Macaulay's Minute of 1835
One document decided that Indian law students would one day study in English. Thomas Babington Macaulay, the first Law Member of the Governor-General's Council, was asked to referee a dull-sounding argument about how to spend an education fund. His answer changed the language of Indian administration, law and education for the next two centuries.
In two minutes
Macaulay's Minute of 1835 decided the Anglicist-Orientalist controversy in favour of English education, using the downward filtration theory to justify educating a small elite rather than the masses directly.
The rest of this chapter
The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of History on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.