Abstract
Historians and economists working on the Indian railways refer to what they term the ‘railway mania’ of Britain in the 1840s, resulting ultimately in two principal achievements of the industrial revolution (the steamship and the steam engine) being brought to the colonies.1 Multiple rationales have been ofered to explain the spread of this ‘mania’ to India. Recounting the debate around the Indian railways, Bipan Chandra reminds us of the ‘strong political and economic pressure’ from textile manufacturers in Lancashire, who wished to access the vast supplies of cotton and wheat in India.2 Apart from being a source of opulent raw materials, India could also become a huge consumer of textile and other products manufactured in Britain, Daniel Thorner points out.3 In addition to the commercial and economic advantages, once put in place, the railways could be used to transport military personnel from one part of the vast colony to another in a relatively short time.4 These economic and political justifcations apart—many of which have been dealt with in great detail by a number of scholars of colonial India—we are left with the undeniable fact that railway construction remained a crucial endeavour of colonial rule in British India. The frst passenger railway line in India, covering 34 km between Bori Bunder (Bombay) and Thane, was opened to trafc on 16 April 1853, barely 28 years after the world’s frst successful train ran between Stockton and Darlington in England in 1825. This was one of the frst railway lines in the country. Before passenger trains were introduced, there were a few trains used to transport stone and other material, such as on the Red Hill line in Chennai in South India. The frst short lines were followed by a rapid escalation of railway construction.5 In Ian Kerr’s estimate, by 1870, ‘excluding Russia (and thus Russian Asia), ffty-fve per cent of all operating railway mileage in Africa, Asia, and Latin America combined was located in India’. The fact that neither China nor Japan had operating lines at the time stresses the unique nature of railway construction in India.6 During these initial tumultuous years, the railway building project was