Thomas Macaulay: The first moderniser of the Indian Sub-Continent?

Macaulay’s ambitions went way further than that. He proceeded to draft a new Penal Code for India which would be, as he described, “… one great and entire work symmetrical in all its parts and pervaded by one spirit”

On this day in 1859 Thomas Babington Macaulay died in London aged 59. He was a British politician, Barrister, historian and reformer. He made no lasting contribution to British society and is seen as no more than a marginal historical figure in his native country.

Macaulay entered British Parliament in 1830. Two years later he became Secretary of the Board of Control of India and in this capacity he spoke frequently in Parliament about India. In 1834 he travelled to India as the first law member of Governor-General’s Council and later in the same year he became the first Chairman of the newly formed Law Commission of India. In 1838 he left India, having resigned his office, never to return again. Yet, his legacy formed in this short period of time still robustly endures and for which he continues to be either loved or loathed throughout the Sub-Continent, especially in India. 
For centuries before Macaulay’s arrival in India, Sanskrit and Persian were used as mode of education while vernacular languages were used only for primary education. Macaulay wasted no time in advocating that Sanskrit and Persian texts had no educational values and only English as a method of education could provide the natives with “useful learning”. He argued that only European languages, especially English, had the necessary vocabulary for teaching modern sciences, philosophy, law and history.
Macaulay formulated his policy proposal in his famous Minute on Indian Education, delivered before the Governor-General’s Council in Kolkata on 2ndFebuary 1935. He claimed to have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit works and came to the conclusion that “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia”. He spelt out his vision to create amongst the natives “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect”.
This echoed his last speech in Parliament before leaving for India, on 10th July 1833, when he talked about “diffusion of European civilisation among the vast population of India”. He explained his idea in simple terms: “Educate them, make them accustomed to our way of life and then they could be independent but would be reliant on English manufactures.” He concluded his speech by saying: “To trade with civilized men is infinitely more profitable than to govern savages.”
Macaulay’s proposal for replacement of the native languages with English found instant favour with Governor-General, William Bentinck. He approved the proposal on 7th March 1835 and it became the corner stone of British Indian educational policy. Macaulay’s biographer G.D Trevelyan describes the magnitude of the event in the following dramatic terms: “A new India was born in 1835. The very foundation of her ancient civilisation began to rock and sway. Pillar after pillar of the edifice came crushing down.” 
Whether or not Macaulay’s  reform of Indian education system nullified the ancient civilisation, it decisively marginalised  Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian influences in education, and instilled European values in a small but significant class of the Sub-Continent’s population who continue, long after the British rule, to advocate the virtues of such values.
Macaulay then turned his attention to reforming the criminal justice system in Indian as the Chairman of the Law Commission of India. Lord Cornwell as Governor-General in 1790 had already modified the prevailing Islamic law of crimes and reduced native control of criminal law by instituting Circuit Courts presided over by English judges. But Macaulay’s ambitions went way further than that. He proceeded to draft a new Penal Code for India which would be, as he described, “… one great and entire work symmetrical in all its parts and pervaded by one spirit.” It is to be noted that Macaulay and a small group of reformers, including Bentham and Mill, had long been advocating codification of criminal law in Britain but they failed to win the democratic debate around it. Led by Macaulay, they decided to impose the codification on India, thinking that if it succeeded there then that would bolster their argument for it at home (which argument, incidentally, Macaulay and is successors have still  not won in Britain).    
