Eliminating Macaulay? Pushing the end of colonialism within India towards ‘India’. india news

In ancient India, knowledge often traveled within the subcontinent, not outside. Scholars traveled from China, Korea, Tibet, Central Asia, and Persia to study in centers such as Taxila and Nalanda, where mathematics, astronomy, grammar, statecraft, and medicine flourished. These were not mere stone buildings but the heart of an intellectual civilization whose teachings were rooted in local languages ​​and knowledge systems. However, over the centuries, invasions and subsequent colonial rule weakened this tradition, and by the 20th century, India was no longer exporting knowledge as confidently as it used to be.

In modern India, polished English often opened doors. It helped in finding jobs, signaled education, enabled migration and allowed an engineer from Chennai and a banker from Delhi to collaborate without the need for a common mother tongue.Also, English has long had a social meaning. A fluent speaker is often considered intelligent, worldly, and somehow “clever”. A speaker who hesitates may be considered less competent.

It is this perception, not the language itself, that is at the center of India’s growing conversation on decolonization. Prime Minister Narendra Modi This was called the “Macaulay mentality” during the flag hoisting ceremony of Ram temple in Ayodhya on 25 November.How did English take root in India?The British entered India through trade, diplomacy, and ultimately conquest. The British East India Company and later the Crown used the language for administration and governance. But the spread of English did not happen systematically. It was introduced strategically to create a middle class that would think like the colonial rulers.

In 1835, Thomas Babington Macaulay, a British historian and politician, famously argued in his “Minute on Indian Education” that the English would create a class of Indians who were Indian by birth but English in intelligence and sensibilities. Macaulay wanted Indians who were, in his words, “Indian in blood and complexion but English in tastes, opinions, morals and intelligence.”Macaulay and other early British administrators were unaware of India’s ancient glories – great literature and philosophy (Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads), sophisticated mathematics and astronomy (Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Bhaskara), and magnificent architecture (from Mohenjo-Daro to Sanchi and Nalanda). This ignorance and racism led Macaulay to say, “One shelf of a good European library was equal to the entire native literature of India and Arabia.,

The plan worked. The knowledge systems contained in Sanskrit, Tamil, Persian and other languages ​​were gradually sidelined. English became the language of courts, universities and bureaucracy. Access to power became tied to access to English.By the beginning of the twentieth century, a new elite had emerged. English-educated and urbane, and influential. They wrote newspapers, argued in courts, entered civil services and led nationalist politics. Ironically, the language of colonial control also became the language of resistance, helping leaders like Nehru and Ambedkar articulate modern political ideas to the world.Decolonization in actionUnder Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Sangh’s colonization project has expanded from language to symbols and institutions. Rajpath was renamed Duty Path, the Indian Navy adopted a new flag inspired by Shivaji Maharaj, and sites like the National War Memorial, Prime Minister’s Museum and Yuge Yugeen Bharat Gallery were built to demonstrate civilizational continuity.7, Race Course Road (7 RCR), the official residence of the Prime Minister, was renamed Lok Kalyan Marg by the New Delhi Municipal Council in 2016, replacing the colonial-era name to emphasize welfare and public well-being. PM Modi has also changed the name of Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to Seva Teerth.

Education reforms through the National Education Policy 2020 encourage mother tongue learning and allow engineering, medical and law courses in regional languages. Technical textbooks are being translated into Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali and other languages, with the UGC expanding undergraduate programs in regional languages. The trilingual policy promotes Indian languages ​​along with English.In January 2022, on his 125th birth anniversary, the government installed a 28-foot hologram of Subhash Chandra Bose at India Gate under the canopy where King George V once stood. It served as a temporary tribute before being replaced by a granite statue later that year, symbolically shifting from colonial memory to the legacy of the independence struggle.In September 2023, ahead of the G20 summit in New Delhi, the official dinner invitation sent by Rashtrapati Bhavan referred to Draupadi Murmu as “President of India” instead of the traditional “President of India”, which was widely reported as the first such instance in an English-language state invitation.

Government terminology now includes words such as service week, Indian Judicial Code and India in diplomatic use. Museum projects and tributes to figures like Birsa Munda and Alluri Raju broaden the historical vision.Is decolonization a way to impose Hindi?However, the conversation around decolonization is not without concerns. In many non-Hindi speaking states, especially in the South and Northeast, language is closely linked to identity, history and political autonomy. Many regional leaders and scholars worry that the pressure to move away from English could gradually translate into privileging Hindi at the national level. For them, decolonization risks becoming centralization if it does not explicitly protect linguistic diversity. The concern is less about opposition to Indian languages ​​and more about ensuring that Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali, Assamese and others receive equal visibility and policy support. Calling PM Modi’s decolonization drive an attempt to recognize India’s historical strengths and move away from the “white man’s burden” mentality, BJP national spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari said, “It has nothing to do with what language you speak. The idea here is to focus on and promote indigenous education and inherent strengths.” “If you look at the new education policy, it focuses on recognizing the inherent talent of the individual, irrespective of the language and region you come from. If one remembers historically, India was an education capital. Our Vedic rituals, our guru-disciple Tradition was something the world wanted to emulate. In fact, Nalanda was considered a center of excellence globally, where scholars from all over the world would come, learn and then try to emulate it in their countries,” he said.

The BJP leader also rejected the notion that decolonization efforts were a path to impose Hindi, calling it an “unfair and political” criticism. Referring to the New Education Policy (NEP), he said that it focuses on promoting education in one’s own language. “Whether one speaks Tamil, Telugu, Kannada or any other language…the idea is to focus on and promote education and excellence in any language of choice.”On the question of language hierarchy and how Hindi speaking states would connect with non-Hindi speaking states if English was not given priority, he said that in the age of technology, linguistic barriers are being removed.