Macaulay Misunderstood
- Independent Ink
- Dec 4, 2025
- 6 min read
Viewpoint: The epoch-making contribution of Lord Macaulay to education in India and the sustained disinformation campaign against his education policy have to be seen through the lens of the Phule-Ambedkar epistemology.
By Dr Vijay Chintaman Sonawane
During the East India Company and the subsequent British Crown administration after 1858, Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay had a singular influence on the educational and administrative systems of British India. To critique the impact of Western culture on Indian society, it has become crucial to berate Macaulay’s contribution to the formulation of the education policy.
The persistent lie that Macaulay destroyed our previous educational system ignores the reality that existed before the British colonisation of India. Among those who are less knowledgeable and susceptible to conditioning, the selective repetition of the harm created by Macaulay educational system can find credulous consumers.
Following the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the British solidified their hold over most of India. This led to the demand for qualified individuals who could do administrative tasks in both English and a vernacular language. The whole workforce needed for the British government could not be brought from Britain.
Lord Macaulay was appointed to lead the Committee of Public Instruction after arriving in India on June 10, 1834, as a barrister on the Governor-General’s Executive Council. A resolution was passed in March 1835, following the council’s release of its well-known minutes in February 1835, which Governor General, Lord Bentinck, endorsed.
As a result, the new period of modern education in India began, where hitherto education was the exclusive domain of Brahmin males, and the scriptures prohibited education for women, Shudras, and Untouchables.
The statement: “A single shelf of a decent European library was worth the entirety of the native literature of India and Arabia,” made by Macaulay in his February 1835 Minute on Indian Education, is undoubtedly conceited. But at the time, orientalists like Sir Richard Burton and Prof Max Müller had not yet begun their monumental work on the heritage of the East. Ashokan edicts had not yet been deciphered. The world had not yet fully witnessed the profound philosophy of Buddha or the magnificent history of the Mauryan empire.
With his education strategy, Macaulay did not hold back when expressing his desire to establish a class of native people who were “Indian by blood and colour, but English by tastes, opinions, morals, and intellect.” Under British rule, the administrators had to do this.
Even though Macaulay emphasised in his minutes the perceived superiority of Western civilisation for administration, his willingness to provide natives with higher education of European standards must be contrasted with the Brahmin’s exclusionary mindset, which forbade education for anyone who had not undergone the sacred thread ceremony, let alone the Shudras and the untouchables.
Macaulay anticipated that a small group of native Indians would eventually grow and disperse among a larger population if educated in accordance with his policy. Today, numerous Indians have secured important positions in the global IT industry, skilled vocations, and higher education overseas, proving that his vision was entirely correct.
Let us look at a few effects of Macaulay’s education policy and its implementation:
First and foremost, Macaulay’s education programme made education accessible to all people, including women, Shudras, and untouchables. This gave them access to government employment and a ticket to economic security, which, in turn, gave them limited influence and prestige within the British Raj. People from all walks of life began striving for education and good government employment because they had no chance to advance through education for generations.
In just a few decades, a generation of English-speaking natives with knowledge of Western history, philosophy, mathematics, science and politics emerged. This could be termed as a veritable renaissance in India.
Lord Macaulay’s educational system produced notable individuals such as Dadabhai Navaroji, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, Mahadev Govind Ranade, Gopal Krishn Gokhle, B.G. Tilak, Aurobindo Ghosh, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, C.R. Das, Lala Lajpat Rai, Satyendra Nath Banerjee, Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, Dr B. R. Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, Dr Shama Prasad Mukherjee, M.N. Roy, Sir J.C. Bose, Prof. Meghnad Saha, and S. N. Bose and Sir C. V. Raman.
Despite the expectation of producing men who were “Indian by blood and colour, but English by tastes, opinions, morals, and intellect,” Macaulay’s educational system produced people with elevated consciousness about society and the nation.
This was demonstrated by the emergence of social reformers, freedom fighters, political leaders, statesmen and world-class scientists. Indeed, scientists like Prof. M.N. Saha, S.N. Bose, and Sir C.V. Raman put India at the forefront of fundamental research, even when scientific infrastructure was scarce in the country.
