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However, I discovered this anomaly only later in the course of the debate. What
first made me suspect the spuriousness of the quotation was not any external
information but a close reading of its utterly cynical contents, quite imaginable
in the private scheming of hard-nosed colonialists but rather out of style in the
setting of a parliamentary debate. Politicians who try to sell a policy will
normally present it as beneficial. This was especially true for that particular
stage of colonial expansion, when the "imparting of civilization" and the
"abolition of slavery" had become commonplace justifications for the colonial
enterprise. British imperialists liked to think of themselves as bringers of light
in the darkness of the primitive societies which they were about to rule and
transform. Yet, here we get to hear Macaulay brutally calling for the wilful
destruction of a civilization which he praises to the skies and acknowledges as
superior to that of Britain itself.
So, I challenged my Hindu correspondents to give a reliable reference for this
strange quotation. In the age of the internet, they had no problem coming up
with a great many seemingly authoritative sources for Macaulay's damning
statement. Among the highly varied instances of its use, we may mention
numerous Hindu websites including www.aryasamaj.org (in a review by B.D.
Ukhul of the "Macaulayite" book The Myth of the Holy Cow by Prof. D.N.
Jha), www.veda.harekrishna.cz, and many more; but also a document by the
Planning Commission of the Government of India; and even a speech by the
President of India, as reported:
"While seated as the chief guest on the dais of the Jamia Millia Islamia's
auditorium and about to deliver his convocation address President A.P.J. Kalam
fiddled for a moment with the keyboard and mouse of his laptop. (*) The
President quoted Macaulay's 1835 speech in British Parliament, 'I do not think
we would ever conquer this country (India), 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.'"-S. Zafar Mahmood,
"Learning from the President", The Hindu, 2-9-2004.
The President of India, a good man and a top-ranking scientist, may seem to be
a very authoritative source, but to a historian, even he isn't good enough.
Nobody so far has been able to trace this quotation to an original publication of
Macaulay's speeches, though such published collections exist (e.g. Macaulay,
Prose and Poetry, selected by G. M. Young, 1957; Speeches and Documents on
Indian Policy, 1750-1921, edited by A. Berriedale Keith, 1922; Life and Letters
of Lord Macaulay by George Otto Trevelyan, 1876). It is unlikely that they ever
will, and they could have realized as much by carefully rereading the one source
to which all the extant instances of this quotation can apparently be traced.
3
certain contexts may even make the appropriate nationalist noises critical of the
education reformer. The most explicit approbation for the English colonial
impact on India emanates from the so-called Dalit (low-caste) movement. They
don't think very highly of the virtues of Hindu civilization and so they applaud
Macaulay's bold bid to uproot it.
On 23 October 2004, I received this invitation circulated by a Dalit weblist:
"Join us to Celebrate Macaulay"
"Dear Friend,
"(*) To begin with, toss the ros-gullas [a Bengali sweetmeat] in the Bay of that
Bengal. Let seeds of renaissance sprout. Let us clear all the hurdles. Let us
battle with the self, and win over as well. Let us unlearn all we were taught so
far. Let us break free from the falsehood we are condemned in trust. Let us take
a chance, and relish truthfulness. Let refreshing winds of reason excavate our
degenerated, malodorous existence. We are born as false people, with false
indices of reasoning, with false languages, false spirituality, with false histories.
Our consciousness too, therefore, is false. We are victims of civilisational faults,
as we missed, by civilisational disgrace, any standard of ethics, morality, and
hence, we are historically programmed in living with falsehood. Worse still, we,
as a civilization, find it almost pathologically, constrained to live as honest
people. Our intellectual insolvency, therefore, is civilisational.
"The fundamental challenge before all of us, therefore, is as how to create
conditions where we can turn intellectually honest, and still exist. This one
challenge once clinched, it can unleash a renaissance in India where ethics,
morality, and reason can gain a germinating ground. (*) our 'self' ought to be
given a jerk. And the jerk can be caused, like sex the first time in life, by
speaking the most fundamental truth hitherto unpronounced.
"This October 25 provides us that historic opportunity, where we can in a
reasonably discreet manner, turn honest for a few hours. The sure blissfulness in
those few hours may reprogram our 'Self' wherein intellectual honesty can be a
welcome interlude, deleting the space the falsehood has occupied for ages.
"(*) India, on its own, never had, in at least our known history, the notion of the
'Independence from foreign Rule', 'Rule of Law', or 'Every one Equal before
Law'. The India's indigenous system of education never dealt with sciences, the
sciences that we possess today. It would probably never have been possible to
understand modern sciences in Sanskrit, Arabic or Persian.
