Macaulay’s Bequest: Is the empire of English imperishable as he believed?

Student: In the “Global Gurukul”, are we allowed to speak the truth?

Teacher: But remember the old dictum: no agreeable falsehoods, neither disagreeable truths.

Student: Haha. The latter holds especially for us, no?

Teacher: You mean as “Macaulay Putras”?

Student: Is that how in our own ‘cultural revolution’ we must characterise ourselves? Then let me get straight to it. Why in the world should we worry about Thomas Babington Macaulay today?

Teacher: Why does that bother you so much?

Student: But Macaulay (1800-1859) died nearly 166 years back!

Teacher: True, did you know his death  anniversary is coming up on December 28?  Occasion to question his legacy, don’t you think?

Student: Speaking of inane factoids, when you look up Macaulay, what comes up first is Macaulay Culkin.

Teacher: The once child star of the Hollywood holiday fave Home Alone?

Student: Thomas Babington is hardly remembered, but how can we “Macaulay Putras” ever forget him?

Teacher: Hasn’t he cast a much longer shadow on us? In fact, his ghost continues to haunt us.

Student: But why? Macaulay died long back.  And the British left ages ago too. Independent  for over 78 years, how long can we continue to blame Macaulay?

Teacher: Macaulay spent only four years in India.

Student: The present dispensation has been in power for thrice as long...and they want another 10 years to end the “Macaulay mindset”?

Teacher: But what is the Macaulay mindset?  And who can define or adjudicate over it, let alone abolish it?

Teacher: Those who fall for the bait will only expose themselves in trying to deny it. The so￾called English-speaking elite of India, with their collective guilty conscience…

Student: Isn’t it a useful distraction, the proverbial red flag before the bull?

Teacher: But those who don’t have English want it badly too. Show me one English-deprived leader or politician who, after he has hit big time, continues to deprive his children of English.

Student: They condemn English but all of them want it.

Teacher: Did you know that for decades the number one bestselling book in Hindi was called Rapidex English Speaking Course! But more seriously, we fought against both colonialism and the domination of English.  The fight for swaraj, still ongoing, does mean the empowerment of all our languages.

Student: But why attack what we got after so much toil, even trauma? In addition to being the most sought-after international language, English is also an Indian language now, isn’t it?

Teacher: Linguists have identified three circles of English: native speakers, non-native speakers, and those who use it as a foreign language.

Student: Where do we belong?

Teacher: We have all three types, but mostly, we are what may be termed non-native speakers. English is neither our mother tongue, nor is it the other tongue. It is, as one of my linguist buddies so wittily put it, our “auntie tongue”.

Student: And how we love aunties in India!  Every lady who is older than you is aunty to you.

Teacher: Also, English was not imposed on us, at least not entirely. Charles Edward Trevelyan (1807-1886), who was Macaulay’s brother-in￾law and also a colonial administrator, offers us a fascinating account of India’s hunger for English in those times.

Student: Tell, tell.

Teacher: When he and his party disembark in Calcutta, they are surrounded by ‘native’ boys  badgering them for English books. He has to tear out pages from the Edinburgh Review and distribute them among the grateful aspirants!

Student: You mean we really wanted English, craved for it, and still desire it?

Teacher: English is not just a language, but both a symbol of, and means to, something much bigger. Sad but true, English continues to connote prosperity, prestige, and power in India. Also, class consciousness and exploitation of the masses.

Student: That’s why Macaulay touches a raw nerve each time!

Teacher: But though he’s so easy a target, what with his infamous quotation, it’s not so easy to undo his legacy.

Student: What do you mean?

Teacher: Just look at that infamous passage from his ‘Minute of February 1835’: “I have no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanskrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”

Student: Incredible! The loathsome, even brutal arrogance of power.

Teacher: We must understand the enormous dominance of empire, coupled with its egregious ignorance and capacity to do harm.

Student: Still sends shivers down my spine.

Teacher: Exactly! But who bothers to read the Minute today? Macaulay hints at India’s independence in this very Minute long before the freedom movement began, over 20 years before the Great Revolt of 1857. In fact, Macaulay, in another speech in the House of Commons on July 10, 1833 even advocated India’s independence, albeit for selfish reasons.

Student: I didn’t know that.

Teacher: Macaulay was an extraordinary man. Given that he lived less than 60 years, his impact was immense. He was also a brilliant writer and historian. In his four years in India, he also wrote much of the Indian Penal Code, that we still follow today.

Student: Ha! Why haven’t we got rid of it then?

Teacher: It’s easy to rail against him, but much harder to undo what he did.

Student: But the China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam—and so many others. They’ve done so well without English. Why can’t we?

Teacher: These comparisons are misplaced. They were never colonised or occupied as we were. Moreover, linguistically, India is much closer to Europe than to any single country.

Student: You mean it is as difficult to impose one language on India as it is on Europe?

Teacher: That is why Macaulay called the empire of English “imperishable” even when he predicted the demise of the British Empire.

Student: What do you say to that?

Teacher: Persian held sway in India for over 600 years. India produced more Persian texts than Iran.

Student: But it disappeared almost overnight, when the British took over. What about English?

Teacher: We may have to give some more time, don’t you think? Unless you want to go all out for Mandarin, which, by the way, many more of us need to learn. After all, it comes from the Sanskrit word “Mantrin,” for it was spoken by the elite in the Chinese emperor’s court.

Student: Or Hinglish?

Teacher: It’s one of the fastest-growing languages in the world and easily understood in the subcontinent. But note the “lish” in it. No one seems to speak a single sentence in Hindi these days without a word or two of English thrown in.

Student: Ishhh….