S K MITTAL The Role of Meerut College in the Freedom Struggle of India MEERUT COLLEGE was founded in 1892 at a lime when educated Indians had begun to voice their organised opposition to the exploitation of India for colonial and imperial ends. With Macaulay's historic minute which decided the educational issue in favour of the English language in the fond hope of ^anglicising' the world, increasing numbers of the alumni came to imbibe the Western notions of nationalism, democracy and unity.1 Macaulay believed like Cecil Rhodes in the idea of a "world federation' under British hegemony. Sketching his idea of the British empire, Cecil Rhodes visualised a commonwealth of peoples linked together by the bond of English language and culture, serving the cause of peace among men. His idea was: ...the extension of British rule throughout the world, the occupation by British settlers of the entire continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the valley of the Euphrates ... the whole of South Africa... the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament, which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire...3 But the western invasion stimulated and produced such a ferment by the end of the nineteenth century that the Macaulayesque dream of