A book that has truly enlightened: most of us have been brought up to believe that Macaulay was an arch-imperialist who wanted to turn Indians into dull brown copies of the British in order to make them office drudges for the colonial government. But the truth is more or less the opposite, as he, along with a few other British thinkers and administrators (most of them Scottish), actually wanted to impart modern education to the people of all castes and classes, so that they could be better equipped tp participate in governance. The elitist Britishers occupying positions of power mostly worked vigorously against this agenda, on the grounds that the Indian masses were least interested in devoting resources to a liberal education with English and modern subjects, and that they should be limited to the traditional madrasa and vernacular pathashalas. It is one of the ironies of our times that a great and broad-minded reformist and progressive like Macaulay has been relegated to the ranks of the devils in the popular historiography of the British Raj. The author has dug out (and listed) a whole raft of reports and documents from those times, that will be of utmost usefulness to anybody who wishes to understand how we got here. ( )