"Who conceived the first sperm of India's independence? Consider the
following: 'It would be, on the most selfish view of the case, far better for us
that the people of India were well governed and independent of us, than ill
governed and subject to us; that they were ruled by their own kings, but wearing
our broadcloth, and working with our cutlery, than that they were performing
their salams to English collectors and English magistrates, but were too ignorant
to value, or too poor to buy, English manufactures. To trade with civilized men
is infinitely more profitable than to govern savages. That would, indeed, be a
5
doting wisdom, which, in order that India might remain a dependency, would
make it an useless and costly dependency, which would keep a hundred millions
of men from being our customers in order that they might continue to be our
slaves.' July 10, 1833 (25 years before India officially became a British Colony)
"Further: 'The laws which regulate its growth and its decay are still unknown to
us. It may be that the public mind of India may expand under our system till it
has outgrown that system; that by good government we may educate our
subjects into a capacity for better government; that, having become instructed in
European knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European
institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never will I
attempt to avert or to retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in
English history.' (July 10, 1833)
"On the question of 'Equality before Law', on July 10, 1833: "The power of
arbitrary deportation is withdrawn. Unless, therefore, we mean to leave the
natives exposed to the tyranny and insolence of every profligate adventurer who
may visit the East, we must place the European under the same power which
legislates for the Hindoo. No man loves political freedom more than I. But a
privilege enjoyed by a few individuals, in the midst of a vast population who do
not enjoy it, ought not to be called freedom. It is tyranny. In the West Indies I
have not the least doubt that the existence of the Trial by Jury and of Legislative
Assemblies has tended to make the condition of the slaves worse than it would
otherwise have been.'
"'Or, to go to India itself for an instance, though I fully believe that a mild penal
code is better than a severe penal code, the worst of all systems was surely that
of having a mild code for the Brahmins, who sprang from the head of the
Creator, while there was a severe code for the Sudras, who sprang from his feet.
India has suffered enough already from the distinction of castes, and from the
deeply rooted prejudices which that distinction has engendered. God forbid that
we should inflict on her the curse of a new caste, that we should send her a new
breed of Brahmins, authorised to treat all the native population as Parias.'
"Should native Indians hold high offices? July 10, 1833: 'We are told that the
time can never come when the natives of India can be admitted to high civil and
military office. We are told that this is the condition on which we hold our
power. We are told that we are bound to confer on our subjects every benefit --
which they are capable of enjoying? No; --which it is in our power to confer on
them? No; -- but which we can confer on them without hazard to the perpetuity
of our own domination. Against that proposition I solemnly protest as
inconsistent alike with sound policy and sound morality. (*) I allude to that
wise, that benevolent, that noble clause which enacts that no native of our
Indian empire shall, by reason of his colour, his descent, or his religion, be
incapable of holding office.'
"The above quotes are from Lord Macaulay's Speech in the British House of
Commons. The House was debating the Bill, which was enacted as The Charter
6
Act 1833, or, The Government of India Act 1833, which sought for the
establishment of a Law Commission for consolidation and codification of
Indian Laws. Lord Macaulay eventually became President of India's First Law
Commission, and drafted the IPC [Indian Penal Code]. While submitting the
draft of the IPC, Lord Macaulay maintains in his covering letter: 'It is an evil
that any man should be above the law, it is still a greater evil that the public
mind should be taught to regard as a high and venerable distinction the privilege
of being above the law.'
[Some further quotes used polemically will be brought up and discussed below.]
"Was Lord Macaulay wrong when he argued the following in his Minute: 'I
would at once stop the printing of Arabic and Sanscrit books, I would abolish
the Madrassa and the Sanscrit college at Calcutta.' What would have been
India's fate, had Lord Macaulay been defeated?
"In 1813, the British Parliament made it mandatory that the East India Company
spend at least Rs. One Lakh annually on the education of native Indians. The
British officials were divided in two camps: one the powerful Orientalists, who
wanted the indigenous system of education to continue, with Sanskrit, Arabic
and Persian as media of instruction. The Anglicist camp, led by Lord Macaulay,
argued for the European kind of modern education, with focus on modern
sciences. Macaulay won, and the British-type of modern educational system
was introduced in India.
"What if the indigenous education continued, with Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian
as media of instruction? Well, to most Indians, it may be a matter of conjecture.
To some of us, India would have been most probably like Afghanistan, or at
best, the present day Nepal (*).
