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The English colonial perspective is revealed in the famous
Minute on Indian Education, presented in 1835 by Thomas Babington Macaulay. There was a debate over how or if Indians should be educated in the traditional literature of England. Macaulay believed in educating the Indians with English because their native dialects were '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.' Macaulay explained that
'What the Greek and Latin were to the contemporaries of More and Ascham, our tongue is to the people of India. The literature of England is now more valuable than that of classical antiquity.' In perhaps the most famous part of the Minute, he stated
his intent for English education in India, to 'form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.' These people were to then aid in governing and civilizing the natives of India, in order that they would conform to British rule. A good representation of British colonial ideology in literature is in the novel Kim, by Rudyard Kipling.
Colonial & Postcolonial Literary Dialogues: Text Page
