Macaulay is only a useful punching bag. His ghost is resurrected to bury inconvenient ideas |
Macaulay is a shorthand for at least three things — the English language, modern education and an un-Indian mentality. The beauty of invoking Macaulay’s ghost is that its mention puts defenders of English or modern education on the defensive and any self-criticism is discredited as un-Indian. It is therefore useful to exorcise the ghost by being a devil’s, or the ghost’s, advocate. Let us not get blinkered by Macaulay’s colonial intentions — because, after all, if we want to decolonise our thinking, then should we not see the effects of the Minute through our decolonised wisdom?
Take the case of the English language. For the vast majority, it is never their first language. India’s many languages have happily — sometimes grudgingly — accommodated many English words precisely because users of those languages can’t speak “proper English”. From the early 19th century, the influence of English only alerted speakers of other Indian languages to the need to reorganise, modernise or sharpen their respective traditions. If we look at the vocabulary, idioms and ideas that writers in India’s many languages are producing, we shall realise the diversity and richness of these languages.
These developments are not hindered by the pragmatic and superficial use of the English language. Early social revolutionaries like Jyotirao Phule or EV Ramasamy Naicker resorted to languages such as Marathi or Tamil for their political projects ,and even as the conservative Bal Gangadhar Tilak started an English periodical, his politics as also his original thinking took place in a powerful and artful Marathi. Therefore, if........