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Abstract
Using well-written texts to teach English is often viewed as a hangover from the system of education imparted by the British in the Indian subcontinent. Macaulay’s Minute of 1835 is a candid enunciation of the colonial agenda: the goal in view was to “form a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” (Macaulay,430). In the subcontinent today, the English classroom, though free of colonial shackles is a site where a different kind of angst prevails: in some it is clearly the aspiration to belong to the English speaking world, in others the anxiety about not being left behind or being denied the opportunities for employment and upward mobility to which “English speaking” people have easy access. Macaulay observed