MACAULAY’S CHILDREN
Khaliqur Rahman
I received an invaluable mail-forward titled RARE PHOTOGRAPHS. You need to see them for yourself to realise their value. They are simply priceless! There’s also a typed text of what Macaulay said in his address to the British Parliament on 2 Feb 1835. Here it is:
“ I have travelled the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief, such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such high caliber (sic), that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.”
We have celebrated 63 Republic Days and if we care to take a stock of our progress in the field of Education, we will notice with amazement how successful Macaulay’s plans have been!
It seems we somehow manage to do difficult and complex things brilliantly but fail miserably to do the simple things. Look at our IITs and IIMs and look at our primary schools! Look at the way how brilliantly the first IPL was organized and conducted. Look at the way the Commonwealth Games were made to be a spectacle of brilliance and a message to the rest of the world of our progress and well being. And then, look at the way we conduct our State level games, Ranji Trophy and so on. Look at the way we do our day to day work in schools, colleges and universities, in our offices, in our courts and hospitals.
It seems – why seems – it’s a reality we’ve ignored and forgotten Gandhi’s Nayee Taleem that aimed at an all round development of our children – their physical, mental and spiritual development. We’ve overlooked many of our leaders like Rajagopalachari and other eminent educationists like Radhakrishnan and Maulana Azad and Zakir Hussain who among other things had suggested examination reforms. They had warned against degree oriented pursuit in education.
Socio-economic constraints in early days, lack of political will and lackadaisical approach on our part, and above all, sloth combined dangerously but definitively over all our Independent decades and Macaulay’s children are there to see and multiply! His aim was to produce Babus so that they served the English Sahibs better having had some disciplining in English Literature. The Babu producing Karkhana still produces Babus, even of inferior quality, because the Karkhana like any other old one cannot maintain the quality. These Babus then are converted into copper plated, silver plated, gold plated and platinum plated products to become teachers, lawyers, engineers bureaucrats. Inside them the reality remains that of a Babu!
We’ve succeeded in developing our Agriculture, our Engineering and Technology and Defence Forces. We have world class engineers and doctors, technocrats, bureaucrats, teachers and leaders for external consumption. But inside, have a look at their classes. At work, all Babus! Where are the human beings?
In this Babudom of ours, look at the state of our present day culture, religion and spirituality, despite Murari Bapu, Maulana Waheeduddin and Shri Shri Ravi Shankar, not to forget Jaggi Vasudev of Spiritual Engineering and many others in the field like Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare.
But I have hopes of a Glorious Plant replacing Macaulay’s Karkana to produce human engineers!
