While delivering the Ramnath Goenka Lecture, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that India should take a ten-year pledge to root out the colonial mindset. In ten years, he noted, it will be 200 years since Lord Macaulay introduced the English-based education system. According to Modi, Macaulay’s project aimed to reshape Indian thought by dismantling indigenous knowledge systems and enforcing colonial education. He went on to argue that Macaulay’s “crime” was creating Indians who were “Indian in appearance but British in thought.” This, Modi claimed, destroyed India’s self-confidence and introduced a sense of inferiority.
Modi, an RSS pracharak and representative of Hindutva nationalism, comes from an ideological tradition that has long emphasized alleged atrocities by Muslim rulers, such as the destruction of temples and the imposition of Islam. This narrative claims that India’s past was a golden era that deteriorated with the arrival of Muslim invaders. More recently, Hindu nationalist thinkers have shifted attention to “coloniality” as the major historical evil introduced under British rule, referring to a colonial mindset and the suppression of traditional knowledge systems.
These arguments come from representatives of an organization whose followers kept themselves largely aloof from the anti-colonial struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi and other national leaders.
While Modi and others blame Macaulay for many of India’s problems, Dalit intellectuals like Chandrabhan Prasad have praised Macaulay’s contribution to laying foundations that, over time, enabled struggles for dignity and equality for Dalit and marginalized communities.
Modi and his supporters seem to view the cultural impact of Macaulay and British rule as linear and uniform. Yet they themselves support a European-style nationalism based on language or religion. India’s development was far more complex. The introduction of English education contributed significantly to the spread of modern liberal values and opened the gates of knowledge to social groups such as Dalits and women who had long been excluded from education, which in the gurukul system was restricted to upper-caste men.
India’s traditional knowledge—from scholars such as Sushrut, Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, the Lokayat school, and Bhaskar—contributed enormously to the intellectual development of society. However, this knowledge remained confined to traditional elites. Access to knowledge, power, and wealth was limited to a privileged few.
It is true that Macaulay had a vested interest in producing clerks and administrators who could serve the British Empire, and figures like Rudyard Kipling attempted to glorify colonial rule through the idea of the “white man’s burden.” Yet modern education also produced towering nationalists who led struggles against colonialism. Gandhi, Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose, and Nehru were all educated in English, and their leadership was crucial in India’s struggle for freedom. Nehru beautifully articulated this journey in his “Tryst with Destiny” speech.
Did English suppress regional languages? In fact, modern education fostered their growth. Lokmanya Tilak (Kesari and Maratha) and Gandhi (Navjivan) published influential newspapers in regional languages. Writers like Rabindranath Tagore and Munshi Premchand enriched Indian literature simultaneously.
British scholars also helped rediscover aspects of India’s heritage such as the Brahmi script and historical monuments like Ajanta and Ellora. As Swaminathan Aiyar (TOI, November 2025) notes, the British established the Archaeological Survey of India under Alexander Cunningham, who unearthed important sites from Taxila to Nalanda. These contributions were unintended but nonetheless valuable.
India did not accept British thought wholesale. Key leaders such as Dadabhai Naoroji, M.G. Ranade, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and R.C. Dutt fiercely opposed British economic and political policies. The freedom movement became the greatest challenge to colonial ideology. English was a tool, and over time it became Indianized, producing world-class writers such as Amitav Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, and Kiran Desai, who articulated Indian experiences through a global language.
Traditional knowledge systems can only grow through interaction with global thought. Linguistic states provided space for regional languages and local knowledge. Importantly, engagement with the world—not only the West—helped challenge entrenched caste and gender hierarchies. Modern education, despite its flaws, opened pathways to dignity and equality for marginalized groups.
An interesting anecdote captures the complexity of colonial influence: Shashi Tharoor, in his famous Oxford debate (later published as The Dark Era of British Empire), forcefully presented the immense economic plunder of India by the British. A few months later, Dr. Manmohan Singh, speaking in England, acknowledged the role of the British in initiating modern administration and education in India.
The core reality is that these processes strengthened the foundations of liberal democratic values and shaped the freedom movement in which people of all religions participated. In contrast, predecessors of today’s Hindutva nationalists openly distanced themselves from the struggle against the British. As Shamsul Islam has documented, Golwalkar reportedly stated: “Hindus, don’t waste your energy fighting the British. Save your energy to fight our internal enemies: Muslims, Christians, and Communists.” This perspective prioritized communal division over anti-colonial unity.
Why then are Hindutva nationalists now focusing on combating “coloniality” and restoring so-called traditional knowledge systems? This is reflected in the New Education Policy. Hindutva nationalism promotes traditional caste and gender hierarchies, which were weakened by the freedom struggle and the Constitution. Opposing Macaulay and Western forms of knowledge becomes a strategy to revive these hierarchical structures.
Civilizations do not move in straight lines. Progress emerges through continuous exchange and dialogue—an “alliance of civilizations”—which pushes society toward justice and equality.
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