The Graduates

A NARROW trail through a thick mountain forest leads to the Shugsep nunnery. Two old, peeling houses accommodate about 70 nuns. Today, the s...

A NARROW trail through a thick mountain forest leads to the Shugsep nunnery. Two old, peeling houses accommodate about 70 nuns. Today, the silence at Shugsep is broken with the important hush of a first-time event. A graduation ceremony.

Eleven years ago Dawa Yangzom escaped to India from Tibet. Now the 37-year-old nun has a quiet air of achievement. She and seven other nuns at Shugsep nunnery created history by becoming the first Tibetan nuns to graduate.

8216;8216;Traditionally in Tibet, monastic education was restricted to monks. Nuns focused mainly on learning prayers and reading and writing Tibetan. It was a proud moment when nuns graduated for the first time in the history of Tibet,8217;8217; says Rinchen Khando Choegyal, director of the Tibetan Nuns Project TNP. She has been the minister of education with the Tibetan government-in-exile and the first president of the Tibetan Women8217;s Association.

RINCHEN Khando started the Tibetan Nuns Project in 1987. 8216;8216;At that time about 90 nuns had arrived from Tibet,8217;8217; remembers Rinchen Khando.

She was then president of the Tibetan Women8217;s Association and had been asked by Dalai Lama to do something for the nuns. 8216;8216;We rented a house to accommodate them. Then we went begging for clothes, food and mattresses. I wrote to the other branches of TWA asking for help. The support we received was amazing,8217;8217; she says.

The health of the newly-arrived nuns needed immediate attention. The terrible escape route through the Himalayas resulted in frost bites. Stomach ailments and tuberculosis were other common illnesses. 8216;8216;Improving their health was a nightmare. It took us almost two years to get them in good shape,8217;8217; Rinchen says.

Then there was the question of their education. Most of them could neither read nor write. There were no women teachers so TNP wrote to the monasteries in the south, asking them to send a few monks to teach.

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Today 14 years after its inception, TNP houses more than 600 nuns in four different nunneries in and around Dharamsala. More than 30 nuns have graduated in the second highest level of monastery studies. Since 1995 they have also participated in Jang Gonche, a month-long philosophical debate practised only by monks earlier.

ALMOST 15 km from Shugsep is the Dolma Ling nunnery. Large and airy it looks more like a modern residential school. Its curriculum is modern too. It offers a secular education with English, mathematics, social studies and computer classes along with courses in Tibetan and in dialectics.

Says Rinchen Khando: 8216;8216;Right now their living and education is being sponsored. But we have to make them self-sufficient. I want to set up a system where they can trained as health workers, teachers, mid-wives, artists.8217;8217;

Her progressive attitude does not stop here. 8216;8216;Earlier it was a terrible stigma when a nun or a monk decided to give up the monastic life. But we believe it is better for a woman to leave than remain ordained when she is unhappy. That is why we emphasise on basic education8212; she can support herself regardless of whether she remains a nun or not,8217;8217; says Rinchen Khando.