Getting Admitted to St. Xavier’s School

The story of a historian getting admitted to St Xavier’s School at Jawalakhel in the early 1970s provides an insightful peek into Nepali society of those days.

MY ASSOCIATION WITH St. Xavier’s School (StX) Jawalakhel started one morning in the winter of 1971. The date was 11 December. I got onto the back of my father’s motorbike—I think it was a Honda—in front of our house in Thamel, Kathmandu, and off we went to Jawalakhel, Patan, some six kilometres away. I had to appear for an admission test. During those days, for reasons I do not know, the Godavari wing of StX (where only boarder students studied) had Class I but the Jawalakhel branch did not. So, this admission test for a new cohort of students at StX Jawalakhel was for Class II.

In late 1971, StX Godavari was already 20 years old, having started operations on 1 July 1951 under the management of American Jesuit educators. It was the first among several boarding schools established in Nepal immediately after the demise of the Rana Regime in February 1951. The folklore among graduates of the school regarding its founding is that Fr Marshall D. Moran (1906–1992), then based at St Xavier’s, Patna, had been invited by King Tribhuvan (1906–1955) to start the school after the power of the Shah monarchy had been restored. However, as the recent archival research of two of my Martin Chautari colleagues, Lokranjan Parajuli and Rukh Gurung, has shown, the series of decisions that led to the founding of StX can be traced back to at least 1946 when the penultimate Rana Prime Minister, Padma Shamsher, was the supreme ruler of Nepal.

Until late 1971, boarder students in classes one through seven studied in Godavari and they all came to Jawalakhel to finish high school. This would change in 1972 when Class VII was eliminated in Godavari. The Jawalakhel wing of StX had come into operation in 1954. In 1972, this wing had Classes II through VI with students who were all day scholars and Classes VII through Senior Cambridge (10 plus one) with both boarder and day students.

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AFTER I FINISHED KG class in another school, my parents must have thought about sending me, their firstborn, to a school which had classes through high school. It would have been a pain to change schools every few years. But why StX? I don’t know the answer to that question. As indicated previously, StX was not the only boarding school in the Kathmandu Valley. There were many other such schools both in Kathmandu and Patan. The advice of a second cousin, Umeshwar Joshi, who had graduated from StX in 1969 after taking the Senior Cambridge exam, must have played a key role in their decision. Plus, StX was not exorbitantly expensive. In its earlier days, some Nepali families, especially from the Bahun community, were a little apprehensive about sending their wards to a school run by Christian missionaries. However, by the time of my application, this fear or scepticism had probably dissipated.

On 11 December 1971, I was thus taking an admission test to become a day scholar student of Standard II at StX Jawalakhel. Despite the cold weather of the Kathmandu winter, my father and I arrived much earlier than the scheduled test time of 10 am to make sure that I didn’t miss the test. Once inside the school compound, I remember taking off my favourite winter coat (I was wearing a sweater inside) and running off to a classroom in an impressive big building. That building does not exist anymore. It was badly damaged by the 2015 earthquake and has since been torn down and replaced by a new one.

I don’t remember how long the test lasted, perhaps for an hour or an hour and a half. It contained separate sections that tested my ability in basic written English and Nepali. The test also contained sections on simple arithmetic. After the written test was over, Fr Leo P. Cachat, S.J. (I would not have known his name then), then the principal of StX Jawalakhel, engaged me in a conversation in basic English. I have a vague memory of him rolling a pencil on top of a desk and asking me to describe what I had seen. I replied to him with confidence. Maybe some other teachers of StX also tested me orally in Nepali and maths.

Before we returned home, my father, Tirtha Raj Onta, and parents/guardians of all test-takers were given a printed letter signed by Fr Cachat (see Figure 1). It mentioned that more than 300 boys had signed up to take the admission test for Class II but the school could accommodate only 35 students. The letter went on to explain the selection method:

The boys are tested in written English, Arithmetic, Nepali and Nepali Hisab. They are tested orally in the same subjects. Their total score for the written and oral sections are written down. Extra points are given for example, to those boys who are Nepali, whose father [sic] is in government service or some other way directly helps the development of the country and whose relative has attended our school. All the tests and the scores are then handed over to a selection committee who will sift through the 300 plus candidates to pick out the 35 who will be admitted.

I had done well in the written and oral exams. I was also a nice fit with respect to the eligibility criteria for ‘extra points’.  As a child of two Nepali citizens, I was a Nepali by birth although as a small kid, I did not have a nabalak (minor) citizenship paper then. In my childhood, acquiring official birth certificates and citizenship documents was not common. While my mother, Mainya Baba Onta, was a homemaker, my father was in government service then. He was a lecturer of political science in the government-owned Balmiki Sanskrit Mahabidyalaya (College)—an entity that is now part of the Nepal Sanskrit University—in Kathmandu. He had joined the institution in the late 1960s after passing the usual interview-based exam for lecturers in government-owned colleges executed by the Public Service Commission. 

