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Strife Series: Colonial Legacies – Macaulayism – a colonial legacy that lingers long in India

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Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay. Public Domain Photo.

In a country as diverse as India would anyone imagine that many Indians feel comfortable writing in English rather than writing in their native language/ mother tongue. How did the language English spread its influence in this heavily populated country? To know the answer to this we need to start from the 1600s when the British East India Company entered the subcontinent via Surat (located in the west of India) as spice traders.[1] The company were awarded permission from the Mughal rulers in the north and the Vijayanagara Gadariya rulers in the south to establish factories. Slowly, but steadily, the company realized the fortunes the subcontinent held and used the cracks among the Indian princes by the 1750s to evolve from a trading company into a ruling company. The East India Company grew tremendously powerful, but due to the Sepoy’s mutiny (1857-1858), the company finally dissolved, and the British Crown took complete control over the subcontinent.[2]

The British Raj gave India “gifts” such as liberalism, the rule of law, cricket, incipient democracy, and a well-knit railway system. Moreover, the welding together of 17 provinces and 562 princely states (except partition)[3] enabled India to become the vast united country that it is today. Also, let us not forget about the architectural traces left behind by the Raj, such as the marvellous high courts, government buildings, libraries, universities, and the many splendours of New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Madras.[4]

The above indeed represent the country’s colonial legacy, yet the most deliberate gift given to India by the British Raj (which most people undermine), is the English language. Who we should give credit to is Mr. Thomas Babington or Lord Macaulay, the man who brought the English language and British education to India in the 1830s.[5] He wrote in the Minute that “We must do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and intellect.”[6]

Thanks to him, the East India Company and the British government invested in the provision of English language education and the promotion of ‘European learning’ in the region.[7] Nevertheless, the primary purpose behind teaching the language to a handful of middlemen (their local assistants/workers) was that conveying the orders of the British Raj to their colonial subjects would be made easier with the presence of these intermediaries. Without a doubt, it can be said that the British had no plans to provide language education to the enormous population of India, nor was the Raj willing to spend its money on ‘the Indians or the dogs.’[8] It is the Indians who seized the opportunity to learn the English language and turned it into an apparatus for their own independence, that is, by using it to express nationalist sentiments against the Raj.

Within a few years after Independence, 15th August 1947, the Constitution of India came into effect on 26th January 1950.  The Constitution of India represents the longest handwritten constitution ever, with 25 parts containing 448 articles and 12 schedules, and was originally written down both in English and Hindi.[9] The Indian Constituent Assembly’s usage of English for writing the constitution can be seen as a mark of the growing importance of this language in the subcontinent.

With around seven decades of independence, India claims to be the world’s second-largest English-speaking country.[10] In a globalized economy, this represents an advantage and helps in social mobility. However, every coin has two sides; parents are under tremendous pressure to earn enough money to send their children to an ‘English medium labelled school’ instead of the state-sponsored or the central government schools, as the teaching in these schools is not done in English (considered as a waste of government resources). Moreover, children are pressurised by parents to enter these ‘English medium schools’ and must go through stressful interviews and exams. Whilst it can be considered problematic that children are taught English before their native language or mother tongue, it is understandable that parents want their children to get a decent job. In a globalized world, English is a must. This leads to English being regarded as the language of status and achievement in India (to the extent where middle-class and higher-class families see English as a basic requirement for the bride and the groom, in a society where around 90 per cent of the marriages are arranged).[11] This perpetuates another layer of societal hierarchy, internalized oppression, and control that the country can do without. Similarly, the Indian government is unable to abolish the caste system as it is deeply embedded in the grassroots of Indian society.

India has 22 scheduled languages recognized by its Constitution (one of which is Hindi – a language spoken by the majority of the Indian population) and thousands of other languages with rich cultural heritage. However, with the rising dominance of English, an imminent conflict over which language should be considered the national language of India can be expected sometime in the future. The British colonization did not end when the British flag went down, and the Indian flag went up, as the effects of colonization linger in the psychological realm, where self and identity (mother tongues) become subject to a second form of colonization,[12] all thanks to Lord Macaulay.

[1] When and why did the British first choose to invade India? August 26, 2019.

[2] The National Archives, CASE STUDY 4: BACKGROUND LIVING IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE: INDIA.

