The damage Macaulay did to IndiaBy Francois Gautier




A country needs people who are proud of their own culture and
civilization in order to move forward. That is what true nationalism -
as opposed to jingoism - is all about. It also requires an
intelligentsia which reflects this pride in its newspapers, books,
paintings, sculptures and sports.

But
for such overall excellence to be achieved, a country needs
intellectuals in contact with their society, who know their roots, who
have been groomed in the intricacies, the subtleties and genius of
their own culture, while not being blind to its faults. For
intellectuals are the ones who shape the psyche of a nation.

In
India, we generally find there exists a brilliant intelligentsia, which
is at par with most of the Western intelligentsia. Indian intellectuals
are fluent in English, write it even better, are cognizant of Western
literature; indeed, they can often quote Camus, Sartre, Freud, and
Jung; they know the latest trends in the West, have read the latest
books, and can converse on any subject on this earth, be it ecology or
fashion.

Unfortunately, not only are they totally ignorant of
their own culture, but they also look down upon it. Not only have they
no idea about the greatness of the Bhagavad Gita, of meditation, of
Ayurveda, or pranayama, but they use the best of their talents to run
it down, with wit, good English and a nasty and acerbic pen.

These
intellectuals are all a product of a man called Macaulay, who, more
than 200 years ago, had the brilliant idea to fashion sahibs out of
brown-skin natives and make them not only more British than the
British, but also make them ashamed of their own culture, spirituality
and ethos. When they took over India, the British set upon establishing
an intermediary race of Indians, whom they could entrust with their
work at the middle level echelons and who could one day be convenient
instruments to rule by proxy, or semi-proxy. The tool to shape these
British clones was education.

In the words of Macaulay, the
pope of British schooling in India: "We must at present do our best to
form a class, who may be interpreters between us and the millions we
govern, a class of persons Indians in blood and color, but English in
taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellects." Macaulay had very
little regard for Hindu culture and education: He stated "All the
historical information which can be collected from all the books which
have been written in the Sanskrit language, is less valuable than what
may be found in the most paltry abridgement used at preparatory schools
in England."
He further said : "Hindus have a literature of small
intrinsic value, hardly reconcilable with morality and full of
monstrous superstitions."

It seems today that India's Marxist
intelligentsia could not agree more with Macaulay, for his dream has
come true: Today, the greatest opponents of Indianised and
spiritualized education are the descendants of these brown sahibs; the
"secular" politicians, the journalists, the top bureaucrats, the whole
westernized cream of India. And what is even more paradoxical, most of
them are Hindus!

It is they who, on getting independence,
have denied India its true identity and borrowed blindly from the
British education system, without trying to adapt it to the unique
Indian mentality and psychology; and it is they who are refusing to
accept a change of India's education system, which is totally
West-oriented and is churning out machines, learning by rote boring
statistics which are of little use in life.

And what India is
getting from this education is a youth which apes the West: They go to
McDonald's, thrive on MTV culture, wear the latest Klein jeans and
Lacoste T-Shirts, and in general are useless, rich parasites, in a
country which has so many talented youngsters who live in poverty .
They will grow up like millions of other Western clones in the
developing world, who wear a tie, read The New York Times and perhaps
swear by liberalism and secularism to save their countries from doom.
In time, the same youth will reach elevated positions and write books
and articles which make fun of India; they will preside over
human-right committees; be "secular" high bureaucrats who take the
wrong decisions and generally do tremendous harm to India, because it
has been programmed in their genes to always run their own country
down. In a gist, they will be the ones always looking to the West for
approval and forever perceive India through the Western prism.

Dr.
Murli Manohar Joshi is absolutely right. Indian children should be told
about the immense human and spiritual values of their own literature,
like we in Europe are brought up on the values of the Iliad and the
Odyssey, or the great Greek tragedies. Therefore, education in India
has to be more Indianised - it is not a question of being
"nationalistic", or "saffron-oriented", as Indian Marxists are fond of
saying, but of knowing one's own culture, the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita,
the Ramayana, which in fact, according to many Western scholars, stand
among the greatest literary
works of all times.

At the same
time, it is true, as Sri Aurobindo pointed out: "Though we must save
for India all that she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble
thoughts in her immemorial past, we must also acquire for her the best
knowledge that Europe can give her and assimilate it to her own
peculiar type of national temperament.

Unfortunately, at a
time when the West, sick with antibiotics and a blind medicine which
kills more than it cures, is rediscovering the virtues of Ayurveda,
every third shop in India sells allopathic prescriptions. When the
West, sick with materialism is rediscovering the virtues of Swadeshi,
Coca Cola, McDonald, or Ford are given a free hand in India. When the
West, amidst violence, depression and stress is rediscovering the
virtues of spirituality and pranayama, it is not even taught in Indian
schools and
universities. When the West, in mortal combat with a
religion which says: "Unless you believe in my God, I will kill you,"
is rediscovering the virtues of the Indian dharma - the only living
spirituality left in the world - it is made fun of by India's own
intelligentsia. If only they knew on what treasure they are perpetually
spitting on!








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