'Everyone wants to be English-speaking in India'
March 19, 2013 14:27
'If you're an Indian reading this book in English, it's probably because of Macaulay,' says the blurb on the book cover of Macaulay, Pioneer of India's Modernisation by Zareer Masani. Thomas Babington Macaulay, the British politician who introduced the English language as a medium for education, spent just four years in India, but has left behind a highly debated legacy.
That is why even 178 years after English was introduced in Indian schools, he continues to be both admired and reviled in India. Masani, who has an Oxford DPhil with a thesis on Indian nationalism, says that though largely forgotten in the land of his birth, Thomas Macaulay's legacies are alive and hotly contested in the Subcontinent -- and it is time for a balanced reprisal of his contribution.
Writer Zareer Masani explains Thomas Macaulay's legacy in a fascinating interview with Rediff.com's Archana Masih. Read
Pic: Children play football in the backdrop of the memorial to Queen Victoria in Kolkata, which was the first capital of the British empire.
That is why even 178 years after English was introduced in Indian schools, he continues to be both admired and reviled in India. Masani, who has an Oxford DPhil with a thesis on Indian nationalism, says that though largely forgotten in the land of his birth, Thomas Macaulay's legacies are alive and hotly contested in the Subcontinent -- and it is time for a balanced reprisal of his contribution.
Writer Zareer Masani explains Thomas Macaulay's legacy in a fascinating interview with Rediff.com's Archana Masih. Read
Pic: Children play football in the backdrop of the memorial to Queen Victoria in Kolkata, which was the first capital of the British empire.
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