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Thomas Babington Macaulaywww.kgbreport.com |
“I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.”
........Lord Macaulay’s speech in the British Parliament on 2nd February 1835.
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Lord Macaulay came to India as its supreme council member. With a view to creating an Anglicized English-speaking elite to act as a link between India's British rulers and the Indian masses, Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), member of the governing council of the East India Company from 1834 to 1838, successfully advocated the replacement of the native languages - Persian and Sanskrit as the medium of education in schools from grade six onwards with English as the medium of education. He formulated his policy proposal, a subjective matter, in his Minute on Indian Education, delivered in Kolkata on 2 February, 1835. The Governor-General of India, William Bentinck, an equally competent man, at last approved the proposal on 7th March, 1835. Thus had begun a new British-Indian educational policy until Independence.
To many hardcore patriotic Indians, the very name of Macaulay is synonymous with cultural annihilation of Indian civilization and heritage, masking dubious linguistic assimilation into global English-speaking community. The interpretations of the above speech may vary. However, the crux of the matter is the British, who have a distinctive class system back in England did divide India which had already been torn apart by numerous caste systems, squeezed India on all sides and converted into a poor, sick country before leaving the Indian shores for good. However, introduction of the English language, to smart Indians, was more a boon than a curse. The English language united the multilingual society and the united Indians fought for their Independence with more vigor than ever before.
Lord Macaulay was instrumental in drafting the Indian Penal Code, which became a model for the courts through out the British colonies. In India, the Indian judiciary system still follows the legal works of Macaulay. If the English language has become a potential global language of communication, it is because of the timely introduction of the English language in India which served as his successful experiment base.
Ref:
From Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Speech in Parliament on the Government of India Bill, 10 July 1833,” Macaulay, Prose and Poetry, selected by G.M. Young (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 716-18
