Lord Macaulay’s Minute: UPSC Daily Important Topic | 5 March 2023

Lord Macaulay’s Minute

• The famous Lord Macaulay’s Minute settled the row in favour of Anglicists— the limited government resources were to be devoted to the teaching of Western sciences a lone literature through the medium of English language alone.

• Lord Macaulay held the view that “Indian learning was inferior to European learning”.

• The British planned to educate a small section of upper and middle classes, thus creating a class “Indian in blood and colour but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect” who would act as interpreters between the government and masses and would enrich the vernaculars by which knowledge of Western sciences and literature would reach the masses . This was called the ‘downward filtration theory’.