The Roots of English Language Hegemony

For this blog, I’m going back to 1835 British India. For people who’ve ever wondered why English has become the defacto language-of-the- world-you-are-expected-to-know, here is the sort of thinking that enabled that development. Sir Thomas Macaulay was appointed President of the Indian Committee of Public Instruction in 1835 by the liberal colonial administration of Governor General Lord Bentinck. At that time there were two factions in British colonial administration the Orientalists–who looked on South-Asian culture with a sort of condescending respect even though they misunderstood it all the time–and the liberal reformists–who wanted to bring Indian culture out of the “dark ages” and teach western learning.  Macaulay is definitely from the latter. In his ‘Minute on Indian Education’ of 1835 he denounces the teaching of Sanskrit and Arabic in Indian education and promotes English and European culture–obviously with the attitude that European culture is superior. Actually the commonly held view by both Orientalists and reformers was that many of the nonwhite areas of the world–Egypt, China, India, Persia–were once “great” cultures but had dwindled to inferior cesspools of backwater superstition.

However, Macaulay takes this view one step further in proclaiming many times that Arabic and Sanskrit languages and literature do not hold anything that was even previously “great.” To him, any learning of these languages is a waste of time because there is no science or rational thought within the literature. He goes so far as to say, “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.” It is very easy for us to dismiss Macaulay, since he is so blatantly xenophobic, but his thoughts reek of a similar attitude found today in the West. It’s the attitude that the West is built on Science. That our philosophies, political and otherwise, are built on some sort of inherent truth and reason while other cultures are built on superstitious religion. Of course, this is a load of poppycock. One doesn’t need to look far to find instances of Western prejudice that resulted in philosophies, politics, and science that were later proven to be false when the trends changed.

 Macaulay also goes beyond this outlandish claim of superiority and argues for the practical uses of teaching Indians English. He does have a point that the language of the ruling class in the East was English so if an Indian wanted to move up in society, learning English would be the most helpful. But of course why exactly was that? Because the British dominated the East during this time period. There just seems to be something fishy about a people going into an area, taking it over, and then saying, “hmmmm, it would be more practical for them to learn English since we took the place over and refuse to learn their language…” Oh well. I suppose this is all water under the bridge. Macaulay does make a very accurate prediction that as the language of the ruling class of many areas of the world, English would “likely become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the East.” He was right. Of course they needed a little help from America to make this happen.