Liked on YouTube: Lord Macaulay In India - In His Own Words (Video One)

Lord Macaulay In India - In His Own Words (Video One)
The Education Of The Natives. Pt One I have noticed, quite recently, that there is a serious attempt in some quarters to deliberately misrepresent the intentions of Macaulay in regards to his Indian reforms. In this series of 5 videos I shall read out what Macaulay actually said about contentious issues like education. My source for this is the two volume book " Life And Letters Of Lord Macaulay" by G.O. Trevelyan which quotes him copiously on important matters. Some background to the man may be needed to contextualize his attitudes here. His father, Zachary Macaulay, was one of the members of the "Clapham Sect" who campaigned ceaselessly for the abolition of slavery. He even went aboard a slave ship to find out for himself what conditions were like for the occupants. Macaulay grew up surrounded by all this and the influence of his father rubbed off on him as well. Prior to going to India, Macaulay, in England, had helped pass the Catholic Emancipation Act, had passed laws helping Jews in England acquire a fairer social status and had threatened to quit as an MP should the abolition of slavery bill be passed on condition that slaves should remain as workers for their masters for some 12 years after abolition. He managed to get the time reduced to seven years before he was satisfied. He was elected as President of the Indian board because he had no commercial interests in the post and he accepted because he felt it would mean he could support his elderly father and the rest of his extended family far better than his journalism. If you listen carefully to what he is actually saying here about Indian culture, he is not dismissing it, per se, but rather like how contemporary atheism views organized faith establishments, he wants to set the natives of India on good solid scientific and economic grounds rather than old wives tales about ancient kings who lived for 3000 years. Far from keeping Indians as mindless slaves of Empire, his dream was to give them the tools to elevate themselves on the world's stage. In England his position was greeted with horror and people scolding him for effectively arming the natives against their rule. Lord Macaulay was a very wise and humane man and, hopefully, by putting what he actually said about India and did for the native population in terms of extending their civil rights and educational horizons, into the public domain, the idea that he was simply some agent of empire come to keep the natives in their place will fade away. This text can be found in "Life And Letters Of Lord Macaulay"-Trevelyan Vol.1 pages 446-449.
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