Deepa Gopalakrishnan
HMS 251
Prof Daniela Fabricius
RAILWAY AND MODERNITY: TRACING INDIA’S COLONIAL FOOTSTEPS
The effects of colonization are not unidirectional; it covers a multitude of spheres affecting the culture, architecture, surroundings, and everyday lives of people. The British took over the Indian subcontinent for over two hundred years until India’s independence in 1947. As an attempt to show how British rule and ideas of the “modern” west have influenced and enriched the colonies, they built structures commemorating their rule and showcasing how they have “enriched” everyday lives as a result of “civilizing mission”. Colonial architecture in India is seen primarily through the civic buildings used in the everyday lives of people. “Imperial relations were not simply impositions of western norms onto colonized people, but also the attempt to synthesize and integrate Indian cultural norms with the British” . This results in a mixture of architecture styles creating a wider range of variations.
The British, in their attempt to “modernize” India and “enlighten” the masses with their technological advances and ideas of “modernity”, made a variety of changes around the then subcontinent. One of these included the railways. Railways changed the way modernity was looked at in India. In "The Future Results of British Rule in
India," published in the New York Daily Tribune in 1853, three years after railway construction began in India, Karl Marx wrote, "England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia” . He saw the railway as the "forerunner of modern industry” . Railways had become such an important part to this concept of modernization introduced by the British in India that in 1877 a British official wrote: "Any history of the material progress of India may well be divided into a pre-railway and a post railway period" . Modernity and technology became a larger picture all at once brought by the railways. Mohandas Gandhi wrote in a letter to his friend: "It is not the British people who are ruling India, but it is modern civilization, through its railways, telegraphs, telephones, and almost every invention which has been claimed to be a triumph of civilization" . Taking the example of one particular railway station should show us impact of railways in a colonial and postcolonial context.
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus was built in 1887 in Mumbai, India. When built, this was the largest British edifice in India. It was inspired by St Pancras railway station in London. Frederick William Stevens was the architect, and he built more buildings of a similar Victorian style around the city. Bombay (now called Mumbai) has a huge coastline and was a flourishing port city under the British rule.
The building is located in the Bori Bunder area, which was formerly used as a storehouse for goods imported and exported from the city. The main reason for introducing railway was for the British to have proximity to colonies and ease of movement between them. There came ease of transportation of not only people but also goods, especially raw natural materials, from one place to another within or across colonies, which helped in flourishing business for the British. There could be a movement of ideas, information, manufactured construction parts and goods.
Railways thus played an important role as a primary national transportation system. The style of architecture is mostly gothic revival with a mixture of Indian Mughal architectural elements and Italian neo gothic. Most ornaments are purely Victorian, depicting nature: leaves, flowers, animal motifs are present to symbolically show how the British saw India as a land of abundance of natural resources and beauty. The exterior is decorated with sculptures from the JJ School of Art, including mythical beasts, monkeys, plants and medallions of important personages. Mumbai being a hot sunny city, to minimize sun’s impact, stained glass decorated with elephants and locomotives are used. Early transport methods in the subcontinent included animals such as elephants and horses. Railways came as an easier alternative brought to the masses as one of the products of modernization. These ornaments on the train station show how the British were gradually removing the natural elements from Indian culture and replacing it with elements of what they perceived as the more progressive modern world. Its stone dome, pointed arches and ground plan are derived from traditional Indian palace architecture. A British lion and an Indian tiger stand guard at the entrance. Colonial architecture as seen in many places started off as a single architectural style completely rejecting traditional local architecture. But in the second-half of the 19th century, British architects in India blended their architecture with themes deriving from Indian traditional architecture. They worked with Indian craftsmen, thus creating a new style.
Trains became signs of “modernity” in India. This modernity, its effects and reactions were different in the colonial, partition period, and postcolonial context. Thinking of trains as a symbol of “progress” and “modernity” brought by the British to India, it can be compared with the larger French idea of keeping up with the “modern” world, which is reflected in French colonial railway stations in Vietnam. That is when the question arises – which culture does modernity belong to? This questions orientation itself and is shown in Edward Said’s book Orientalism, where he says that for a group of people to be the “orient” or “other,” there needs to be one reference point or center which acts as basis of comparison which in this case would be the “western” world.
