Macaulay's Confessions

One of the people who has benefited the most from Macaulay’s reforms recently sent an email, part of a larger email chain that now generally implies some travesty, which quoted Macaulay as having spoken the following (on Feb 2nd, 1835 in India, the same day his gave his Minute on Education in Britain) –

I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation?

Of course, Lord Macaulay never said such a thing. While we all want glorious histories, the past generally isn't as glorious. Neither are confessions of colonial rapacity generally so naked.

Suggestion: For greater imagined glories, one must go further back than just 1835, when the Mughals had had their way (as Hindus may point out), writing had been invented, into the mists of more obscure pre-history. How about the crowning glories of Lord Rama and his return on an airplane like ‘pushpak’ vahan?