Nepal Theological Association to affiliate with Serampore College

Calcutta – The Association for Theological Education in Nepal has announced that it will launch a degree course in divinity this year, after being affiliated to Serampore College in West Bengal, thereby, bringing back the association of the Himalayan kingdom with Serampore, where British missionary and educationist William Carey undertook the first translation of the New Testament into Nepalese in 1812.

Carey, one of the founders of the Serampore College (1818), finished his translation in 1821. Thereafter, a Nepalese pastor in West Bengal, Ganga Prasad Preadhan, rendered the entire Bible into Nepalese in 1914.

About two percent of the nearly 26.5 million population of Nepal are Christians, mostly from economically disadvantaged classes with little or no access to education.

While Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs and even Muslims were readily assimilated in Nepal, the early Christians had to undergo much struggle. The first Christian missionary is said to have been established by Jesuit priests in Kathmandu valley in the 18th century with a community of 57 converts.

However, in 1760, King Prithvi Narayan Shah banished the priests and for nearly 150 years the state frowned upon Christianity–related activities. Conversion was made a punishable offence and is still in force.

However, things improved in 1990 when the democracy movement weakened the power of monarchy and the state relented in its persecution of Christians.

The first Bibles to circulate in Nepal was smuggled in from India. However, since 1999 the various Bible societies have been able to print it in the country.

Establishing the degree course is a moment of quiet triumph for Ramesh Khatry, executive secretary of the Association for Theological Education that was established in 1993 by nearly 30 church groups, missions and societies to bring a standard to Bible education.

Khatry, a doctorate degree holder in divinity from Oxford, was imprisoned in 1984 along with 13 Christians for running a one–month Bible school in western Nepal.

They were released after the missions raised nearly Nepali Rs.50,000 for bail but the case dragged on till 1990, when the democracy movement, Khatry said, made the state more liberal and the suit was relegated into oblivion.

Today, the association is a government–registered body and runs an impressive library of religious texts. From 2005, it will be starting a three and a half year Bachelor of Divinity degree course affiliated to Serampore College, which has become a university.

Knowing that there will not be too many takers initially, Khatry hopes that things will change. “Even if the (Nepalese) government decides to shut down the association or the course in Kathmandu, the students can get admission to any of the 40–odd Bible colleges in India affiliated to Serampore College,” he said.