Figure 1: Letter given after test, 11 December 1971 (Pratyoush Onta)

No member of my immediate family had attended StX. However, in the application, my father had mentioned the name of my above-mentioned second cousin, Umeshwar, who had graduated from StX two years earlier. In 1971, he was an undergraduate student in Amrit Science College and was taking private tutorials with my father on the ‘philosophy’ of the Panchayat System. As a lecturer of political science, my father had to teach this theme but he wasn’t a propagandist of the regime. Umeshwar’s mother and my mother were first cousins. He had been a star student-athlete at StX and my father must have thought that mentioning his name in the application was a good idea.

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THE RESULTS OF the admission test were supposed to be out on 19 December 1971. I do not know if they were made public only on that day or even earlier. The names of the boys who had been selected were apparently listed in a notice on the school’s bulletin board. Being dead sure that my name would not be there, my father did not bother to visit the school to check the results. He had a reason to believe that the trip to Jawalakhel would be a waste of his time.

Although the letter from Fr Cachat given to all guardians on 11 December (Figure 1) had explicitly stated:

‘Source and force’ is not part of our admission procedure. Those who try to use it will only have points deducted from their child’s score…

No one believed that that was in fact the case. By the time I took the entrance exams, StX had the reputation for being the best school for boys in Nepal, one in which it was very difficult to secure admissions. In public understanding, only sons of families that composed the elite class of Nepali society—top politicians, leading businessmen, high-level bureaucrats, and top brass of the security forces—studied there. At a time when most of Nepali society was under the control of the King Mahendra-led Panchayat System, there was a perception that ‘source and force’ was crucial to securing a spot at the school. Our family did not belong to the above-specified elite echelon of Nepali society and since he had not engaged in any bhan-soon (‘source and force’ engagement), my father was quite sure that my name would not be there among the list of admitted students. It was left to a relative of ours, whose son had also been admitted, to inform us that I had indeed been accepted for Standard II. Even in Kathmandu, few houses had land telephone lines then (we got our first telephone in the late 1970s). So, my parents must have received the good news via some relative intermediary.

My father then went to the school where he was given a note saying I had been admitted to Standard II (see Figure 2). It was signed by Fr Cachat and Fr James E. Chambers, the vice-principal. My father was given an admission form to fill and was told that that form and fees totalling Rs 70 (Admission Fee Rs 30 and Tuition Fee Rs 40 for the month of February 1972) were due by 8 January 1972. My father must have returned the filled form to the school before the deadline. After all, I had secured a coveted spot and it would have been foolish not to follow the exact instructions regarding the deadline and fees. However, the receipt for the fees he did pay (Rs 70 as requested) is dated 13 January 1972. Whatever might have caused the delay in making this payment, after the admission form was submitted and the fees paid, I was officially a student of Grade II of StX.

The above-mentioned note informed us that all ‘boys must be sure to send a transfer certificate and progress report from the school they last attended’ (emphasis in the original). I am not sure if my father submitted either of those documents. He probably told StX officials that such documents could not be produced for me. And here is why. As a child, I was often sick. I did attend a KG class in another school in the Tripureshwor area (which reportedly went defunct some years later after its administrators fled town with the school’s money) but missed many days of school because I was sick.

Figure 2: Admissions note, 15 December 1971 (Pratyoush Onta)

I might even have been enrolled in Class I at the same school in early 1971 but upon a doctor’s advice, my parents had decided that it was best for me to skip school for the rest of 1971. During those days, the school year used to begin in February and end in December. Instead, they hired a private tutor for me. She (I can’t recall her name at the moment) taught in a school—probably one of the schools located in the Thamel–Lainchaur area—and lived right in front us in Thamel in a house owned by a contemporary of my grandfather’s, someone we used to affectionately call sahuba (he had a shop in Makhan selling cosmetics). I would go to her dera (rented room) for lessons during the late afternoons. That is how my parents had home-schooled me to cover the contents usually taught in Grade I.

The same note also informed my parents about the school dress we were expected to wear to school. It said:

The school uniform consists of a white shirt and dark blue half pants. Black shoes and dark blue socks should be worn, but no tie is required. During the cold season boys may wear dark blue full pants and a dark blue sweater and/or a dark blue jacket.

I don’t remember if the school had an arrangement with some specific tailoring entity where we could buy or order our school uniform, or if it expected each student’s family to prepare the school dress with the help of some tailors they knew. My mother might have remembered this detail but she is no longer with us, having passed away in February 2025.

The note further stated:

Classes for the year 1972 will begin at 9:00 on Tuesday, February 1st, 18 Magh [2028 BS]. All boys should be present at 8:45.

After being formally enrolled in StX, I spent the rest of the winter—the minpachas—of 1971–1972 playing marbles and the game of ‘seven stones’ with my neighbourhood friends in Thamel while looking forward to attending the school with its impressive football fields and big buildings.

Published date: 15 December 2025
Source: https://commons-nepal.com/getting-admitted-to-st-xaviers-school/