Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent denunciation of the “Macaulay mindset”— first at the Ramnath Goenka Lecture and then at the Dharma Dhwaj unfurling in Ayodhya — has reignited a debate about the place of English in India. The timing is apt: As India strides into global prominence, it must reckon with the legacy of a language that was once imposed to subjugate, but has since been appropriated to liberate, challenge, and even charm.

The irony is delicious. Thomas Babington Macaulay, in his infamous 1835 Minute on Indian Education, proposed the creation of “a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect”. His goal was not cultural upliftment but colonial convenience — a cadre of clerks and collaborators who would serve th

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