Saturday, June 24, 2017

"Tourists, students flee as protests spread in India's Darjeeling tea lands"

CNN:
On Friday protestors offered a 12-hour window for more than 7,000 boarding school students to safely evacuate the hills -- home to some of the best boarding schools in India. Father Divya Annandam, Vice Principal at St Josephs School, told CNN some school dormitories are already facing food shortages.

The crisis started in mid-May when the government of West Bengal, the Eastern Indian state of which Darjeeling is a part, made Bengali language courses compulsory in schools across the state.

The government's decision was viewed with hostility among the area's Nepali-speaking community.