Lord Macaulay: Saint or Sinner?
While the Modi tribe is blaming Macaulay for our ills, the Dalit thinkers like Chandrabhan Prasad are hailing the contribution of Macaulay in laying the foundations which in due course led to the struggle for dignity and rights of equality for Dalit and marginalized sections of society
While delivering Ramnath Goenka Lecture, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that we should take a ten-year pledge to root out colonial mindset. In ten years, it will be 200 years when Lord Macaulay introduced the pattern of education in English.
As per Narendra Modi “…Macaulay project was to reshape Indian thought by dismantling indigenous knowledge systems and enforcing colonial education”.
Modi goes on to state that Macaulay’s crime was to create Indians ‘who are Indians in appearance but British in thought’ This system broke India’s self-confidence and introduced a sense of inferiority. (I.E. November 18, 2025)
Modi is a Pracharak of the RSS and Hindutva Nationalism. This ideology so far has been focusing more on the ‘evil Muslim kings’ and their atrocities against Hindus like breaking Hindu temples and forcing Islam on them.
As per this narrative, India had a golden period in the past and the coming of Muslim invaders brought in evil practices here. Now, from last some time the Hindu nationalist thinkers are focusing on ‘Coloniality’ as the evil introduced by British rule. This coloniality stands for the colonial mindset and suppression of the traditional knowledge and thought systems.
These thoughts are coming from the ideology whose followers had kept themselves aloof when the Indian masses under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi were fighting against colonial power at all levels of the struggle.
While the Modi tribe is blaming Macaulay for our ills, the Dalit thinkers like Chandrabhan Prasad are hailing the contribution of Macaulay in laying the foundations which in due course led to the struggle for dignity and rights of equality for Dalit and marginalized sections of society.
Modi and his ilk think that the culture introduced by Macaulay/British traveled in a straight line. Interestingly, they themselves stand for European style nationalism, based on language or religion.
What developed in India was much more complex where the introduction of English education did contribute to the introduction of modern liberal values and led to opening up of the portals of knowledge for all sections of the society like Dalits and women, who were deprived of education, where education as in Gurukuls was restricted exclusively to upper caste men.
In India, the traditional knowledge contributed by the likes of Sushrut, Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Lokayat stream and Bhaskar had a tremendous impact on pushing forward the society in the direction of enlightenment. The knowledge was under the control of the traditional elite and was restricted. Knowledge, and thereby power and wealth, belonged to the privileged few.
True Macaulay had vested interests in producing the clerks and other sections who could serve the British empire. It is also true that the likes of Rudyard Kipling tried to undermine the Indians when they glorified the British by terming their mission here as ‘white man's burden’.
Through the womb of modern education also emerged nationalists who rose tall to combat the colonial enslavers. The likes of Gandhi, Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose and Nehru were all educated in England in this system. It is their contributions which combatted colonialism to give us a new path for our development, which was summarized in Nehru’s famous ‘Tryst with Destiny’ speech.
Did English suppress the regional languages? As a matter of fact, education in general promoted regional languages as well. Tilak (Maratha) and Gandhi (Navjivan) started their papers in regional languages. The doyens of regional languages contributed in this period also, Rabindranath Tagore and Munshi Premchand, to name just a few.
Many British researchers contributed to the recovering of our heritage like Brahmi Script and the structures like Ajanta-Ellora. Swaminathan Aiyer (TOI, November 2025) points out that “the British created ‘Archeological survey of India’ headed by Alexander Cunningham. Digging up mounds across India he uncovered dozens of dazzling sites from Taxila to Nalanda…” This is one example of the India centric outcome from colonial rule, though it was not their aim but just an outcome.
India did not accept the thinking promoted by British lock stock and barrel. There were strong oppositions to their policies by Dada Bhai Naoroji, M.G. Ranade, G.K. Gokhale and R. C. Datta. The freedom movement was the biggest opposition and challenge to the British promoted thinking. English was a tool and in due course English also got Indianized with many brilliant writers in this language acting as mirror of Indian thinking, Amitav Das, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai for example.
The traditional knowledge systems can only be enriched by an interaction with other systems of thought. With the formation of linguistic states there is all the space for regional languages and the traditional knowledge systems. The only caveat is that the interaction with the world, not only the West, has been instrumental in combating our traditional caste and gender hierarchy, deeply rooted in our society. Modern education, with all its flaws, opened the door of these marginalized sections of society towards the path of equality and justice.
There is an interesting anecdote about the role of colonialism in India. Shashi Tharoor in his famous Oxford debate elaborated the plunder of India by the British (came as a book, Dark Era of British Empire). Few months later Dr. Manmohan Singh was in England. He eulogized the role of the British in initiating modern administration and education.
The core point is that this was the pathway which strengthened the foundations of liberal values and brought in modern administration. The liberal values laid the path of freedom movement where people irrespective of their religions participated in it to throw out British rule.
The predecessors of present Hindutva nationalists clearly stated that their goal is to restore the glory of ancient times when Manu smriti ruled. Shamsul Islam highlights Golwalkar's reported statement, "Hindus, don't waste your energy fighting the British. Save your energy to fight our internal enemies that are Muslims, Christians, and Communists". This perspective indicates a focus on communal issues over the anti-colonial struggle.
Now why are Hindutva nationalists focusing their energies on combating ‘Coloniality’ and restoring traditional knowledge systems? This is also reflected in the ‘New Education Policy’. Hindutva nationalism stands for the traditional hierarchy of caste and gender which have been mildly shaken by the freedom struggle and Indian Constitution. To restore the ‘traditional’ social hierarchies this route of opposing the Macaulay and Western Knowledge system is being highlighted. As such civilizations don’t travel in straight lines. There is a constant “Alliance of Civilizations” which takes us forward towards justice and equality.
[The writer, Ram Puniyani, is former Professor at IIT Bombay.]
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