Macaulay lives on...

I'll start with a small tidbit from history which I am cocksure that you wouldn't have studied in your history classes.

Circa 1813 : India was ruled by the East India company. The first stone for the introduction of western education to Indians was laid. Sita Ram Goel in his book History of Hindu-Christian encounters explains the unfolding of events that led to the introduction of western education for Indians:

The renewal of East India Company’s Charter in 1813 had opened the Company’s dominions to Christian missionaries. It had also advised “introduction of useful knowledge and religious and moral improvement.” A controversy had been going on ever since regarding the system of education suitable for India. The Orientalists among the British rulers advocated retention of the traditional Indian system. They were afraid that imparting of Western knowledge to natives would encourage them to claim equality with white men and demand democratisation of the administration. The Anglicists, on the other hand, were convinced that knowledge of Western literature, philosophy and science would wean Hindus away from their “ancestral superstitions” and draw them closer to the religion and culture of the ruling race.

Christian missionaries were, by and large, with the Anglicists. One of them had written in 1822 that, through Western education, Hindus “now engaged in the degrading and polluting worship of idols shall be brought to the knowledge of true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.” Missionaries felt immensely strengthened when Alexander Duff, an ardent advocate of Western education, reached Calcutta in 1830.

Alexander Duff was convinced that “of all the systems of false religion ever fabricated by the perverse ingenuity of fallen men, Hinduism is surely the most stupendous” and that India was “the chief seat of Satan’s earthly dominion.” He studied for some time the effect which Western education was having on Hindu young men attending the Hindu College and similar institutions which had come up in Calcutta and elsewhere in Bengal since more than a decade before his arrival. He came to the definite conclusion that Western education would make the Hindus “perfect unbelievers in their own system” and “perfect believers in Christianity.” In an address delivered in 1835 to a General Church Assembly he proclaimed that knowledge of Western literature and science would “demolish the huge and hideous fabric of Hinduism” brick by brick till “the whole will be found to have crumbled into fragments.”

A Committee of Public Instruction had been set up by the Government for recommending a suitable system of education. Alexander Duff had been made a member of the Committee in 1834. Next year, T. B. Macaulay, a member of the Governor General’s Council, was appointed to preside over the Committee. He wrote a Minute on February 2, 1835, advocating Western education. There was a tie between the Anglicists and the Orientalists when the Minute came before the Committee on March 7. Macaulay used his casting vote and forced a decision. The Western system of education was adopted. In a letter written to his father in 1836, Macaulay predicated, “It is my firm belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes of Bengal thirty years hence.”

Macaulay argued that providing education based on Sanskrit is of no use for India’s development, and batted instead for education based on English. He (in)famously envisioned creating “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect”. [You can find the complete minute here] He correctly identified the strength of Indians was in their tradition, heritage and spirituality. Once you make them believe all that they valued are just a baggage of hogwash, you can easily rule them. As simple as that. In a way, you can call Macaulay a visionary because what he had envisaged did turn out to be true in the future.

I am not adding his one more cardinal sin of adding racial theories which were very prevalent in Europe during 19th century to the new curriculum. Thus applied racial theories to the Indian populace were initially used by colonialists to divide and sub-divide India. This was later used by evangelical missionaries and political parties to serve their own ends. The commie historians who were to rule Indian academics post-Independent India kept this repudiated, outdated theory intact and these hoax theories are peddled even to this day.This is a big story in itself. Let's keep it for some other day.

Who should write history? This is a very serious question that one should contemplate on. Some say history is written by the winners and conquerors. This is true even in case of India. Indian history is never written from an Indian perspective. It was always written with the invaders' perspective be it Moguls or the British. That's the sole reason that we are conditioned to see the invaders as heroes or liberators. So,our history books are full of invasions, wars and subjugation. These are just the products of colonial constructs which are peddled even to this day. Anyone who is a product of this kind of education can never admire the greatness of this nation. All that he can have is contempt for it and its past. People like Vivekananda or Aurobindo are just a few honorary exceptions to come out of the kind of western education introduced by Macaulay. Even people like them, discovered the greatness of India only because they chose to go beyond what was taught to them. Else, even their intellect and perception would have been crippled.

We can see this phenomenon clearly in this country : To be called as an intellectual, you should have an absolute disdain for its heritage and you should be able to debunk it. That's one of the criteria for being a 'progressive' in this nation. The more you debunk the tradition, the more intellectual you appear. Those people who debunk even the profound things of this culture have no problem in accepting absolute trumpery of predatory cultures and religions that have invaded India. This is just a small instance to show the triumph of Macaulay's education system.

So I readily agree when someone says 15th August 1947 is just an end of physical (or administrative) slavery but mental (or intellectual) slavery continues even to this day. I think it's high time that we broke the shackles of mental slavery and came clean.