The Confused Hindu : Victim of Macaulayism by Sita Ram Goel
The term derives from Thomas
Babington Macaulay, a member of the Governor General’s Council in the 1830s.
Earlier, the British Government of India had completed a survey of the
indigenous system of education in the Presidencies of Bengal, Bombay and
Madras. A debate was going on whether the indigenous system should be retained
or a new system introduced. Macaulay was the chief advocate of a new system.
This, he, expected, will produce a class of Indians brown of skin but English
in taste and temperament. The expectation has been more than fulfilled.
There is a widerspread impression among “educated” classes in India that this
country had no worthwhile system of education before the advent of the British.
The great universities like those at Takshashilã, Nãlandã, Vikramashîla and
Udantapurî had disappeared during Muslim invasions and rule. What remained, we
are told, were some pãthashãlãs in which a rudimentary instruction in
arithmetic, and reading and writing was imparted by semi-educated teachers,
mostly to the children of the upper castes, particularly the Brahmins. But the
impression is not supported by known and verifiable facts.
Speaking before a select audience at Chatham House, London, on October 20,
1931, Mahatma Gandhi had said: “I say without fear of my figures being
successfully challenged that India today is more illiterate than it was before
a fifty or hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British
administrators when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as
they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at
the root and left the root like that and the beautiful tree perished.”
What the Mahatma had stated negatively, that is, in terms of illiteracy was
documented positively, that is, in terms of literacy by a number of Indian
scholars, notably Sri Daulat Ram, in the debate which followed the Mahatma’s
statement, with Sir Philip Hartog, an eminent British educationist, on the
other side. Now Shri Dharampal who compiled Indian Science and Technology in
the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts in 1971 has
completed a book on the state of indigenous education in India on the eve of
the British conquest.
Shri Dharampal has documented from old British archives, particularly those in
Madras, that the indigenous system of education compared more than favourably
with the system obtaining in England at about the same time. The Indian system
was admittedly in a state of decay when it was surveyed by the British
Collectors in Bengal, Bombay and Madras. Yet, as the data brought up by them
proved conclusively, the Indian system was better than the English in terms of
1. the number of schools and colleges proportionately
to the population,
2. the number of students attending these
institutions,
3. the duration of time spent in school by the
students,
4. the quality of teachers,
5. the diligence as well as intelligence of the
students,
6. the financial support needed to see the students
through school and college,
7. the high percentage of lower class (Sudra and
other castes) students attending these schools as compared to the upper class
(Brahmin, Kshatriya and Vaisya) students, and
8. in terms of subjects taught.
This indigenous system was discarded
and left to die out by the British not because its educational capacity was
inferior but because it was not thought fit for serving the purpose they had in
mind. The purpose was, first, to introduce the same system of administration in
India as was obtaining in England at that time. The English system was highly
centralised, geared towards maximisation of state revenues, manned by
“gentlemen” who despised the “lower classes” and were, therefore, ruthless in
suppression of any mass discontent. Secondly, the new system of education aimed
at promoting and patronising a new Indian upper class who, in turn, would hail
the blessings of British Raj and cooperate in securing its stability in India.
The indigenous system of education was capable neither of training such administrators
nor of raising such a social elite, not at home anywhere.
The system of education introduced by the British performed more or less as
Macaulay had anticipated. Hindus like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Swami
Vivekananda, Lokmanya Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi, Mahamanã Malaviya, Veer Savarkar,
Sri M.S. Golwalker, to name only the most notable amongst those who escaped its
magic spell and rediscovered their roots, were great souls, strong enough to
survive the heavy dose of a deliberate denationalisation. For the rest, it has
eminently succeeded in sweeping an ancient and highly cultured people off its
feet. Macaulay does deserve the honour of a whole ‘ism’ of which we have not
seen the last yet.
It is not easy to define the doctrine of Macaulayism in as authentic
terms as we could do in the case of Islamism and Christianism. Doctrinally,
Macaulayism is quite diffused. It does not swear by a historical prophet whom
it proclaims as the latest as well as the last and the best. It does not bestow
a monopoly of truth and wisdom on a single book. It does not lay down a single
code of conduct distilled from the doings of a prophet or the sacerdotal
tradition of a church.
Nor is Macaulayism malevolent like Islamism or mischievous like Christianism.