In addition to feeding the occidental vs oriental dichotomy, the constant criticism of Macaulay’s educational policy also serves to conceal the harsh truth about the state of education in India before colonisation. It gives the impression that there was actually an educational system in place prior to colonisation, which the British destroyed.
Macaulay had observed that before colonisation, an educated person meant that “a person who might have studied in the sacred books, traditional knowledge of little utility, and all the mysteries associated with faith,” whereas he wanted Indians to know the poetry of Milton, the metaphysics of Locke and the physics of Newton.
That is why Macaulay was an advocate of European education for Indians. Sanskrit, in his view, was the language of the canonical knowledge.
Except Brahmins, nobody else could learn it, excluding others from education. In contrast, English was open to all and had the capacity to teach the metaphysics of Locke, the poetry of Milton and the physics of Newton to all Indians.
Acknowledging that the ancient Egyptian civilisation was superior to the then-European civilisation, he argued that the people of modern Egypt would not benefit from the revival of ancient Egyptian education. Instead, science would need to be taught in either English or French because the old languages were unsuitable for this purpose. For this reason, Macaulay favoured teaching science and English to indigenous people rather than Sanskrit and Arabic.
There was no organised system of knowledge for the entire population before the British democratised knowledge. Prior to that, traditional trade knowledge and skills were passed down from father to son. The Vedshala, which was associated with religious authorities and taught scripture knowledge exclusively to Brahmins, was the only indication of a knowledge school. The student had to be a Brahmin male who had completed the sacred thread rite or a prince according to the rules of Gurukuls. As a result, the majority of people were essentially denied the chance to pursue education.
The assertions that there was an educational system in India before colonisation are untrustworthy, and they will be refuted by research on Indian households’ first-generation school-goers.
It is clear that gurukuls did not preserve the knowledge traditions established by Nalanda. Due to India's inadequate educational system, the Nalanda tradition was ultimately lost. Notably, until James Princep decoded the Dhamma Lipi (Brahmi script) in 1837, no Indian scholar could read or interpret the edicts of Ashoka.
Our understanding of ancient and pre-medieval Indian history relies on the writings of historians such as Megasthenes (3rd century BC) and travellers like Fa-Hien (5th century AD), Hiuen Tsang (7th century AD), and Al-Biruni (11th century AD).
Similarly, it was Captain James Thomas Molesworth created the first Marathi dictionary in 1831, while missionary William Carry compiled the first book of Marathi grammar in 1805. The same missionary also created and published Bengali and Punjabi grammars in 1812 and 1843, respectively.
Herbert de Jager, a Dutch East India Company officer, created the first painting of Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in 1677. James Grant Duff wrote the first thorough and reliable history of the Marathas in 1826.
These examples all highlight the lack of an educational system to advance knowledge in the community.
Francis Bacon’s dictum: “Knowledge is power” is well known; its corollary in India has been described by Jyotiba Phule in his monumental book Gulamgiri (Slavery). Avidya, or deprivation from knowledge, he notes, is a terrible handicap
विद्ये विना मती गेली। मती विना निती गेली॥
निती विना गती गेली। गती विना वित्त गेले।।
वित्त विना शुद्र खचले। एवढे अनर्थ एका अविद्येने केले॥
Through his education policy, Lord Macaulay ended the darkness of ignorance that kept nearly all of India in the thraldom of Brahmanism. He freed the Bahujan from the bonds of slavery imposed by ‘Avidya’ and ushered them into a future that gave rise to generations of social reformers and patriots who inspired the masses in the freedom struggle.
Every educated Indian should be thankful to Lord Macaulay, except for those who were born as Brahmins or princes.
Dr Vijay Chintaman Sonawane is M.Sc., Microbiology, M.Tech. (S.P. University, Pune), M. Tech. Biochemical Engineering (IIT, BHU), PhD. Biotechnology (Panjab University, Chandigarh). He retired as a Senior Principal Scientist from a National Laboratory in Chandigarh. He was born and brought up in Maharashtra in an Ambedkarite family.