The most enduring myth among apologists of the British Raj is that colonialism did deliver some so-called benefits: the railways, the telegraph, modern institutions. But chief among them, the central argument in favour of colonialism in any debate, has often been the extensive network of tracks that we have now come to call the Indian Railways. Without the British, there would be no Indian Railways. Or so, the argument goes.
The absurdity of that argument has been debunked enough times, but yet it has survived for a 100 years like a resolute zombie. Indian Railways: The Weaving of a National Tapestry by Bibek Debroy and team is the latest in a long line of attempts to demystify the early history of a train network that became the largest railway system in the world by 1900. So, why was it built and who benefitted?
It is no coincidence that railway construction picked up significantly immediately after the 1857 war of independence; or that the railway network, at least initially, primarily connected cantonments and army outposts; or that its biggest early proponent was Viceroy Dalhousie whose policy of annexation and expansion led to the 1857 conflict.
In the early decades when railway building was largely a private effort, British investors who put in money were guaranteed a return of 5% by the Government of India. The result was a profligate spending spree that drained taxpayer money out of India. At one point, the railway budget accounted for half of the Government of India’s budget. Despite such massive spending, there was little or no incentive to encourage local economic activity or freight traffic, an unfortunate legacy that has stuck till the present. Goods were by and large imported. In fact, for a while, freight rates were kept artificially high in order to ship coal all the way from England. The cumulative effect was that the world’s largest railway network did very little to stimulate the country’s economy. Through a period in the late 1800s, much smaller railway networks in Latin American countries created greater per-capita income growths than in India.
Besides, though the focus was on passenger traffic, any benefit that Indians reaped was almost incidental. They were often confined to tightly packed third and fourth class compartments. An extensive quote in the book by Mohandas Gandhi, a man who made third-class travel synonymous with his name, reveals the state of these coaches with their “layers of grime” and toilets so hideous that most people fasted during the journey.
If India ever gained from the railways, it was despite the British, not because of them. The colonists never imagined that Gandhi, who initially riled against the railways, would use it so extensively in his journeys across India. They never imagined that Indians would travel so frequently on pilgrimages. Or that a set of humble tracks would stitch a nation together; would bring distant cultures closer; or unify a geography which was merely a haphazard collection of princely states.
The Indian Railways has a fascinating story to tell. This book, while it may encompass some of these details, is written like a government report for the most part. After all, it is a direct product of a 2015 report compiled by the authors about the restructuring and modernisation of the Indian Railways. The narrative flow often lapses into long-winded quotations and endless tables. Unfortunately, the most engaging thing about the book is its introduction penned by Gurcharan Das. But for those with patience and some interest in the gripping story of the early history of the railways, or those dying to take on apologists of the British Raj, there may yet be some value hidden in these pages.
Indian Railways: The Weaving of a National Tapestry ; Bibek Debroy, Sanjay Chadha and Vidya Krishnamurthi, Penguin Random House, ₹299.
