In his recent sixth Ramnath Goenka Lecture, delivered on 17 November 2025 in New Delhi with former President Ram Nath Kovind in attendance, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke on several themes, but the idea that resonated most was his call to overcome mental slavery—a psychological legacy that continues to limit India’s civilisational confidence even decades after Independence.

PM Modi revisited the long-term impact of Macaulay’s education system and argued—much as he did in his lecture—that the colonial project was not merely administrative but civilisational in intent. It was deliberately designed to produce a class of English-educated intermediaries—“Indians in blood but English in taste"—culturally alienated from their own heritage and mentally aligned with the needs of the British Empire. In the process, this system weakened India’s indigenous knowledge networks, disrupted the continuity of its intellectual traditions, and reshaped the Indian mind in ways that distanced it from its own civilisational roots. As Modi remarked, “Macaulay shattered our self-confidence. He infused a sense of inferiority within us."

Introduced formally through Thomas Babington Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education in 1835 and implemented under Governor-General Lord William Bentinck, this system marked a deliberate break from India’s centuries-old educational landscape, which had been sustained by networks of pathshalas, madrasas, gurukulas, and professional knowledge traditions. It rapidly displaced vernacular learning, undermined traditional scholarship, and institutionalised English as the primary language of instruction across higher education and administration.

The Macaulay system portrayed Western knowledge as inherently superior and placed English at the apex of the linguistic hierarchy. This carried the implicit message that Indian languages—and by extension, Indian systems of knowledge, cultural symbols, and ways of life—were outdated or inferior. Over time, such conditioning produced a mindset where many Indians began viewing their own heritage merely as old monuments, relics, or decorative legacies without contemporary relevance. Standards of living, values, tastes, aspirations, and even metrics of success gradually began to mirror Western ideals. It was not simply a shift in language; it was a deeper shift in worldview, one that created a lasting cultural and civilisational alienation that Modi argues the country must now consciously overcome.

PM Modi, however, made an important distinction: rejecting mental slavery does not mean rejecting Western learning. He clarified, “We do not oppose English—we support Indian languages," and urged a new national resolve over the next decade: “Let the next 10 years be our resolve to free ourselves from this colonial mindset." He added that when heritage isn’t........

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