"Come on my scholar friends, wake up and arise. (*) Lord Macaulay was India's
earliest Gandhi, if Gandhiji epitomized freedom movement, as it was he who
conceived independent India when Gandhi was not even born. (*)
The first one of these statements is, however, not the best choice to prove
Macaulay's maliciousness, though it is the one genuine quotation most used for
that very purpose. Here goes, from Thomas Babington Macaulay, Minute on
Indian Education, 2 Feb. 1935: "In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to
whose general views I am opposed. I feel with them, that it is impossible for us,
with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must
at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters
between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in
blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.
To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to
enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western
nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying
knowledge to the great mass of the population."
The problem is that this paragraph is mostly given in an incomplete version, up
to the word "*intellect". The sentence which follows changes the intention
expressed considerably. In this case, this sentence is faithfully given, but the
quoter is so accustomed to thinking the worst of Macaulay that he doesn't notice
its qualifying impact. Our Dalit host of the Macaulay anniversary celebration
has correctly observed how it makes all the difference:
"Our lies about Macaulay. Was Macaulay attempting to create 'intellectual
slaves' for the British Empire? Yes, if we just read the following: 'We must at
present do our best to form a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but
English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.' We, in a most
mischievous manner, present the above quote, twisted, taken out of context, and
thus, present Lord Macaulay as a villain. No, if we read the full paragraph as
originally available in his February 1835 Minute on Indian Education: 'It is
impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the
people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters
between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in
blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.
To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to
enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western
nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying
knowledge to the great mass of the population.'"
So far, I had thought that Macaulay was well-intentioned but that he undeniably
had wanted to anglicise India at least in language. But even this turns out to be
unfair to him. In fact, he envisioned a modernization of the native languages,
making them as fit as English for the conduct of modern affairs, thanks to the
good offices of the "interpreter" class which he set out to create. Even on
language he wasn't all that imperialistic, wanting to enrich and modernize rather
than replace the native languages, assuring them a new lease of life in an age of
science. As for replacing Indian taste/opinions/morals/intellect with their
English counterparts, he considered this a great boon to the Indians.
8
So, to convince his British colonialist audience, and no doubt also out of sincere
conviction, Macaulay argued that British interests would be well served by the
policies he proposed,-- but precisely because these policies would first of all
benefit the natives. The more advanced (and Europeanized) the Indians became,
the more profitable it would be for Britain to trade with them.
"The mission of the White Races upon the earth, seems to have been, as I have
said, to civilize and Christianize it. For this the Creator has specially endowed
them. He has given them powerful intellects; frames and constitutions
wonderfully adapted to the vicissitudes of climate, the extremes of heat and
cold. He has made them ambitious, discerning and reckless of danger. Above
all, he seems to have implanted in their bosoms an instinct which, in spite of
themselves, drives them forward to the fulfilment of their lofty mission. That
they are destined to occupy every land, where climate does not erect a barrier,
there can be no doubt. It is not reason -- it is destiny, and no philanthropy, no
legislation, no missionary zeal can prevent it. The fate of the aborigines of our
own Continent is manifest; and if we look to Asia we find a repetition of the
13
same melancholy tragedy upon a larger scale, and in respect to, perhaps, a
nobler people. Where is now the great Mongolian race of Central Asia -- once
the most powerful and warlike of the earth-whose reign was for centuries the
reign of terror, and desolation for the rest of mankind? (*) Their glory is gone,
their sceptre is broken, their race is run, their mission ended. (*)
"In conclusion, permit me to ask you, whether you do not recognise a certain
law, a certain order, a certain progression in the succession in which the Races
of Men have appeared to perform the part assigned them? From that distant
epoch, when human history first unfolds itself to view on the time-worn
monuments of the Nile to our own day and generation, do we not discover, from
century to century, from Continent to Continent, a gradual, but a certain onward
and upward movement? Has not the great tide of human civilization risen on the
whole?"
Doesn't that clinch the issue, proving what a racist Macaulay was, and in
passing also how the Christian mission was intimately interwoven with racism?
This quote may yet have a great future as a classic in Indian nationalist polemic.
Unfortunately, as so often with such tidily useful quotes, it's just too good to be
true. In fact, the Trevelyan page referred to carries a letter by Macaulay
detailing his study of Greek and Roman authors (admittedly a sign of
Eurocentrism when this is what occupied the attention of an administrator in
Calcutta), not this text. However, the text is a genuine one, only it was not
written by Macaulay but by one Henry A. Washington, an American, in the
April 1860 issue of the Southern Literary Messenger. The connection with
Macaulay is that his obituary was carried in the same issue. At most, the text
illustrates just how Macaulay's civilizing mission would have been interpreted
in the race-obsessed American South.
