Kathmandu, July 21 -- Sambriddha Karki, 18, had barely finished six months of his grade 11 when he experienced the forced haircut. Every three to four weeks, teachers and discipline in-charges at his school in Kathmandu would line students up and check their hair. If it was too long, the punishments varied: a phone call home, a class he wasn't allowed to enter, sometimes his identity card was taken away.

"They were giving me a lot of mental harassment for getting my hair cut," said Karki. The reason given, he said, was always the same that students needed a "professional look." He didn't buy it. "Whether you cut your hair or not doesn't change anything. It doesn't make your studies better or worse."

So he did what he'd watched a civic p...