Macaulay’s Ghost And Modi’s India

The Language Debate Returns

- M.R. Lalu Freelance Journalist, Kerala Ph: 84149-18976

The discourse on how to unseat the prominence, dominance, and influence of English within the present nationalistic ambiance of India began soon after the Modi regime came to power.

Since 2014, centers of power, through a host of ideological arguments, have consistently made this issue a subject of national debate; yet the impact of such discourse did not surface vigorously.

However, some credible and long-term efforts to challenge the dominance of English as the most influential language have begun to create a discernible undercurrent.

The NEP 2020 was one such impactful initiative, an attempt to elevate India's linguistic pluralism to a new pedestal of recognition. The education policy accorded great importance to all local Indian languages, and their introduction in the early learning experiences of children was among its most significant and lasting decisions.

Above all, the chief propagator of India's envisioned transition into a nationalistic and patriotic community was the Prime Minister himself. He has consistently maintained that the country cannot continue to promote the very language that was once used to create, in Macaulay's words, "a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect."

Thomas Babington Macaulay's plan was to keep the Indian landscape under the continuous dominance of colonialists, fully aware that language could hold generations in mental subservience even after the British had formally withdrawn. He believed this to be a perennial investment; one that would endure for centuries and help his line of colonizers to succeed.