At the center of the railway station is an immense dome atop of which is a fourteen-foot female statue of “progress” with a flaming torch on her right and spoked wheel by her left side. Beneath this was the statue of Victoria, who had been proclaimed empress of India. It has arched windows, verandahs, and balustrades, arched porticos and ornamented interiors. Arches pierce the facades, emphasized by polychromatic stone and glazed tiles. The windows are filled with stained glass or delicate wrought iron grillwork tracery. Beneath the dome is a majestic staircase that opens onto landings on each of the three floors.
It is still functional as a major railway station and has become a landmark in the city of Mumbai. It is a very busy station primarily due to its central location near major offices and has an enormous number of people flushing in and out of it; very high ceilings make it feel more open and help in increased ventilation. It was the main terminal and administrative offices of great Indian peninsular railways. The plan of the building is C-shaped and symmetric about east west axis. The booking office is traverse to the axis, and has a cross-vaulted ceiling painted blue with gold stars.
The building quite literally (because of the statue on top) and symbolically was supposed to show progress in India because of British rule.
The railway in India stands as a symbol to many of Britain's model of progress. Modernity is a dynamic concept that is heterogeneous. As a part of the larger reindianization process to delete representations of colonial past, the terminal, which was formerly called Victoria Terminus, was renamed to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. Funnily enough, it being something passed on by generations, the terminus is still commonly called Victoria Terminus.
“The railway as an imaginative object represents culture, forces, and processes around it. Railways became a kind of moving theatre that staged first a colonial, then a national and then finally a global identity” . Railways were being associated with a greater concept of modernity that was perceived by the Indian masses as something so distant and almost imaginative that the whole scenario felt more theatrically unreal. The railway is also important in the context of the partition of the subcontinent. The idea of it being a symbol of modernity shifts. During Partition, trains were a part of the relocation process. They were used for the movement of large masses of people who struggled and completed to get a spot on the crowded trains. The same railway was now thought of as a horrendous place that was causing the derailment of modernity, destruction and trauma.
A lot of writers around that time period wrote about railway influencing modern ideas and lives of people during and around the partition period. Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh shows how the perception of trains shifts to a greater picture of national identity. Priest and local thieves also act according to a timetable of the train. The timetable of the railway thus unites the people creating a larger collectiveness that leads to the creation of local identity. The railway timetable organized the villagers' daily life; but as soon as violence starts arising in the village, things get disrupted. “Some days it seemed as though the alarm clock had been set for the wrong hour. On others it was as if no one had remembered to wind it. Goods trains had stopped running altogether, so there was no lullaby to lull them to sleep. Instead, ghost trains went past at odd hours between midnight and dawn, disturbing the dreams of Mano Majra” . This disruption shows how the railway was an important part of livelihood in many areas and was directly connected to their lives. It shows how trains were once appreciated and looked at positively, but now due to the circumstance in which it is being used and the sights associated with it, it has become something disturbing. The Indian culture unknowingly came to rely on it.
Railway and modernity is thought of differently in postcolonial context. Post colonization asked for reconstruction of ideologies, culture, administration, economy, social norms and education structure. National reconstruction and nation building was required to reindianize the nation.
Railways and modernity when traced through colonial footsteps are deeply rooted together. It symbolizes something more than just being a western imposition on the colonies. It became a vehicle for expression of thoughts among people, an image of a perceived notion of modernity showed to the masses, a theatrical rather imaginative
world that gave them hopes and aspirations and wheels which showed them a world outside British rule and became a symbol for freedom.
Bibliography
1. Mumbai Rough guides snapshot India: Rough guides: Penguin, 2012
2. Victorian Literature: an anthology, blackwell anthologies: Publisher John Wiley and sons, 2014
3. Tracking Modernity: India’s railways and the culture of mobility, Marian Aguiar, U of Minnesota press, 2011
4. Orientalism, Edward Said, W.Ross MacDonald School, Resources Services Library, 2006
5. Singh, Khushwant. Train to Pakistan. 1956; repr. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990.
6. Marx, Karl. "The Future Results of British Rule in India." in the New-York Daily Tribune, August 8, 1853 Writings, ed. David McLellen, 332-37. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990
7. Gandhi, M. K. Hind Swaraj and Other Writings, ed. Anthony Parel. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2003.
8. Aguiar, Marian. “Making Modernity: Inside the Technological Space of the Railway.” Cultural Critique, no. 68, 2008, pp. 66–85. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25475462
9. Danvers, Juland. Indian Railways: Their Past History, Present Condition, And Future Prospects (London, 1877),
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