Opinion Yogendra Yadav writes: PM is spot on but Macaulay’s children wear suits, ties — and the tilak too

Let me begin by underlining my deep agreement with Modi and serious disagreement with his critics on his remarks about Macaulay. Just to recall, here is the underlying assumption of Macaulay’s “Minute on Education”: “A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia… historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit (sic) language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England… [This applies to] every branch of physical or moral philosophy.” Hence his policy prescription: “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 tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.”

This note continues to be a reminder that India was subjected not just to political colonisation and economic plunder, but also epistemic violence. While the PM’s remarks about the glory of India’s pre-modern education system — clearly inspired by Dharam Pal’s book The Beautiful Tree — may need closer scrutiny, there is little doubt about the veracity of his lament that Macaulay’s design did succeed. The system of education instituted following Macaulay has indeed “shattered our self-confidence”. We have been governed by Brown sahibs — Indians only in blood and colour. Modi’s allegation that our post-Independence education system continued this legacy is largely true. If anything, political freedom made us ever more complacent about our mental slavery. The PM is right to point to a societal trend that puts a premium on “imported ideas, imported goods, and imported services”.

Sadly, his critics have resorted to disingenuous arguments. Some of them claim that the post-Independence education system was not a continuation of the colonial system of education. It may not have been so in intent and official pronouncements. But it is hard to deny that for all practical purposes, India retained, if not reinforced, the colonial system of education with its primacy of the English language. Most critics simply extol the virtues of modern education and the English language, and assume that the only way we could have had these was by putting aside our pre-modern knowledge systems and our many languages. These critics actually agree with Macaulay and thus serve to illustrate the PM’s point about the widespread “sense of inferiority” among the products of Macaulay’s education.

The real problem with Modi’s position is not that he is wrong in what he said, but that he is more right than he may have realised. The life work of Ashis Nandy — among the greatest living thinkers and arguably the most astute students of the psychological impact of colonialism — reminds us that colonialism not only conditions its loyal subjects but also its critics in very surprising ways. The psychological wound caused by colonialism produces a loss of self that induces even its critics to internalise notions of Western superiority and unthinkingly reproduce templates of Western thought. In Nandy’s memorable phrase, the West becomes an “intimate enemy”. The RSS variety of nationalism is a textbook example of the imitative response induced by colonialism.

Modi’s Ramnath Goenka lecture is a good example. He spoke of “governance model”, “aspiration”, “tourism”, “made in India” — English phrases in a Hindi lecture — without perhaps realising that most of these ideas may have been examples of the “imported ideas” he had been railing against. He referred to the new National Education Policy. The fact is that there is nothing Indian about it, except some tadka of Indian knowledge systems sprinkled on top of an American education policy document largely disconnected from the Indian reality. No matter how much his government rants about English, the BJP regime has witnessed an acceleration of English-medium schools.

For Modi, the whole point of getting rid of Macaulay’s legacy is to move towards the goal of “Viksit Bharat”. This trope of development and its translation into models of GDP growth is a very tired Western, if not neo-colonial, language of thinking about the economy, that excludes multiple dimensions of human well-being and ecological sustainability, that denies the knowledge and practices in the Global South. Surely, there is something odd about a leader who lays out the dream of “catching up with them” while calling for an end to the colonial mindset.

The lecture is just an example. A simple reading of the documents of the RSS, the BJP or their ideological forefathers would show that their foundational ideas are derived from the West and stand in opposition to India’s civilisational legacy. Their very core idea — nationalism — is an imitation of the failed Western model of nation-state that demands cultural uniformity and seeks to centralise power. This is contrary to India’s civilisational experience. Their understanding of Hinduism itself is an attempt to replicate the template of Abrahamic religions so as to erase the plural and fluid identities that India has lived with. Its overt masculinity, hyper-statism and aggressive majoritarianism hide an internalised inferiority complex.

The litmus test of a colonised mind is that its ultimate dream is to become like the master. In that sense, the present regime is a perfect vehicle for the colonial mindset. If anything, Macaulay in saffron clothes is worse than the rule of the English-speaking elite, for its rhetoric of nationalism makes us forget the real challenge of the loss of self under colonialism. The recovery of the self must begin with Gandhi and Tagore, once we overcome the RSS mindset.

The writer is member, Swaraj India, and national convenor, Bharat Jodo Abhiyaan. Views are personal