But Macaulay's own outlook was slightly different. He believed that the equality
of Asians and Europeans was not a natural given, or was at any rate not the then
state of affairs, but that it was just around the corner if only his own educational
proposals were implemented. Our Dalit source gladly quotes from Macaulay's
speech in the House of Commons on 10 July 1833 to show us how he already
envisioned India's independence:
"The destinies of our Indian empire are covered with thick darkness. It is
difficult to form any conjecture as to the fate reserved for a state which
resembles no other in history, and which forms by itself a separate class of
political phenomena. The laws which regulate its growth and its decay are still
unknown to us. It may be that the public mind of India may expand under our
system till it has outgrown that system; that by good government we may
educate our subjects into a capacity for better government; that, having become
instructed in European knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand
European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never
will I attempt to avert or to retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest
day in English history. To have found a great people sunk in the lowest depths
14
of slavery and superstition, to have so ruled them as to have made them desirous
and capable of all the privileges of citizens, would indeed be a title to glory all
our own. The sceptre may pass away from us. Unforeseen accidents may
derange our most profound schemes of policy. Victory may be inconstant to our
arms. But there are triumphs which are followed by no reverses. There is an
empire exempt from all natural causes of decay. Those triumphs are the pacific
triumphs of reason over barbarism; that empire is the imperishable empire of
our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws."
Look at that: more than a whole century before independence, Macaulay was
ready to concede independence to India, on condition that it changed its culture
from (what he considered to be) backward to civilized. He didn't see their race
as a lasting impediment. And he tried to convince even the avowedly selfish
promoters of colonialism that an enlightened self-interest would see the benefits
of a civilized and free India over a backward and dependent India.
3. Conclusion
3.1. Not malice but limited competence
The above list of quotations only confirms my suspicions against the one
incriminating "quotation" so popular among Indian nationalists. On the one
hand, we had non-primary sources for the quotation which I allege to be
spurious. They may be the President of India and the Planning Commission, but
they are not primary sources. On the other, we now get a great many certified
original quotations, but the one which I had alleged to be spurious, is not among
them. And they all allow me to stand by my position that Macaulay, for all his
limitations, was well-intentioned: he had contempt for Indian culture but wanted
the best for the Indian people, viz. to lift them up from what he considered to be
their backward traditions.
The whole corpus of quotations which we've seen in this discussion confirms
entirely that Macaulay was but a child of his time; that he was among the more
progressive and generous and benign among the colonizers; and that he wanted
to benefit the Indians by helping them out of their inherited and into the modern
worldview. None of it confirms that he was "mean-spirited" or "diabolical". The
quotations also confirm that unlike contemporaneous racists, he believed that
Indians had the capacity to become modern and self-governing.
Macaulay's known record does not contain any praise for India's "culture" (a
term then not normally used in its modern sense) which he then mischievously
consigned to destruction. He did not say anything "to that effect", as claimed by
the "quoter". On the contrary, he repeatedly said that to the best of his
knowledge, Indian culture was backward and inhumane and that it would be a
big favour to the natives if they dropped it in favour of English culture. He
generously wanted to share with the Indians the benefits of science and justice.
It is a different matter that in his ignorance, he failed to acknowledge the merits
15
For example, what Moghul emperor Aurangzeb did to the Hindus may have
been monstrous, but he sincerely thought he was doing good. Religion in
particular can twist man's subjective good intentions into motives for
objectively evil behaviour. As 1979 Physics Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg
has said: "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad
people can do evil; but for good people to do evil -- that takes religion." (Facing
Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries, Harvard University Press 2001,
p.242) With better education about the irrationality of his belief system,
Aurangzeb might have given up his Islamic zeal and become a benign ruler.
This seems to confirm Socrates' view that ignorance is the cause of evil. In the
19th century, enthusiasm for modernization took the place of religion as the
road to salvation for many Europeans, often with the same tendency of
blindness towards the limitations of one's own worldview and the merits of
others. Transposed to India, this became Macaulayism.
So, we have two views of the evils in history: one, foaming at the mouth, sees
evil-intentioned monsters as the ultimate actors; while the other sees the moral
and intellectual limitations of man as an overriding factor in effecting evil (or
more often, partly evil) results. Do look at the practical implications. What can
you do against monsters except slaughter them? By contrast, against ignorance
you can try education.
modernization of Indian social relations was a worthy goal, but one which
required an evolution in the Indian mentality if it was to come about peacefully.
