On the second of February 1835, Thomas Babington Macaulay compressed an empire’s educational ambition into a single sentence: “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia”. The line is often quoted as insult, and it was one.
Thomas Babington Macaulay’s 1835 “Minute on Indian Education” is a short text that has cast a long shadow over debates about language, knowledge, and power in India.
Mr Ashok Kapur’s two-part article, “Imperial India I & II” (8 and 9 February) coveys the impression that a congregation…
