The Purveyors of Destiny: A Cultural Biography of the Indian Railways;
By Arup K. Chatterjee
Published by: Bloomsbury India
Pages: 322
Price: Rs 599
Indian Railways is either admired for its efficiency and engineering genius, or else criticised over dynamic ticket pricing and seasonal delays. But in an age when air-travel is considerably time-saving, and at times even cheaper than other available modes of transport, one often forgets to narrate the tales of the trains. This is one of the many issues raised by Arup K. Chatterjee’s new book on the Indian Railways, titled The Purveyors of Destiny: A Cultural Biography of the Indian Railways, which was recently released by Shakti Sinha, Director, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library at the India International Centre. At the event, the Union Railway Minister, Suresh Prabhu, addressed the gathering through video conferencing.
At the outset there is the ominous proposition: what would happen to our culture if Indian Railways had never been built? A huge bulk of literature along with iconic films, such as Pather Panchali, Sholay, Gandhi, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, or Slumdog Millionare, would never have seen the light of day. The theoretical proposition of the book rests on the major premise of Karl Marx’s idea of the railroads leading to ancillary industries, in the industry of cultural representations, which have come to define the institution of the railway institution of the country.
The book vouches not to be concerned by the economics and politics of the Indian Railways, as the author claims there already exists a body of work dealing with those issues. The Purveyors does not confine itself to statistical or policy-related literature, but culminates into a discerning social analysis of literature, cinema, and other representations such as postage stamps, parliamentary debates, or even commodities such as tea, which, Chatterjee believes, is also a representation of the railways. “Tea is the quintessential ingredient of an Indian railway experience,” he writes in the book.
Indian Railways has seen diverse political and social upheavals. For some, the railways have been the ideal spaces to lose caste by physical intermingling. For others the memory of the railways brings back the horrid memories of Partition, a time when, according to Chatterjee, the trains became the “mute dumbwaiters” to transport corpses.
The railways have also given us numerous architectural examples, such as the Victoria Terminus and the Howrah stations, which were built on Gothic or Indo-Saracenic architectural styles prevalent in Europe at that time. And they gave us political leaders, such as Mahatma Gandhi, who used the railways as a tool to overcome imperial hierarchies. With the entry of Mahatma Gandhi into the railway scene, the stations transformed from being sites of British military fortification to a theatre of Indian nationalism.
Chatterjee moves with ease, from literature to history to politics to cinema, in a juxtaposition of exciting styles and frames of reference, and in a language which he calls symbolic of the railways themselves: “Why should not the language of a railway book pay homage to the institution, the times and eras in which its changing narratives belong?” He recounts how the first lavatories were built in third-class passenger trains as late as the early 20th century, courtesy a hilarious letter by one Okhil Chandra Sen.
From the first proposals for the Indian Railways, to Dwarkanath Tagore and Rowland Macdonald Stephenson’s economic alliances over building them, the Great War of Independence to the age of Kipling, from the Civil Disobedience to the to Quit India Movement, to the reconstruction of the Pamban Bridge and the burst of Eastman colour on celluloid screens in the 1960s, the Indian Railways emerge as a palpable protagonist in Chatterjee’s work. The book goes into the neoliberal Nineties, when trains became the workshops of new-age romances, and well into the new millennium, in its discussions on the role of the railways in literature, cinema and advertisements.