to extinguish, consumed the offices of the vice chancellor, the registrar, and the controller of examinations. All of the student records, kept since the university opened, were destroyed. The university official, who asked not to be named, said that an unknown number of Sanskrit books had been lost in the fire.
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