Robert McCrum : The New Yorker

In 1834, Thomas Babington Macaulay, the British historian and statesman, arrived in Madras. He travelled north to Calcutta, then India’s capital, to assume the role of Law Member of the Governor-General’s Council. “We know that India cannot have a free Government,” Macaulay had written to the Scottish philosopher James Mill the year before. “But she can have the next best thing: a firm and impartial despotism.” A few months later, Macaulay wrote a memo on Indian education, which stated, “It is impossible…

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