It's not everyday that I agree with the PM. I usually keep Thursdays aside for that option. So, imagine my single eyebrow-raised surprise when I was in broad agreement with what he said last Monday about the need to break free from the 'mindset of slavery that Macaulay imposed on India'.
The fact that by invoking Thomas Macaulay, Narendra Modi was telling young Indians - who aren't even aware of Macaulay Culkin, child star from the 1990 comedy Home Alone - to first look up the 19th c. Dead White Male (DWM), and then reject his notions of the inferiority of Indian, especially upper-class Hindu, culture and learning, is rather ironic.
No one in circa 2025 under the age of, well, 75, really frets over babbling Macaulay's 1835 'Minute on Education'. But I got what the PM was getting at: to get over the Oriental Orientalist's point of view that many Indians harbour - that Westerners and the Westernised are better than the rest.
Every time I encounter a 'Top 50 Books of the Decade' or 'Greatest Films Ever' list in NYT or Guardian, I chuckle. Earlier, I would gnash my teeth. But I've had a great dentist for a while now who sometimes doubles as my therapist.
But the cliche of Anglo-American-centrism among the Indian elite makes it genuinely seem that all the perfumes of not just Paris, but also of Arabia, lie in Macaulayganj. For this, I don't blame the West and its culture curators. After all, unless you're facing a belly dancer, it's one's own navel that one finds the most alluring. The problem has been 'our' unwillingness - which comes in inability's clothing - to beat our own mridangam.
The asymmetry is apparent even in something as 'universal' as internet content. To take language out of the equation, there are far more and far better high-resolution images of, say, Kim Bassinger that comes up on a Google search than, say, Zeenat Aman.
The contrast becomes more dire when it comes to 'high culture'. That you'll find more about PG Wodehouse online (never mind offline) than about Shibram Chakraborty - great humourists both in their respective languages of English and Bengali - will automatically give you, even a bilingual reader, the notion that the Englishman was a greater comic writer than the Indian. Which, in turn, could jolly well lead you to the conclusion that English is a better language for humour than any other tongue.
When Modi says that 'Macaulay broke our self-confidence and filled us with a sense of inferiority', he's using 'Macaulay' as a metonym - figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something associated with it. Like 'Mir Zafar' (traitor), or 'Yudhisthir' (honest hombre). Essentially, to blame 'Macaulay' for a well-entrenched ethnic-racial inferiority complex is to blame the 'colonial mindset'. Modi's right.
The PM proceeded to suggest some correctives, including pride in our heritage and preservation, and in our 'local' languages. I reckon that's too wishful - like telling someone to take pride in his or her footballing skills, without emphasising that he or she should first hone their footballing skills. A more effective way would be to get down to brasstacks and let the results do the talking.
Make our entrance examination systems not the joke it mostly is. Ensure our heritage and historical sites and structures - including structures built on earlier destroyed ones - don't set to crumble, squalor, or a collective push. Let non-English languages thrive organically, sucking up other languages like Hindi and English as well as colloquialisms and streetspeak, without fear of the officious 'gowment'-approved 'cottage industry' language mafia.
I'm hardly what anyone would call a cultural nationalist. I have two framed images of Franz Kafka on our walls at home (and none of Tagore). But imagine if there's an educational establishment here in India that names its 'houses'after Warren Hastings (first governor-general of Bengal), Job Charnock (supposed founder of Calcutta), Claude Martin (French officer in East India Company's Bengal Army, but at least he founded the school), and - yes, you guessed it right - Macaulay.
Never mind my gasp over such foppery. The self-appointed 19th c. baboo(n)-trainer would have been delighted to see the extent of our cultural progress.
The fact that by invoking Thomas Macaulay, Narendra Modi was telling young Indians - who aren't even aware of Macaulay Culkin, child star from the 1990 comedy Home Alone - to first look up the 19th c. Dead White Male (DWM), and then reject his notions of the inferiority of Indian, especially upper-class Hindu, culture and learning, is rather ironic.
No one in circa 2025 under the age of, well, 75, really frets over babbling Macaulay's 1835 'Minute on Education'. But I got what the PM was getting at: to get over the Oriental Orientalist's point of view that many Indians harbour - that Westerners and the Westernised are better than the rest.
Every time I encounter a 'Top 50 Books of the Decade' or 'Greatest Films Ever' list in NYT or Guardian, I chuckle. Earlier, I would gnash my teeth. But I've had a great dentist for a while now who sometimes doubles as my therapist.
But the cliche of Anglo-American-centrism among the Indian elite makes it genuinely seem that all the perfumes of not just Paris, but also of Arabia, lie in Macaulayganj. For this, I don't blame the West and its culture curators. After all, unless you're facing a belly dancer, it's one's own navel that one finds the most alluring. The problem has been 'our' unwillingness - which comes in inability's clothing - to beat our own mridangam.
The asymmetry is apparent even in something as 'universal' as internet content. To take language out of the equation, there are far more and far better high-resolution images of, say, Kim Bassinger that comes up on a Google search than, say, Zeenat Aman.
The contrast becomes more dire when it comes to 'high culture'. That you'll find more about PG Wodehouse online (never mind offline) than about Shibram Chakraborty - great humourists both in their respective languages of English and Bengali - will automatically give you, even a bilingual reader, the notion that the Englishman was a greater comic writer than the Indian. Which, in turn, could jolly well lead you to the conclusion that English is a better language for humour than any other tongue.
When Modi says that 'Macaulay broke our self-confidence and filled us with a sense of inferiority', he's using 'Macaulay' as a metonym - figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something associated with it. Like 'Mir Zafar' (traitor), or 'Yudhisthir' (honest hombre). Essentially, to blame 'Macaulay' for a well-entrenched ethnic-racial inferiority complex is to blame the 'colonial mindset'. Modi's right.
The PM proceeded to suggest some correctives, including pride in our heritage and preservation, and in our 'local' languages. I reckon that's too wishful - like telling someone to take pride in his or her footballing skills, without emphasising that he or she should first hone their footballing skills. A more effective way would be to get down to brasstacks and let the results do the talking.
Make our entrance examination systems not the joke it mostly is. Ensure our heritage and historical sites and structures - including structures built on earlier destroyed ones - don't set to crumble, squalor, or a collective push. Let non-English languages thrive organically, sucking up other languages like Hindi and English as well as colloquialisms and streetspeak, without fear of the officious 'gowment'-approved 'cottage industry' language mafia.
I'm hardly what anyone would call a cultural nationalist. I have two framed images of Franz Kafka on our walls at home (and none of Tagore). But imagine if there's an educational establishment here in India that names its 'houses'after Warren Hastings (first governor-general of Bengal), Job Charnock (supposed founder of Calcutta), Claude Martin (French officer in East India Company's Bengal Army, but at least he founded the school), and - yes, you guessed it right - Macaulay.
Never mind my gasp over such foppery. The self-appointed 19th c. baboo(n)-trainer would have been delighted to see the extent of our cultural progress.
Indrajit Hazra
Editor, Views