by AJAI SHUKLA
Macaulay: Pioneer of India’s Modernisation
by Zareer Masani
Random House India, 2012
Price: Rs 450/-
269 pages
“If you’re an Indian reading this book in English, it’s probably because of Thomas Macaulay,” says a blurb on the cover of the smartly produced volume that is billed as the first general biography of a man who made incalculable contributions to the shaping of modern India. This refers, of course, to Macaulay’s controversial Education Minute, in which he advocated British support for English language education to create “a class (of Indians) who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.”
But enticing the reader with the bait of “Macaulay’s children” does little justice to the rest of his prodigious legacy which Zareer Masani details in his beautifully written portrait of a brilliant, opinionated, patronising, infuriating, yet strangely likeable Macaulay. Just as Napoleon’s military conquests overshadowed his contributions to modern France — The Code Napoleon, the Bank of France, the baccalaureate examination and the departmental system amongst others — so too has the furore over Macaulay’s propagation of English overshadowed his other achievements, like his seminal role in drafting the Indian Penal Code, creating the Indian Civil Service, legislating a free press, and effectively nationalising the East India Company.
Masani’s skill as a historian, which is evident from his marshalling and interpretation of material, is complimented by a simple, readable writing style that draws skilfully on the illustrative anecdote, the telling quote. Given Macaulay’s superlative command of the language, and the trove of speeches, interventions, ripostes, comments, letters and documents, that Masani has mined, he has wisely chosen to use Macaulay’s own words extensively, with Masani’s own presence light and skilful. Through most of the book, the author is barely perceptible; this self-effacement is his greatest triumph.
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(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)