That, of course, is why education was so important: it was the only way of
freeing India's upcoming generations from the mentality which kept premodern
institutions including caste alive.
If Macaulay is considered as the representative of the whole modernization
process, including democracy and the rule of law with equality before the law, it
is understandable that Dalits who have been taught to equate Sanskrit with
"Manuwadi" caste oppression, posthumously welcome the anglicizer Macaulay
as a great benefactor. However, they should not forget that initially, i.e. for
about two centuries, the lower castes have been affected more adversely than
the upper castes by other dimensions of modernization, particularly its
economic impact. With their cultural and entrepreneurial skills, the Brahmins
and Banias quickly found new roles for themselves in the British-controlled
new establishment. By contrast, the artisan castes saw their livelihood destroyed
by British industries. And due to exploitative agricultural policies and land-
ownership reforms, the peasants became victims of a number of devastating
famines, less well-known tragedies killing millions.
Even on the educational front, the impact of British reforms was not altogether
beneficial. Early British reports on native education, prepared in anticipation of
the Macaulayite policy (vide Dharampal: The Beautiful Tree, Biblia Impex,
Delhi 1983), showed that it had been far more accessible for low-caste pupils
than is generally thought. In fact, they served to a larger proportion of India's
lower classes than the percentage of the British proletariat reached by British
schools at the time. And of course, they taught many more low-caste children
than the elitist and expensive English schools would ever do. For all we know,
low-caste participation in education actually declined when the native education
system was phased out.
Nobody is safe from being quoted wrongly, it seems. I just received a request
from an editor of a book who wanted me to give the reference to the places
where I had written the following statements, "quoted" by one of the
contributing authors as mine, though without exact reference:
"Koenraad Elst also remarks 'that many early Christian saints, such as
Hippolytus of Rome, possessed an intimate knowledge of Brahmanism'. Elst
also quotes Saint Augustine who wrote: 'We never cease to look towards India,
where many things are proposed to our admiration.'"
These sentences attributed to me seem to be spurious. I doubt that I could have
written them, and I certainly don't recall it, because they simply don't reflect my
considered opinion. I believe the one on Hippolytus c.s. is wrong and the one on
Augustine, if true at all, is irrelevant. I certainly don't believe that "many" early
Christians had an "intimate" knowledge of Brahmanism. I vaguely know of
condemnations of Brahmanism by the Church fathers Gregory and Clemens, but
I don't think their knowledge of it was very intimate. As for Church father
Augustine, possibly he still shared the general Greco-Roman admiration for
distant India, but certainly not in the sense that he advised people to take
inspiration from Hindu Paganism.
I am quite aware of the theories that find plenty of Buddhist influence in the
Gospel, when there was no separate religion of Christianity yet. In broad
outline, I agree with them. Hindus would do well to acquaint themselves with
this scholarly development, because it deconstructs the identity of Christian
doctrine, exposing it as an amalgam of Jewish, Buddhist and Hellenistic
influences rather than a coherent message from God. However, by the time of
the Church fathers, Christianity was very identity-conscious and very hostile to
Pagan religions including Buddhism and Hinduism.
idolatrous Mecca: "Hind, Allah has blessed the country after which you were
named"; meaning India. It was propagated (though certainly not invented) by
the late BJP thinker K.R. Malkani, a wonderful gentleman but alas too Hindu to
mistrust such "quotations" which should have struck him as just too good to be
true. Like so many Hindus, he clutched at every straw that supported some kind
of basic Hindu-Muslim unity. It's very akin to the nonsensical Hindutva-
Gandhian-secularist common belief that the "real" Islam is anti-Partition, anti-
riot, pro-feminist, anti-slavery, anti-terrorism etc., that Jesus would have been
against the missionary zeal of his followers, etc. False quotations typically serve
deluded beliefs.
Someone at some point must have invented and launched these false attributions
of statements and viewpoints. The psychology behind this act of deceit deserves
closer scrutiny. I suppose in many cases there is no deliberate will to concoct
and propagate a lie. Many people just don't distinguish properly between what is
and what they wish for. If they want to win the political or intellectual battles in
which they participate with such zeal, they had better exercise their power of
discrimination. If any worn-out quotation deserves to be repeated to them, it is
India's ever-fresh national motto: Satyam eva jayate, "truth shall prevail".