[3] Hemant Sigh, History and date of formation of Indian states since 1947, 6 August 2019.

[4] DAVID GILMOUR, HOW MODERN INDIA WAS BUILT ON THE LEGACY OF BRITISH INSTITUTIONS, JANUARY 30, 2019.

[5] A minute to acknowledge the day when India was ‘educated’ by Macaulay, September 17, 2019.

[6] Shashi Tharoor, ‘But what about the railways …?’ ​​The myth of Britain’s gifts to India, March 8, 2017.

[7] A minute to acknowledge the day when India was ‘educated’ by Macaulay, September 17, 2019.

[8] Gajendra Singh, No dogs, no Indians: 70 years after partition, the legacy of British colonialism endures, August 15, 2017.

[9] Hemant Sigh, Constitution of India: Parts, Schedules & Articles- All In A Glance, 25 November 2021.

[10] Zareer Masani, English or Hinglish – which will India choose?, 27 November 2012.

[11] What the data tells us about love and marriage in India, 8 December 2021.

[12] Sunil Bhatia, HOW ENGLISH CREATES A NEW CASTE SYSTEM IN INDIA, JUN 14, 2017.

Strife Series: Colonial legacies and the shaping of political institutions in Greater South Asia: from decolonisation to modern-day – Introduction

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India-Pakistan Border Wagha. Photo Credit: Koshy Koshy, licensed under Creative Commons.

Greater South Asia as seen on maps today would have been unrecognisable to the European colonial powers which dominated the region from the 15th century up until decolonisation in the mid-20th century. Usually understood to be comprised of 9 states, including India, Myanmar, and Afghanistan, South Asia is a diverse and complex region made up of different cultures, languages and ethnicities. It is pertinent to consider why these 9 states have been grouped as a region; why should these countries, created relatively recently, go together? An obvious answer is geography—they are all situated in one geographical area of the world. But then, where should we draw the boundary for South Asia? Sometimes Afghanistan is included in South Asia and sometimes it is not. The answer lies in the shared regional colonial histories. Though each country has a unique character and story to tell, the impact of colonialism has touched the region as a whole and has left shared colonial legacies, though these vary in similarity between states. Despite the fact that Afghanistan was never directly colonised and thus was deemed a ‘Graveyard of Empires,’ Afghanistan has colonial legacies stemming from contested borders with the British Raj and thus should be included under the South Asian umbrella. In fact, the process of forming the regional idea of South Asia can be traced back to British rule and is itself a colonial legacy. The vast British empire in South Asia was made up of the Raj, now India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and their colony in Burma, now Myanmar, but this area was all administrated by one office and was one unit of governance. Therefore, it seems fitting to look back to the colonial history of South Asia to make some sense of the region as it is today.

Great Britain was undoubtedly the most significant colonial power shaping the region, though competition with other great powers including France and Russia also made an impact. Since the decolonisation of South Asia, government institutions left behind by the British, in varying states of effectiveness, have been consolidated or created entirely anew. Borders have shifted, with East Pakistan becoming the entirely new nation of Bangladesh following the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War. Furthermore, insurgencies and ethnic cleansing have become a familiar plague within some South Asian nations. The impacts of colonial legacies on the Greater South Asia region are deep and pervasive still.

Given the importance of India within the British Empire, the most distinctive and divisive colonial legacy is that of partition, whereby India and Pakistan were split along religious lines in 1947. This event brought unimaginable suffering and loss of life, with the resounding effects still felt today. Beyond this most obvious legacy of colonial rule, other remnants, including the English Language, the impacts of British ‘divide and conquer,’ and ‘othering’ policies, have been left behind, which still greatly influence South Asia today. Britain also ruled Burma, now Myanmar, until 1948, and made unsuccessful attempts to conquer Afghanistan. This series will focus especially upon these three nations to explore the ways in which this legacy of colonialism has impacted the politics and political institutions in Greater South Asia.

Strife Series: Arctic Maritime Security – Introduction

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The USS Connecticut breaks though the ice March 9, 2018 in support of Ice Exercise 2018. Source: United States Navy, in the public domain.