It is rather mild and well-meaning, more like an imperceptible breeze which
blows in silently, fins up the psychological atmosphere, creates a mental mood,
inspires an intellectual attitude, and finally settles down as a cultural
climate-pervasive, protean and ubiquitous
Unlike Islamism and Christianism,
Macaulayism does not employ any meticulously matured methods to propagate or
proliferate itself. It is not out to use a specified section of Indian society
as a vehicle of its virulence. It is not a potent potion like Islamism which
destroys the body of a culture in one fell sweep. It is not subtle like
Christianism which subverts a society surreptitiously. But at the same time, it
is a creeping toxaemia which corrodes the soul of a culture and corrupts a
social system in slow stages. And its target is every section of Indian
society.
Yet, as we survey the spread of its spell over Hindu society, particularly
Hindu intelligentsia, we can spot some of its paralysing processes. The most
prominent are the following five:
1. A sceptical, if not negative, attitude towards
Hindu spirituality, cultural creations and social institutions with solemn airs
of scholarship and superior knowledge. Nothing in Hindu India, past or present,
is to be approved unless recognised and recommended by an appropriate authority
in the West;
2. A positive, if not worshipful, attitude towards
everything in Western society and culture, past as well present, in the name of
progress, reason and science. Nothing from the West is to be rejected unless it
has first been weighed and found wanting by a Western evaluation;
3. An intellectual inclination to compare Hindu
ideals and institutions from the past not with their contemporaneous ideals and
institutions in the West but with what the West has achieved in its recent history-the
19th and the 20th Centuries;
4. A mental mood to judge the West in terms of the
ideals and utopias it proclaims from time to time, while judging the Hindus
with an all too supercilious reference to what prevails in Hindu society and
culture at the present time when the Hindus have hardly emerged from a long
period of struggle against foreign invasions;
5. A psychological propensity to scrutinise,
interpret and evaluate Hindu culture, history, society and spirituality with
the help of concepts and tools of analysis evolved by Western scholarship. It
is never granted that the Hindus too have well-developed concepts and tools of
analysis, derived from their own philosophical foundations, that it would be
more profitable to use these concepts and tools of analysis for a proper
understanding of the Hindu heritage, and that it is less than fair to employ
alien and incompatible methods of evaluation while judging this heritage. If
the Hindus use their own concepts and tools of analysis to process and weigh the
Western heritage, our Macaulayists always throw up their hands and denounce the
exercise as unscientific and irrelevant to the universe of discourse.
The intellectual and cultural
fashions and fads of our Macaulayists change as freely and frequently as the
intellectual and cultural climate in the West. Now it is English
Utilitarianism, now German Idealism, now Russian Nihilism, now French
Positivism or Existentialism, now American Consumerism-whatever be the dominant
trend in the West, it immediately finds its flock among the educated Hindus.
But one thing remains constant. The platform must first be prepared in the West
before it could or should find an audience in India.
And this process of approving, rejecting, judging and justifying which
Macaulayism promotes among its Hindu protagonists does not remain a mere mental
mood or an intellectual inclination or a psychological propensity, that is to
say, a subjective stance on men and matters. It inevitably and very soon
expresses itself in a whole life-style which goes on rejecting and replacing
Hindu mores and manners indiscriminately in favour of those which the West
recommends as the latest and the best. The land from which the new styles of
life are imported may be England as upto the end of the Second World War or the
United States of America as ever since. But it must always be ensured that the
land is located somewhere in the Western hemisphere. “Phoren” is always fine.
The models which are thus imported from the West in ever increasing numbers
need not have any relevance to the concrete conditions obtaining in India such
as her geography, climate, economic resources, technological talent,
administrative ability, etc. If the imported model fails to flourish on the
Indian soil and in India’s socio-economico-cultural conditions, these must be
beaten and forced into as much of a receptive shape as possible, if need be by
a ruthless use of state power. But if the receptacle remains imperfect even
after all these efforts, let the finished product reflect that imperfection. A
model imported from the West and implanted on Indian soil even in half or a
quarter is always preferable to any indigenous design evolved in keeping with
native needs and adapted to local conditions.
Starting from the secular and socialist state and planned economy, travelling
through a casteless society and scientific culture, and arriving at day-to-day
consumption in Hindu homes, we witness the same servile scenario unfolding
itself in an endless endeavour. Our parliamentary institutions, our public and
private enterprises, our infrastructure of power and transport, our medicine,
public health and housing, our education and entertainment, our dress, food,
furniture, crockery, table manners, even the way we gesticulate, grin and smile
have to be carbon copies of what they are currently doing in the West.
