Macaulay, Colonial Education and Its Enduring Legacy

Opinion

Macaulay’s 1835 Minute on Indian Education is often read as an ideological masterstroke, not just an educational policy

By Nandini Bhautoo

The establishment of formal education systems was one of the most far-reaching instruments of British colonial rule. However, far from being neutral, these systems were deeply ideological tools designed to produce a class of intermediaries who could serve colonial interests. At the heart of this enterprise stood Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, whose 1835 Minute on Indian Education catalysed a shift not just in India, but across the British empire. His model influenced generations of education systems in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean — structures that still impact postcolonial societies today.

While Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education was originally intended for the Indian context, its underlying philosophy was soon adopted as a strategic blueprint across the British Empire. Pic YouTube

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) was a British historian, politician, and colonial administrator. As Law Member of the Governor-General’s Council in India from 1834 to 1838, he wielded immense influence. His legacy includes the drafting of the Indian Penal Code and, perhaps more fatefully, the authorship of the Minute on Indian Education (1835), in which he proposed an English-based education system that would serve the administrative and ideological needs of the Empire.

In his Minute on Education, Macaulay disparaged traditional Indian learning, describing Sanskrit literature as devoid of “any valuable knowledge.” He advocated for replacing indigenous systems with Western education, taught in English, to produce “a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.” This minute was swiftly endorsed by Governor-General Lord William Bentinck on 7 March 1835, formalising English-language education in India and marginalising vernacular and classical languages.

This is what Macauley notoriously said: “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern…” This led to the introduction of English literature into Indian education curricula — Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Wordsworth — as tools to “civilize” and morally reform the colonized elite. Meanwhile, English literature was not yet a formal academic discipline in England. At elite British universities like Oxford and Cambridge, classical languages (Latin and Greek) and theology dominated until the late 19th century.

Macaulay’s proposals intensified the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy within the colonial administration. While Orientalists argued for preserving and promoting traditional Indian knowledge systems, Anglicists like Macaulay promoted English and Western content. The Anglicists ultimately prevailed, reshaping the intellectual future of colonised societies.

While Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education was originally intended for the Indian context, its underlying philosophy was soon adopted as a strategic blueprint across the British Empire. The model aimed to cultivate a class of English-educated intermediaries who would not only assist in administering the colonies but also internalise and perpetuate imperial ideologies. In South Asia, particularly in India, Sri Lanka, and Burma, English-medium schools systematically displaced vernacular traditions and monastic forms of learning.

Across Africa — in colonies such as Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya — mission-run institutions propagated a Western curriculum, though access to higher education remained tightly controlled. In the Caribbean, notably in Jamaica and Trinidad, church-led schooling functioned as a tool to manage plantation societies and reinforce colonial hierarchies. Southeast Asian territories like Malaya, Singapore, and Burma witnessed the rise of colonial schools that trained local bureaucrats for subordinate roles in governance. In the South-Pacific, English-language education targeted Indo-Fijian indentured communities, embedding colonial discipline and loyalty.

Meanwhile, Mauritius, under British rule from 1810, adopted a similarly anglicised system that entrenched linguistic and cultural divisions — many of which persist to this day, especially with the paradox of the Capitulation Treaty of 1810, which allowed two elitist systems to co-exist, paralysing effective decolonization of our institutional structures, notably in education. For those of us who are lucky enough to remember the teachers of a previous generation of students of English literature in Mauritius, they testified to learning the same poems as their peers from Kenya, Trinidad and elsewhere. They all learnt to love Wordsworth and Keats. This lead to an unconscious internalization of the ideological centre of the world as being England, which de facto marginalized the place of origin of these students, in their imagination.

Many texts across the spectrum of postcolonial literature speak of the alienation created by the elevation of ideals which were unrooted in the local social, geographical and cultural reality of whole generations of students from the colonies. The one novel which deals with this at length is V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men. Ralph Singh, a colonial subject educated in the British system, attempts to emulate the English gentleman. He finds himself alienated both in London and in his Caribbean homeland. The very literature that promises civilization also installs a sense of inadequacy and dislocation. Ralph absorbs English literature in school as part of his colonial education, particularly the works of Dickens and other canonical authors. But instead of anchoring him, this education instils a sense of rootlessness and unattainable idealism.

Some writers refer to this as the Daffodil complex to embody this paradox: A condition of cultural disorientation and alienation where students are made to study, internalise and admire British literature that have no resonance with their geography, climate, or social reality. It is a metaphorical shorthand for the disjuncture between colonial curricula and colonized contexts which captures the internal conflict created when students are taught to admire or emulate British literary ideals (beauty, landscape, civility) while being made to feel ashamed or inferior about their own language, culture, or environment.

Macaulay’s 1835 Minute on Indian Education is often read as an ideological masterstroke, not just an educational policy. His aim wasn’t simply to replace Sanskrit with English, but to reshape the Indian elite’s imagination, aligning them psychologically, morally, and culturally with British interests.

The legacy of Macaulay’s education system is deeply ambivalent. From the colonial perspective, it was an effective instrument of governance. It generated a class of compliant clerks, legal professionals, and bureaucrats essential to the smooth functioning of the colonial administration. By standardising education through English, the system brought a degree of administrative uniformity to an otherwise linguistically and culturally diverse empire. It also imposed a singular cultural framework — that of the British ruling class — which reinforced imperial authority.

However, from a postcolonial standpoint, the consequences have been far more damaging. The system led to the widespread suppression of indigenous knowledge systems, with traditional sciences, literatures, and pedagogies relegated to obscurity or labelled inferior. If they were not suppressed, they were peripheralised within a colonial model.

The great local example of this in Mauritius is the primary school curriculum, where a slot is reserved each day for the teaching of Oriental languages. Several decades ago, this could be seen as a token on cultural responsibility. However, unbeknown to us, this curriculum structure has shaped our collective consciousness regarding both the pedagogical and cultural value of non-Western languages — something we seem unable to escape, despite the will to do so.

No solutions will ever be found overnight. However, if we do not even recognize the inequality, we are unlikely to turn the existing differences in language status and access to our advantage or address them meaningfully because our education system is still shaped by colonial-era structures and values.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 27 June 2025