The Arctic is a region of enduring geopolitical importance that is receiving more and more attention. Climate change is literally changing the map in the Arctic as seasonal sea ice continues to recede. This has the potential to significantly change the region by opening up new sea routes through Northern Canada or along Russia’s Northern coast. It will also open up new areas to resource extraction from near virgin Arctic fisheries to some of the world’s largest untapped oil and natural reserves. Melting sea ice also emphasizes the region’s unique maritime character, the Arctic is an ocean – not a continental landmass, and decreasing ice will only increase it’s maritime character. The changing climate will also cause problems in the Arctic littoral as the changes in seasonal weather patterns stress wildlife populations and threaten local and indigenous communities through rapid erosion and permafrost melt.

Against the backdrop of climate change, geopolitical tensions in the Arctic are also rising. In their essay, Lauren Chin and Andro Mathewson detail the increasing tension and “securitization” of interests in the Arctic. Over the last decade Russia has been the chief driver or militarization in the Arctic. Russia’s years-long military modernization has reopened “50 previously closed, Soviet-era military posts,” established an Arctic Strategic Command, and conducted repeated exercises with modernized military equipment. In her essay, Alice Staikowski explains how resource competition in the Arctic may continue to drive competition, especially between Russia and the West.

At the same time, China has also expressed a strong desire to protect its perceived interests in the Arctic and declared itself as a “near Arctic state,” despite its geographic distance and nearly non-existent historical ties to the region. How China and Russia negotiate their relationship in the Arctic will play a key part in defining the future of the region. In her essay Henny Lie-Skarpholt talks about Chinese influence in the Arctic. One particular facet of competition in the Arctic is icebreaking fleets, which are critical enablers for trade, resource extraction and even military operations in the High North. In his essay Dylan Phillips-Levine argues that the US Navy needs to invest in its own fleet of ice breakers which will be even more important if sea routes through Russian and Canadian waters gain importance.

It’s also important to recognize that while tensions in the Arctic are rising, they are not new. The were important naval actions fought in the Arctic during the Second World War and it was a key front during the Cold War, partly because the shortest route between the US and the USSR for missiles and bombers was over the North Pole. In his essay, Timothy Choi discusses the history of the Royal Danish Navy in Arctic security, an overlooked but critical contribution.

The ongoing war in Ukraine, which started after these essays were written, will have important but still unknown impacts on the Arctic as well. Russia’s only border with the United States falls just South of the Arctic Circle in the Pacific, and one of NATO’s borders with Russia, between Norway and Russia, falls within the Arctic Circle so increased military tensions between Russia and the alliance are likely to play out in the Arctic. But it’s also possible that the war in Ukraine will draw in Russian forces from across the country and could actually diminish Russian military posture in the Arctic. Ships from Russia’s Northern Fleet were reportedly part of the buildup to war in Ukraine.

Taken together, this series of short essays provides a variety of perspectives on the maritime security in the High North. The authors, all from different backgrounds, provide valuable commentary and analysis that can be a jumping off point or introduction to a deeper investigation of maritime security in the Arctic.

Series on Women and Children’s Health in Conflict: Introduction

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MedGlobal Volunteer Performs Surgery at Al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip. Photo credit: MedGlobal, licensed under Creative Commons.

While conflict’s direct effects – deaths and injuries – often take the limelight, its indirect effects, including population displacement, infrastructure destruction and human insecurity commonly cause prolonged suffering that is greatly exacerbated by the length of conflict and persists long after direct hostilities cease. Though men tend to be affected more by the direct effects of a conflict, women and children, often held to be ‘vulnerable’ in context of conflict, are at much greater risk of suffering its indirect effects.[1]

This series seeks to promote the accounts of healthcare professionals who have first-hand experience dealing with medical and health issues related to women and children in protracted conflicts in the Eastern Mediterranean region. In doing so, it addresses a gap often found in scholarship of health in conflict seen from a top-down perspective, and instead foregrounds the micro-level picture. The four pieces included in the series, therefore, highlight issues which are neither routinely discussed nor prioritized.

The first article discusses maternal, sexual, and reproductive health in the Gaza Strip, and the differential levels of healthcare accessible dependent upon whether an attack is ongoing or has recently ended. In the second piece, the author shares her experience working in refugee camps in Jordan, where gender-based violence and discrimination against women are prevalent. The third article sheds light on child development in Gaza and how it is exacerbated by continual psychological trauma inflicted because of the protracted conflict and blockade. The final piece describes difficulties children with craniofacial anomalies and their families experience in accessing the care their children need in the midst of conflict and political disputes.