Drain-pipes, bell-bottoms, long hair, drooping moustaches; girls dressed up in
jeans; parents being addressed as mom and pa and mummy and daddy; demand for
convent schooling in matrimonial ads: and natives speaking their mother tongues
in affected accents after the English civilian who was helpless to do
otherwise-these are perhaps small and insignificant details which would not
have mattered if the Hindus had retained pride in the more substantial segments
of their cultural heritage. But in the current context of kowtowing before the
West, they are painful portents of a whole culture being forced to feel
inferior and go down the drain.
The Hindu may sometimes need to feel some pride in his ancestral heritage,
particularly when he wants to overcome his sense of inferiority in the presence
of visitors from the West. Macaulayism will gladly permit him that privilege,
provided Kãlidãsa is admired as the Shakespeare of India and Samudragupta certified
as India’s Napoleon. The Hindu is permitted to take pride in that piece of
native literature which some Western critic has lauded. Of course, the Hindu
should read it in its English translation. He is also permitted to praise those
specimens of Hindu architecture, sculpture, painting, music, dance and drama
which some connoisseurs from the West have patronised, preferable in an
exhibition or performance before a Western audience. But he is not permitted to
do this praising and pride-taking in a native language nor in an English which
does not have the accepted accent.
The Hindu who is thus addicted to Macaulayism lives in a world of his own which
has hardly any contact with the traditional Hindu society. He looks forward to
the day when India will become a society like societies in the West where the
rate of growth, the gross national product and the standard of living are the
only criteria of progress. He is tolerant towards religion to the extent that
it remains a matter of private indulgence and does not interfere with the
smooth unfoldment of the socio-political scene. Personally for him, religion is
irrelevant, though some of its rituals and festivities can occasionally add
some colour to life. For the rest, religion is so much obscurantism,
primitive superstition and, in the Indian context at present, a creator of
communal riots.
It should not, therefore, be surprising if this self-forgetful, self-alienated
Hindu who often suffers from an incurable anti-Hindu animus a la Nirad
Chaudhry, turns his back upon Hindu society and culture and becomes indifferent
to their fate. He cannot help having not much patience with the traditional
Hindu who is still attached to his spiritual tradition, who flocks to hallowed
places of pilgrimage, who celebrates his festivals with solemnity, who
regulates his daily life with rituals and sacraments, and who honours his
forefathers, particularly the old saints, sages and heroes. He also cannot help
being indulgent towards those who are hostile to the traditional Hindu and who
heap contempt and ridicule on him, no matter to what community or faith they
belong, though he may not share their own variety of religious or ideological
fanaticism.
The traditional Hindu, on the other hand, wants to live in peace and amity with
all his compatriots. He is normally very tolerant towards his Muslim and
Christian countrymen, and gladly grants them the right to their own way of
worship. He goes further and quite often upholds Muslim and Christian religions
as good as his own. He shows all due respect to Muslim and Christian prophets,
scriptures and saints. He does not try to prevent anyone from freely
discussing, dissecting, even ridiculing his religion and culture. He never
mobilises murderous mobs against those Hindus who do not share his convictions
about his ancestral heritage. He turns a blind eye to his Gods and Goddesses
being turned into cheap models in calendars and commercial advertisements. Nor
does he go out converting people of other faiths to his own.
The traditional Hindu, however, does get stirred when the Muslims and
Christians cross the limits and threaten the unity and integrity of his
country. He does want to retain his majority in his only homeland against
Muslim and Christian attempts to reduce him to a minority by fraudulent mass
conversions. He does believe that Hindu society and culture have a right to
survive and put up some defence in exercise of that right. But the Hindu addict
of Macaulayism stubbornly refuses to concede that right to Hindu society and
culture. He cannot see the need for defence because he cannot see the danger.
And he has many strings to his bow to run down the Hindu who dares defy his
diktat. His attitude can by summarised as follows:
1. To start with, he refuses to recognise any danger
to Hindu society and culture even when irrefutable facts are placed under his
nose. He accuses and denounces as alarmists, communalists, chauvinists and
fascists all those who give a call for self-defence to the Hindus. Better, he
explains away the aggression from other faiths in terms of the aggression which
“Hindu communalism” has committed in the first instance;
2. Next, he paints a pitiful picture of the aggressor
as a poor, deprived and down-trodden minority whom the Hindus refuse to
recognise as equal citizens, constitutionally entitled to a just share in the
national cake;
3. At a later stage, he assumes sanctimonious airs
and assigns to the Hindus an inescapable moral responsibility to rescue their
less privileged brethren from the plight into which the Hindus have pressed
them. In any case, the Hindus stand to lose nothing substantial if they make
some generous gestures to their younger brethren even if the latter are
slightly in the wrong;
4. In the next round, he harangues the Hindus that
any danger to them, if really real and worth worrying about, arises not from an
external aggression against them but from the injustice and oppression in their
own social system which drives away its less privileged sections towards other
social systems based on better premises and promises. Does not Islam promise an
equality of social status because of its great ideal of the brotherhood of men?