Before drafting the Code, Macaulay widely consulted the criminal law of England and drew on Livingston’s Code for Louisiana, the French Penal Code and Scottish law. He also pledged to provide allowances for native conditions and prejudices. He showed tremendous indefatigability in drafting the Code, spending months on several chapters of which he charged the whole plan ten or twelve times until they contained not a single word as they had originally stood. 
He would not be harried, he said, ”Because costs and time were as nothing compared with the importance of the work for welfare of millions and the time during which it would produce good or evil to India.” After three years, on 14th October 1837 Macaulay published his draft Penal Code with this proclamation: “This task was among the most difficult tasks in which the human minds can be employed.”
The draft Penal Code of India remained shelved during Macaulay’s lifetime. The judges in India opposed it vehemently for they saw the Code as designed to deny their creative roles, while the British liberals felt total replacement of native law by a Code based on European law as morally untenable. However, these sentiments were swept away in the aftermath of the mutiny of 1857. As Erik Stokes observed in his book, the English Utilitarians and India: “Following the mutiny reform was to be carried in a spirit of racial conquest.” Accordingly the Penal Code of India came into force on 6th December 1860.
The Code became an overnight British success story in India to a degree that no one could have anticipated. The proof was quite conclusive. The whole subject was studied by English and native students in the universities with great enthusiasm. Its simplicity and clarity created tremendous interests among the Indians of all classes. Within ten years of its implementation books and articles were written in India and Britain hailing the Code and canvassing for its extension into other parts of its Empire and Britain itself.
Today 150 years later, the Penal Code, together with the Criminal Procedure Code of 1872, remains the bedrock of the Criminal Justice System in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. In none of these countries any serious attempts have been made to substantially change the Code or challenge the concept of law that it represents. The general consensus in all three countries is that the Code has stood the test of time.
Meanwhile, Macaulay remains a figure of huge controversy in India and to a lesser extent in Bangladesh and Pakistan. The Indian nationalists, in particular the Hindu nationalists, are among his fiercest of critics. (The Pakistani Talibans also appear to have an opinion on this. In a letter to Malala after she was shot they accused her of being a follower of “Sir TB Macaulay”!) 
The Hindu nationalists accuse Macaulay of doing in four years what the Mughals dared not do in 400 years, namely destroying the whole edifice of an ancient civilisation. Many see their true independence lies in wiping out Macaulay’s legacy all together, and restoring and developing unique Indian values.
The most obvious admirers of Macaulay’s historic missions are the Sub-Continent’s westernised secularists and liberals. However, while they applaud his pioneering modernising efforts, they also acknowledge his dubious motivations behind it all. 
The most vocal group of “Macaulayite” is the Dalit Movement in India. Quoting his 1833 speech in Parliament they argue that he was the first person, British or Indian, to contemplate that India would be independent one day; that was even before Mahatma Gandhi was born. They see him as the father of modern India and the true saviour of low caste Hindus from the slavery of high-caste Brahmins in the name of indigenous civilisation. Indeed, Macaulay’s education reforms opened for the first time the door for education, at least in theory, to all disadvantaged classes in India who had been hitherto denied this exclusive privilege, only opened to the elite castes.
The fact that Macaulay was culturally raciest is now generally accepted by all, including his recent Indian biographer Zareer Masani (who otherwise shows him in a very positive light). Though  Macaulay’s modernisation of Indian education system appears to have served the Sub-Continent well, he was, nevertheless, motivated to do so from a sense of utter superiority over Indians and to ensure the enormous trade benefit that it would bring to his native Britain for decades to come. 
Though his codification of Indian Penal Code has stood the test of time, it was, nevertheless, a blatant experiment. India was cynically and recklessly used as a testing ground for codification, neither knowing nor caring whether it would “bring good or evil” to her people. 
As to the question whether Macaulay was a villain or a hero, the Jury, it seems, is still out!