Publication Schedule

Part I: Maternal and Reproductive Health in the Gaza Strip: the impact of years of blockade and conflict by Maisara Alrayyes

Part II: The Voice of Gender: Shedding Light on the Impact of Emergencies and Armed Conflicts on the Health and Safety of Women and Girls by Asmaa Essa

Part III: The hidden face of the blockade and wars: Palestinian children with psychological wounds by Bahzad Alakhras

Part IV: Children with craniofacial anomalies in the Gaza Strip: treatment options and access to care by Wafaa Alzaanin

[1] Craig, Sophia. “Effects of Conflict on Societies.” In Conflict and Health, 14–24. Berkshire: McGraw-Hill Education, 2012.

Series on Memory, History and Power: Introduction

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The fallen Columbus after a group led by American Indian Movement members tore it down in Minnesota, 2020 | Photo by Tony Webster, used under Creative Commons.

Over the last years, we have seen disputes over statues and monuments all over the world. Memorials dedicated to military achievements, war heroes, colonialists and slave traders have been at the centre of debates on the deconstruction of history and the ways some events and national groups have been inscribed in the public space.  In 2019, for example, we saw Santiago, the capital of Chile, being occupied by protesters waving the flag of the indigenous Mapuche people. One particular image went viral all around the world: in the photo, dozens of protesters climb a military monument in the centre of Santiago and at the top of the statue, a man raises the Mapuche’s flag, a people that has been under attack in Chile since the arrival of Spanish colonizers, in the 16th century. In South Africa, the campaign Rhodes Must Fall led to the removal of a statue in honour of British imperialist Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town. The withdraw flared up a discussion regarding what to do with other monuments to Rhodes around the country. In 2020, we saw similar scenes being repeated throughout Europe, United States and Latin America, when statues of slave trader Edward Colston, Columbus, Belgian King Leopold II and Portuguese Jesuit missionary Father António Vieira, just to name a few, woke up either, at the bottom of a river, painted in red, headless or wearing signs saying: ‘decolonize’. Such movements intended to problematise what is remembered in the public sphere and how those monuments relate to the way we conceive a country’s history or the history of colonialism and slavery.

‘There is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism’[i], writes Walter Benjamin on his 7th thesis on the philosophy of History. For some, statues such as those of Colston, Rhodes and Vieira are symbols of civilisation. For many others, they are memories of massacres and genocides, symbols of barbarism. Monuments as, for example, the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, built in the memory of the infant Henry the Navigator – considered the patron of the 16th century Portuguese colonial expansion – represent the memory of the victors, they anchor history the way power wants it seen. That is the reason why, if we take Benjamin’s critique of history as a guide, we need to deconstruct such monuments built by hegemonic historical narratives. And what we have been seeing over recent years throughout the world are precisely such moments of such deconstruction.

That is to say that the debate over monuments and statues should be considered under a broader scope of history, memory and dynamics of power intertwined in both phenomena. In a recent article in the French newspaper Le Libération, Paul B. Preciado described statues as ‘prosthesis of historic memory that remind us the lives “that matter”’. They inscribe on public space the bodies that deserve to be immortalized in stone and metal. ‘Public sculptures’, he writes, ‘do not represent the people, they build it: they depict a national pure body and determine an ideal of colonial and sexual citizenship’. To critique history as celebrated by statues is, then, to critique the construction of the nation state itself. This series analyses both how events and characters are chosen to be marked in a city or a country’s landscape, and how art might disrupt national and imperial ideals, functioning sometimes as a sort of counter-memory.

Series Publication Schedule

  • Part I: Portugal: the return of the colonial war, by Miguel Cardina
  • Part II: Which door to which city? The Vraca Memorial Park and anti-fascism legacy in Sarajevo, by Renata Summa
  • Part III: Indigenous Uruguay: monuments, histories and memories, by Henrique Gasperin
  • Part IV: The Red Atlantic: modernity and markers of discrimination, by Victor Coutinho Lage
  • Part V: The Memory Sewing: alternative history(ies) of the past and present, by Mariana Caldas

[i] Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ in Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), p. 256.