Does not Christianity present an example of dedicated social service a la
Mother Teresa?
5. If the Hindus are not convinced by all these arguments
and become bent upon organising some sort of a self-defence, he comes out with
a fool-proof formula for that eventuality as well. The Hindus are advised to
put their own house in order which, in his opinion, is the best defence they
can put up. They should immediately abolish the caste system, start
inter-dining and inter-marrying between the upper and lower castes,
particularly the Harijans, and so on and so forth. It never occurs to him that
social reform is a slow process which takes time to mature and that in the
meanwhile a society is entitled to self-defence in the interests of its sheer
survival;
6. If the Hindus still remain adamant, he tries his
last and best ballistics upon them. He suddenly puts on a spiritual mask and
lovingly appeals to the Hindus in the name of their long tradition of religious
tolerance. How can the followers of Gautama and Gandhi descend to the same
level as Islam and Christianity which have never known religious tolerance? The
Hindus would cease to be Hindus if they also start behaving like followers of
the Semitic faiths which have been conditioned differently due to historical
circumstances of their birth. But he never dares put in one single word of
advice to the followers of Islamism and Christianism to desist from always
having it their own way. He knows it in his bones that such an advice will
immediately bring upon his head the same abusive accusations which Islamism and
Christianism hurl at the Hindus. This is the outcome which he dreads worse than
death. He cannot risk his reputation of being secular and progressive which
Islamism and Christianism confer upon him only so long as he defends their
tirades against the Hindus.
But the stance which suits
Macaulayism best is to sit on the fences and call a plague on both houses. The
search for fairness and justice is somehow always too strenuous for a follower
of Macaulayism. The one thing he loathes from the bottom of his heart is taking
sides in a dispute, even if he is privately convinced as to who is the
aggressor and who the victim of aggression. He views the battle as a
disinterested outsider and finds it somewhat entertaining. The reports and
reviews which some of our eminent journalists have filed in the daily and the
periodical press about happenings in Meenakshipuram and other places where
Islamism is again on the prowl, leaves an unmistakable impression that these
gentlemen are not members of Hindu society but visitors from some outer space
on a temporary sojourn to witness a breed of lesser beings fighting about Tweedledum
and Tweedledee.
An adherent of Macaulayism can well afford to take this neutral, even hostile
stance, away from and above Hindu society, its problems and its struggles,
because, in the last analysis, he no more regards Hindu society as his own or
as his indispensable benefactor. He has already managed to monopolise most of
the political and administrative power in this country and the best jobs in
business and the professions. He has secured a stranglehold on the most
prestigious publicity media. The political upstarts and the neo-rich look up to
him as their paragon and try to mould their sons and daughters in his image.
But what is uppermost in his mind, if not his conscious calculation, is the
plenty of patrons, protectors and pay-masters he has in the West, particularly
the United States of America. The scholars and social scientists over there in
the progressive West approve and applaud whenever he pontificates about India’s
socio-economico-cultural malaise and prescribes the proper occidental cures.
They invite him to international seminars and on well-paid lecture tours to
enlighten Western audiences about the true state of things in this
“unfortunate” country and the rest of the “under-developed” world. He can
travel extensively in the West with all expenses paid on a lavish scale. Even
in this country he alone is entitled to move and establish the right contacts
in social circles frequented by the powerful and the prestigious from the West.
And, God forbid, if the worst comes to the worst and the “fanatics like the RSS
fascists” or the Muslim fundamentalists or the Communist totalitarians take
over this country, he can always find a safe refuge in one Western country or
the other. There are plenty of places which can use his talents to mutual
profit. The salaries they pay and the expense accounts they allow are quite
attractive. The level of living with all those latest gadgets is simply
lovable. In any case, he has all those sons and daughters, nephews and nieces,
cousins and close relatives ensconsed in all those cushy jobs over there-the UN
agencies, the fabulous foundations, the business corporations, the universities
and research institutions.
So, Hindu society with all its hullabaloo of religion and culture be damned.
This society, and not he, stands to lose if he is not permitted to work out his
plans for progress in peace. In any case, this society cannot pay even for his
shoes getting polished properly.
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