Macaulay, English, and the Mind India Chooses

For over 2,000 years, the ‘Brahmin was assured of his profession as a bureaucrat in the king’s court.

- Devdutt Pattanaik

The entire system was based on his framework, his rules, his language. His son and nephews inherited his role, no matter who was king. The jati-varna system ensured it. When the Muslim kings came 800 years ago, only the court language changed to Persian. On the ground, everything remained the same. The Brahmin was in charge of administrative affairs. But then came Macaulay, and everything collapsed.

Education changed. Language changed. Systems changed. And most importantly the hegemony was gone. Meritocracy was introduced—provided you studied English and were rich enough to travel to London for the civil services exam. It’sa wound that still has not healed. It was made worse when reservations returned post Independence favouring those the Brahmin once considered ‘untouchable’. Modern India is repeatedly told that Macaulay destroyed a glorious Indian education system.

But the older system that existed before the 19th century was not a universal structure meant for all Indians or even Hindus. It was a patchwork of local institutions aligned to elite groups. They were controlled by hereditary scribes, priests, and court scholars who monopolised state paperwork, temple accounts, land records, and legal interpretation. It was a caste-linked and lineage-linked system that gave predictable employment to specific communities.