Arup Chatterjee’s new book on the Railways traces its cultural legacy. By Team Viva
There is little doubt that the Railways is the leitmotif of our nation, be it social, political, economical or cultural. But it is the last that has seldom been the subject of mainstream discourse. “The whole narrative of freedom, exploitation, aristocracy, consumption leads towards the hope of an egalitarian society in front of my eyes”, says Arup K Chatterjee, who has documented how the Railways has tightly wound the diversity of the country through food, romance, character and people’s use of the network.
An Assistant Professor at the School of law, O.P Jindal Global University, Chatterjee has authored the book, The Purveyors of Destiny: A Cultural Biography of the Indian Railways. “Around the age of five, I saw a miniature train for the first time at the Varanasi Railway Station while waiting to board an actual train. That image really stuck with me, and I kept wondering what the interior would be like and how the architecture of the compartment would be.”
Various books written by British writers like Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, which has a very long description of the British Railways, gave the writer an opportunity to see both the textual representation of the British Railways and visualising its entrails in his mind from their insights. “This juxtaposition of the toy train in India and a classical British Railways compartment was something that fostered in me a poetry, a romance and an adventure about the wooden furnishing, cutlery, the working class, about the staff who served, and all the various forms of aristocracy which could be enjoyed on board as well as the different kinds of exploitation which would occur in the Railways during that time. Whenever I see a train in any part of the world, I start thinking about the miniature toy train in Varanasi”, he added.
As a story of colonial exploitation and national rebellion, he documents the Railway as a purveyor of Mahatma Gandhi’s freedom struggle. “The background score of the film Gandhi haunted me as did the liberal use of images in the background,” Chatterjee explained.
Recalling his most memorable journey in the Railways, he goes back to the days when he was still a college student and had an unconfirmed ticket with him. Despite having some difficulties, he had developed a better understanding of how people actually travel and how they expand their geographical consciousness and the understanding of India in unity. “The Indian Railways has come far from the time when it was started by the British for their own business, to transfer goods from all around the country to Manchester. After the Independence, India and its people have truly reclaimed the railway heritage which they inherited from the British and made it their own,” added Chatterjee.