Imperial Technology and 'Native' Agency

A Social History of Railways in Colonial India, 1850-1920

Aparajita Mukhopadhyay

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315397085
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book explores the impact of railways on colonial Indian society from the commencement of railway operations in the mid-nineteenth to the early decades of the twentieth century.

The book represents a historiographical departure. Using new archival evidence as well as travelogues written by Indian railway travellers in Bengali and Hindi, this book suggests that the impact of railways on colonial Indian society were more heterogeneous and complex than anticipated either by India's colonial railway builders or currently assumed by post-colonial scholars.

At a related level, the book argues that this complex outcome of the impact of railways on colonial Indian society was a product of the interaction between the colonial context of technology transfer and the Indian railway passengers who mediated this process at an everyday level. In other words, this book claims that the colonised 'natives' were not bystanders in this process of imposition of an imperial technology from above. On the contrary, Indians, both as railway passengers and otherwise influenced the nature and the direction of the impact of an oft-celebrated 'tool of Empire'.

The historiographical departures suggested in the book are based on examining railway spaces as social spaces – a methodological index influenced by Henri Lefebvre's idea of social spaces as means of control, domination and power.

1 On time?

Railway time and travel-discipline in colonial India

The opening scene of ‘Mahapurush’, directed by Satyajit Ray, is set on a railway platform.¹ Here, the god-man birinchi baba is receiving homage from a motley crowd of devotees who have gathered at the railway station to bid adieu to him. Interestingly, the scheduled departure time of the train is clearly overdue as is evident from the anxious glances of the guard and the engine drivers. But despite their anxiety, the railway staff wait for the ‘signal’ (pun intended) from the godman. Eventually, the train departs, but only after receiving a nod from birinchi baba. The awaiting guard too, receives his share of religious merit in the form of a dried petal thrown at him by the god-man from the already moving carriage.

The scene is thought provoking on many levels. Evidently, it is a scathing criticism of the hold of holy men on mass psyche, especially when it is eventually revealed that the man in question was a charlatan. But for our purposes, the scene is instructive because of the ways in which it challenges the notion of what I call ‘travel-discipline’, arguably imposed by railway operations in colonial India.² Additionally, the scene questions the nature and degree of time discipline imposed and adhered to by railways in colonial India.³ If trains failed or struggled to adhere to the timetables, then by implication, time discipline, arguably the most significant aspect of the railway-induced travel-discipline, also faltered. Evidently, as the scene reveals, there was a gap between the realities of everyday railway operations and the claims of the colonial state. Trains ran late – for a variety of reasons, including the whims and wishes of a ‘native’ god-man. Incidentally, the ability of birinchi baba to manipulate the train schedule is also suggestive of the opportunities ‘native’ railway users have to influence or direct railway traveldiscipline. The scene therefore, offers a convenient entry point to ask critical questions about railway-induced travel and time-discipline in colonial India and its implications on Indian society, the main subject of the chapter.

Keeping time: railway timetables and travel-discipline

Punctuality, so wanting in our native friends, will be taught more effectively by the rail than by the schoolmaster, the train waits for no one, as many a native has already found to his cost.⁴

Railway timetables has been widely acknowledged as an instrument of imposing modern time discipline.⁵ Additionally, debates about the imposition of time discipline have also underlined the ways in which the nineteenth-century discourse on the subject insinuates a more fundamental difference between colonising Europe and colonised non-Europe than is apparent. Broadly speaking, for post-Enlightenment European imperialists and intellectuals the absence of modern time sense among inhabitants of non-Europe was veritable proof that the latter inhabited a different time, more primitive and inferior than their own.⁶ India too, was not immune from such perceptions of inferiority and difference. If anything, the adherence to a cyclical, religious notion of time by a vast majority of the Indian population exacerbated colonial administrators’ belief in India’s inferiority on the civilisational scale.⁷ Furthermore, the existence of religious or seasonal notions of time by which Indian lives were regulated, were often conveniently ignored to a bid to claim that Indians lived in a sort of timeless existence.

But the logic of colonial control and the rhetoric of imperial beneficence also demanded a simultaneous underscoring of difference while claiming to bestow civilisational progress on the colonised by imposing a modern sense of time and punctuality.⁸ As such, efforts were made to identify the best ways to impart ‘value of time’ to ‘natives’. Railways, or more specifically, railway timetables offered a possible solution. Colonial administrators and railway promoters enthusiastically asserted that railway timetables were to be an effective tutor of punctuality, even more than either plantation or factory managers’ whips and whistles. It is certainly surprising that railway timetables were invested with such transformative possibilities as anyone related with the railway enterprise in the mid-nineteenth century India did not expect ‘natives’ to take to railways in any significant manner.⁹ Perhaps, as noted in the introduction, this belief in the power of steam was a reflection of the acceptance of the wider nineteenth-century credo of the transformative ability of technologies. Or it may well have been the gap that usually separates colonial rhetoric from reality. Whatever may be the source of such convictions; there is little doubt that the ‘imperious whistle of trains’ was expected to teach Indians punctuality, as it has done to ‘common folks’ in England.¹⁰ Railway timetables, in other words, were to discipline Indians by instilling a sense of time and punctuality.

