Hyderabad, Dec. 20 -- If we cannot erase the impact of Thomas Babington Macaulay's Minute of 1835, 190 years after what he wrote, then 1,900 years later, too, we will continue to blame just one individual British official for the mental slavery of Indians. Interestingly, we are debating the issue 78 years after Independence, when nobody had stopped us from cancelling out his consequences. This does not mean that I am condoning him. Instead, it is high time to introspect on why we have not succeeded in coming out of this mindset.

What is often overlooked is the reality that Macaulay was just a foot soldier of European imperialism, whose origin can be traced back a couple of centuries before his birth. Western civilisation actually started...