The author, a British Bangladeshi, is a Barrister and Tribunal Judge in England. [email protected]

Thomas Macaulay: The first moderniser of the Indian Sub-Continent?

Macaulays ambitions went way further than that. He proceeded to draft a new Penal Code for India which would be, as he described, “… one great and entire work symmetrical in all its parts and pervaded by one spirit”

On this day in 1859 Thomas Babington Macaulay died in London aged 59. He was a British politician, Barrister, historian and reformer. He made no lasting contribution to British society and is seen as no more than a marginal historical figure in his native country. Macaulay entered British Parliament in 1830. Two years later he became Secretary of the Board of Control of India and in this capacity he spoke frequently in Parliament about India. In 1834 he travelled to India as the first law member of Governor-Generals Council and later in the same year he became the first Chairman of the newly formed Law Commission of India. In 1838 he left India, having resigned his office, never to return again. Yet, his legacy formed in this short period of time still robustly endures and for which he continues to be either loved or loathed throughout the Sub-Continent, especially in India. For centuries before Macaulays arrival in India, Sanskrit and Persian were used as mode of education while vernacular languages were used only for primary education. Macaulay wasted no time in advocating that Sanskrit and Persian texts had no educational values and only English as a method of education could provide the natives with useful learning. He argued that only European languages, especially English, had the necessary vocabulary for teaching modern sciences, philosophy, law and history. Macaulay formulated his policy proposal in his famous Minute on Indian Education, delivered before the Governor-Generals Council in Kolkata on 2ndFebuary 1935. He claimed to have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit works and came to the conclusion that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. He spelt out his vision to create amongst the natives a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. This echoed his last speech in Parliament before leaving for India, on 10th July 1833, when he talked about diffusion of European civilisation among the vast population of India. He explained his idea in simple terms: Educate them, make them accustomed to our way of life and then they could be independent but would be reliant on English manufactures. He concluded his speech by saying: To trade with civilized men is infinitely more profitable than to govern savages. Macaulays proposal for replacement of the native languages with English found instant favour with Governor-General, William Bentinck. He approved the proposal on 7th March 1835 and it became the corner stone of British Indian educational policy. Macaulays biographer G.D Trevelyan describes the magnitude of the event in the following dramatic terms: A new India was born in 1835. The very foundation of her ancient civilisation began to rock and sway. Pillar after pillar of the edifice came crushing down. Whether or not Macaulays reform of Indian education system nullified the ancient civilisation, it decisively marginalised Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian influences in education, and instilled European values in a small but significant class of the Sub-Continents population who continue, long after the British rule, to advocate the virtues of such values. Macaulay then turned his attention to reforming the criminal justice system in Indian as the Chairman of the Law Commission of India. Lord Cornwell as Governor-General in 1790 had already modified the prevailing Islamic law of crimes and reduced native control of criminal law by instituting Circuit Courts presided over by English judges. But Macaulays ambitions went way further than that. He proceeded to draft a new Penal Code for India which would be, as he described, one great and entire work symmetrical in all its parts and pervaded by one spirit. It is to be noted that Macaulay and a small group of reformers, including Bentham and Mill, had long been advocating codification of criminal law in Britain but they failed to win the democratic debate around it. Led by Macaulay, they decided to impose the codification on India, thinking that if it succeeded there then that would bolster their argument for it at home (which argument, incidentally, Macaulay and is successors have still not won in Britain). Before drafting the Code, Macaulay widely consulted the criminal law of England and drew on Livingstons Code for Louisiana, the French Penal Code and Scottish law. He also pledged to provide allowances for native conditions and prejudices. He showed tremendous indefatigability in drafting the Code, spending months on several chapters of which he charged the whole plan ten or twelve times until they contained not a single word as they had originally stood. He would not be harried, he said, Because costs and time were as nothing compared with the importance of the work for welfare of millions and the time during which it would produce good or evil to India. After three years, on 14th October 1837 Macaulay published his draft Penal Code with this proclamation: This task was among the most difficult tasks in which the human minds can be employed. The draft Penal Code of India remained shelved during Macaulays lifetime. The judges in India opposed it vehemently for they saw the Code as designed to deny their creative roles, while the British liberals felt total replacement of native law by a Code based on European law as morally untenable. However, these sentiments were swept away in the aftermath of the mutiny of 1857. As Erik Stokes observed in his book, the English Utilitarians and India: Following the mutiny reform was to be carried in a spirit of racial conquest. Accordingly the Penal Code of India came into force on 6th December 1860. The Code became an overnight British success story in India to a degree that no one could have anticipated. The proof was quite conclusive. The whole subject was studied by English and native students in the universities with great enthusiasm. Its simplicity and clarity created tremendous interests among the Indians of all classes. Within ten years of its implementation books and articles were written in India and Britain hailing the Code and canvassing for its extension into other parts of its Empire and Britain itself. Today 150 years later, the Penal Code, together with the Criminal Procedure Code of 1872, remains the bedrock of the Criminal Justice System in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. In none of these countries any serious attempts have been made to substantially change the Code or challenge the concept of law that it represents. The general consensus in all three countries is that the Code has stood the test of time. Meanwhile, Macaulay remains a figure of huge controversy in India and to a lesser extent in Bangladesh and Pakistan. The Indian nationalists, in particular the Hindu nationalists, are among his fiercest of critics. (The Pakistani Talibans also appear to have an opinion on this. In a letter to Malala after she was shot they accused her of being a follower of Sir TB Macaulay!) The Hindu nationalists accuse Macaulay of doing in four years what the Mughals dared not do in 400 years, namely destroying the whole edifice of an ancient civilisation. Many see their true independence lies in wiping out Macaulays legacy all together, and restoring and developing unique Indian values. The most obvious admirers of Macaulays historic missions are the Sub-Continents westernised secularists and liberals. However, while they applaud his pioneering modernising efforts, they also acknowledge his dubious motivations behind it all. The most vocal group of Macaulayite is the Dalit Movement in India. Quoting his 1833 speech in Parliament they argue that he was the first person, British or Indian, to contemplate that India would be independent one day; that was even before Mahatma Gandhi was born. They see him as the father of modern India and the true saviour of low caste Hindus from the slavery of high-caste Brahmins in the name of indigenous civilisation. Indeed, Macaulays education reforms opened for the first time the door for education, at least in theory, to all disadvantaged classes in India who had been hitherto denied this exclusive privilege, only opened to the elite castes. The fact that Macaulay was culturally raciest is now generally accepted by all, including his recent Indian biographer Zareer Masani (who otherwise shows him in a very positive light). Though Macaulays modernisation of Indian education system appears to have served the Sub-Continent well, he was, nevertheless, motivated to do so from a sense of utter superiority over Indians and to ensure the enormous trade benefit that it would bring to his native Britain for decades to come. Though his codification of Indian Penal Code has stood the test of time, it was, nevertheless, a blatant experiment. India was cynically and recklessly used as a testing ground for codification, neither knowing nor caring whether it would bring good or evil to her people. As to the question whether Macaulay was a villain or a hero, the Jury, it seems, is still out! The author, a British Bangladeshi, is a Barrister and Tribunal Judge in England. [email protected]