Countering the Macaulayan Hangover: How Modi Battles for the Indian Mind

It is fascinating to see how persistently a group of allegedly intellectual people cling to the comforting fiction that the nation has already transcended its colonial outlines.

- DR PRASHANT BARTHWAL

They proclaim, often with impressive rhetorical flourish, that the British-era mindset has long been exorcised, that Indians have mastered their destiny, and that any contemporary invocation of Macaulay's influence is little more than a political sleight-of-hand. Such assertions would have been amusing had they not been wrapped in a veneer of academic gravitas, for they betray not only a shallow reading of India's cultural and educational trajectory but also a profound misunderstanding of the Prime Minister's contention regarding the deeper psychological battle India continues to wage against inherited epistemic hierarchies. The irony is delicious: the very people who protest most vehemently against the critique of Macaulay's inadvertently embody it in thought, tone, and temperament.