Interestingly, this image of railways as an efficient tool of imposing modern time discipline through an inflexible travel discipline continues to be largely accepted by post-colonial scholars. This however, does not imply a concurrence with the assumptions that underpinned the discourse about imposition of time discipline in colonial India. Quite the contrary, works of Sumit Sarkar and, more recently, that of Ritika Prasad have successfully challenged the seeming beneficence of the colonial rhetoric of imposing time-discipline in India.¹¹ Of these, Prasad’s contribution has also underscored heterogeneous Indian responses to the imposition of ‘colonial time’.¹² These analyses are certainly valuable. At the same time however, underlying assumption continues to conform to the colonial claim that ‘railway time’ forced travellers to submit to ‘colonial time’. Simply put, our current understanding of imposition of time-discipline in colonial India rests on the assumption that railway operations played a key role in the process both by standardising time in India and introducing an inflexible timediscipline through railway timetables.¹³ Railway timetables therefore, are argued to be the tools that imposed a rigid travel-discipline hitherto absent in India; thus, in turn forcing Indian railway passengers to submit to time-discipline.¹⁴ At a related level, this inflexibility of railway timetables has been interpreted as one of the ways in which the colonial state disciplined colonised subjects by coercing them (including controlling their physical movements) into railway travel/timediscipline without any possibilities of the latter to either direct or influence the same.¹⁵

These suggestions, though not entirely inaccurate, however overlook two significant and related points: (i) the standardisation of ‘railway time’ in colonial India was neither quick nor linear;¹⁶ and (ii) the inflexibility of the railway timetables was more theoretical than real. More importantly, these interpretations do not take into account the practical challenges and exigencies that guided every day railway operations in colonial India. Going back once again to the cinematic example used in the beginning of the chapter, if the efficacy of railway timetables was contingent rather than assumed, then by implication, the imposition of railway travel/time-discipline too was compromised – a possibility that also questions the latter’s ability to discipline and control the colonised. Given this, the chapter focuses on railway timetables to explore the nature and scale of imposition of colonial travel/time-discipline. Wherever possible, the analysis is accompanied by Indian passengers’ responses to railway time-discipline. This inclusion of Indian responses, especially the dynamic interaction between the demands of Indian railway passengers and the responses of the railway administrations have permitted me to demonstrate the role of ‘native’ agency in shaping the process as well as the outcomes of the imposition of railway travel/time-discipline in colonial India.

Railway timetabling: a delayed standardisation

At the most practical level, the role of timetables is to coordinate train schedules in order to maximise capital output and minimise clash, both commercial and literal. As such, railway timetables in colonial India, as in other parts of the world, were a product of the necessities associated with safe operation of train movements. Colonial India entered the railway age with a guaranteed system and with private railway companies overlooking railway operations in different parts of India.¹⁷ Consequently, all railway companies had separate timetables and railway travellers had to follow the specific timetables of the lines by which they wished to travel.¹⁸ The significance of the system was underlined in a contemporary Bengali tract published in 1855, which advised travellers on the importance of accurate consultation of the timetables belonging to different railway companies.¹⁹ For a while this arrangement worked well because the railway lines covered short distances and the train service was minimal. But as the railway network expanded and the number of trains increased, coordination among the railway companies became imperative.²⁰ The need to regulate the movement of trains became necessary to avoid commercial squabbles and to ensure that the trains of the various companies passed through the important stations and junctions at least once during convenient hours of the day.²¹ Improved timetables were also needed to attract passenger traffic. Indian passengers preferred a timetable that would obviate the need to travel or wait for the trains in the dark.²²

But effective organisation of timetables required more than coordinating with existing train schedules. It could be done only when the local times of different regions of India could be regulated.²³ To resolve this, the companies sought intervention from the Government of India. Among local times in colonial India, ‘Bombay time’, and ‘Calcutta time’, were the two most important time zones. The Government of India opined that the difference of 63 minutes between these two times was too great for the same ‘railway time’ being adopted for all of India.²⁴ It was decided that ‘Calcutta time’ should be observed from the East Indian Railway network to the North-Western Provinces, as far as the limits of the local Bengal management extended; and the ‘Allahabad time’ should be carried on up to Delhi and down the line towards Calcutta as far as the engine drivers, guards and points-men were subordinate to the local superintendent of the North-Western Provinces.²⁵ It was thought best to change the time on a system of the railways whenever the working staff changed, so that the railway drivers and guards on each section would have a constant standard of time by which to regulate the performance of their duties; while the public would not suffer any inconvenience so long as the difference between the railway time and th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• Introduction
• 1 On time? Railway time and travel-discipline in colonial India
• 2 A ticket to control? Limits of railway travel-discipline in colonial India
• 3 A shared space? Contestation of station spaces and railway travel-discipline in colonial India
• 4 Chariots of equality? Travelling in railway carriages and social transformation in colonial India
• 5 To eat or not to eat? Railway travel, commensality and social change in colonial India
• 6 A nation on the move? Railway travel and conceptualisations of space in colonial India
• 7 Shared spaces, shifting identities: Railway travel and notions of identity and community in colonial India
• Conclusion: All aboard the train? Technology transmission and social transformation in colonial India
• Bibliography
• Index