“Those who will speak English in India will soon feel very ashamed.” This was said by India’s Home Minister, Amit Shah, on 19 July, 2025. In his address, he stressed on the importance of India’s native languages, and emphasised that, without these dialects, “we cease to truly be Indian”. He believes, India’s culture, history, and religion, cannot be understood through the use of foreign languages.
Contextualising this remark, 1835 is an important year, when the British established in India. In 1835, Thomas Babington Macaulay delivered his famous speech titled “A Minute On Indian Education”, which led to a U-turn in India’s education policy. Deemed as controversial and ‘flavoured with European superiority’, while peppered with colonial arrogance and making a mockery of Indians’ learning capabilities, Macaulay’s speech outrightly belittled Sanskrit and Arabic traditional learning methods. Despite his contentious words, he is known as the ‘Father of Indian Education’, the man who first introduced the imperial education systems in British India.
As one analyses Macaulay’s speech, the question begs to arise, if recent developments in India’s education system are an attempt to reverse his reforms, or are a mere coincidence.
A University of Cambridge Law graduate, Whig Party Politician, Macauley proposed reforms to the Governor General’s Council of India that the British East India Company should defund vedic education methods of teaching. He argued that the lakhs of rupees should not be spent on the “revival and promotion of Indian literature, in Arabic and Sanskrit”, rather be replaced with a “far more superior” English language. Macaulay asserts that English was intended for the “intellectual improvement of [India].” His proposition went against the pre-existing policies of The Company, which encouraged natives to learn Sanskrit and Arabic and in lieu, the learners were granted stipends by the British.
Macauley asserted that the taxpayer’s money should not be spent on ritual-based knowledge which is unscientific, superstitious and morally wrong. The dialect was “so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them”. He maintained that “all the books written in the Sanskrit language are less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgements used in the preparatory schools in England”. He believed that such books artificially encouraged “absurd history, absurd metaphysics, absurd physics and absurd theology”, and raised a breed of scholars whose education was “utterly useless”.
Post-independence, India’s first educational reforms were established in 1948. In the subsequent six decades, there were multiple reforms and revisions to the education policy. In contemporary times, particularly July 2020, the final version of the NEP (National Education Policy) 2020 draft was released. Amongst numerous changes made to the original draft, one that stood out the most was a “greater emphasis on mother tongue or local vernacular language as the mode of educational instructions till Grade 5”. Anil Sahasrabudhe, the author of the chapter “Reforms in Higher Education” in the book “Making of New India, Transformation under the Modi government” mentioned that “the essence of all these commissions and policies to make education accessible to all, develop moral and ethical values, strengthen social and national integration, modernise the nation, follow the 3-language formula, induce the spirit of scientific enquiry, vocalise education, develop self confidence and support autonomy, innovation and research”.
The recent educational reforms propagate a “rootedness and pride in India, with its rich, diverse, ancient and modern cultural and knowledge systems and traditions”. Its core value is “Pride and Rootedness in India”, whereby students should develop verbal and written communication in vernacular languages. An in-depth understanding of Indian Knowledge Systems by choosing one subject, such as Knowledge of India or Traditions and Customs will be a subtle nod to instill a sense of national pride, inspiration and self esteem.
The educational reforms have incorporated ancient and vedic educational tools such as Pancha Kosha Vikas (Five-Fold Development), Pramanas (sources of valid information), and Panchanadi (Five-Step Learning Process) for the holistic development of students. The Guru-Shishya tradition and textual learning from the Upanishads should be intrinsic to “Bharat’s” education. The NCERT textbooks revision was a major step towards decolonising the Indian curriculum. Recently, the NCERT assigned Hindi names to English textbooks as part of the implementation of NEP 2020. Under this change, Class 1 and 2 English textbooks are titled ‘Mridang’, and Class 3 textbooks are titled ‘Santoor’. Thus, the framework’s vision emphasises the use of the mother tongue, Indian and traditional knowledge systems, and fosters a sense of nationalism and personal dedication to “Bharat”. Systematic efforts are being made to encourage and revive the Hindi and Sanskrit languages. The government proposed making Hindi compulsory in non-Hindi speaking states such as Tamil Nadu.
Recent shifts in Indian linguistics education represent a reversal of Thomas Macaulay’s colonial vision, which dismissed Indian languages like Sanskrit and Arabic as inferior and irrelevant. Where Macaulay sought to replace traditional systems with English-centric education to create a class loyal to colonial rule, current reforms aim to decolonise the curriculum by revalidating classical Indian knowledge systems, promoting multilingualism, and restoring pride in India’s linguistic and cultural heritage. This signals not just a reformation but an ideological reorientation toward linguistic self-respect and educational sovereignty. The current reforms embrace and institutionalise vedic texts and traditions, not as religious dogma, but as sources of scientific and intellectual value, thus reasserting cultural confidence and redefining what constitutes “rational” and “scientific” education on Indian terms.
Macaulay positioned English and British pedagogical methods as superior, using them to undermine and replace India’s indigenous systems, thereby aligning education with colonial interests. In contrast, the NEP’s vision reclaims education as a means of national transformation, rooting it in Indian ethos and traditions to create an inclusive, high-quality system aimed at global leadership, not through imitation, but through cultural authenticity and intellectual self-reliance.
Reflecting on the last 150 years, evidently, the merits and demerits of India’s education system is a direct result of Macaulay’s education reforms. Thus, are recent NEP changes an effort to bring back “Bharat’s” long-lost linguistic glory, or is it a mere coincidence that their ideological convictions stand in stark antithesis to the ethos underpinning Macaulay’s reforms?
Tisha Tiwari is a grade-12 student at The British School, New Delhi. She is passionate about the study of Modern Indian History and its relevance today. Her areas of research include the Saffronisation of Indian Education, the Indian Independence struggle, women in Indian history and the conservation of Indian heritage sites.
