The British Raj and the Indian Railways

The Indian railways were the single largest infrastructure project undertaken in the colonial world. By 1947, India had more than 40,000 miles of track — more than the rest of Asia and Africa combined — and the railways carried more than a billion passengers a year. The project was, in the words of the historian Ian Kerr, “the supreme expression of the British conviction that they could organise India into a productive modern state.” It was also the supreme expression of the British conviction that they knew better than Indians what was good for India, and the railways were built, in the main, to specifications that suited British commerce, not Indian lives.

The Origins of the Indian Railway Network

The Indian railway network was established in the 1850s, initially as a series of separate companies, and then as a more integrated system. The first proposal for an Indian railway came from the East India Company, which saw the potential of the railway for the transport of goods and people. The first railway, the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, ran from Bombay to Thana on 16 April 1853, and the East Indian Railway, which connected Calcutta to the coalfields of Raniganj, opened in 1854.

The early railway companies were private companies guaranteed by the British government, and the government provided land and capital. The first phase of construction was largely complete by 1880, and the major trunk routes of the Indian railway system were established by the 1890s. By 1900, the basic network of more than 25,000 miles was complete, and the railways served almost every major city in British India.

The Guarantee System

The early Indian railway companies were supported by a guarantee system under which the British government guaranteed a minimum return on the capital invested. The system was introduced in 1849 and was modelled on the British practice of guaranteeing the dividends of railway companies. The guarantee was 5 percent for the first companies, and it was reduced as the system expanded.

The system worked well in the early years, when the railways were profitable, but it was expensive for the British government in the longer term. The system was gradually phased out and replaced by a system of state ownership, which was completed by the early twentieth century. The Indian railway system became a major instrument of British economic policy in India. As Kerr has shown in Building the Railways of the Raj, 1850–1900 (1995), the guarantee system was less a piece of imperial generosity than a private interest subsidy dressed up as public-spiritedness: the guaranteed dividends went, in the main, to British investors in the City of London.

The Expansion of the Indian Railway Network

The Indian railway network expanded rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century. The 1860s and 1870s saw the construction of the major trunk routes, including the Bombay-Baroda line, the Madras line, and the East Indian Railway. The 1880s and 1890s saw the completion of the great transcontinental routes, including the Bombay-Calcutta line, the Madras-Bombay line, and the lines connecting the major ports to the interior. By 1900, the basic network of more than 25,000 miles was complete, and the railways served almost every major city in British India. The expansion of the railways was financed by British capital, and the railway system was one of the largest single investments in the history of the British Empire.

The Strategic Importance of the Indian Railways

The Indian railways were important not only for commercial reasons but also for strategic and military purposes. The railways enabled the British Indian Army to be moved rapidly across the subcontinent, and they were central to the British response to the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the North-West Frontier campaigns, and the two world wars.

The railways were particularly important during the 1857 rebellion, when the British used the existing railway lines around Calcutta and Bombay to concentrate forces against the rebel strongholds. The North-West Frontier campaigns, and the two world wars, would have been impossible without the railway system. The railways were also important for the movement of troops and supplies to the Afghan border, and the strategic value of the railways was one of the reasons for the extension of the network to the frontier. The strategic value of the railways was recognised in the construction of strategic lines, including the Bolan Pass railway and the Khyber railway.

The Economic Impact of the Indian Railways

The Indian railways had a profound economic impact on the Indian subcontinent. The railways enabled the Indian economy to be integrated into the world economy, and they facilitated the export of raw materials and the import of manufactured goods. The railways were particularly important for the development of the Indian agricultural economy, and they enabled the Indian famines of the late nineteenth century to be more effectively combated.

The railways also had a significant impact on Indian industrial development, and they enabled the growth of the Indian coal, steel, and textile industries. The railways facilitated the migration of labour, and they contributed to the development of new social classes, including the Indian industrial working class and the Indian railway bureaucracy. The Indian railway bureaucracy, which by 1939 employed more than 700,000 Indians, was one of the largest industrial employers in the colonial world.

The Social Impact of the Indian Railways

The Indian railways also had a profound social impact. The railways enabled Indians to travel across the subcontinent in unprecedented numbers, and they facilitated the development of a common Indian public sphere. The railways also enabled the spread of the Indian independence movement, and the major political movements of the twentieth century, including the non-cooperation movement of 1920–1922 and the civil disobedience movement of 1930–1934, relied on the railways for the movement of people and ideas. The railways also facilitated the spread of Western education and the Indian press, and they contributed to the development of a modern Indian identity.

The trains themselves became a shared Indian experience in a way that no previous technology had managed. The “third class” compartments — packed with peasants, pilgrims, and petty traders — were the India that the British officials rarely saw; the “first class” compartments — a different world of wicker chairs and ceiling fans — were the India that the British officials always saw. The Indian Railways, as the novelist R. K. Narayan observed in his short stories, were a kind of national institution that the British had not intended to create.

The Indian Railways in the Two World Wars

The Indian railways were central to both world wars. In the First World War, the Indian railways were used to move Indian troops to the ports of embarkation, and they were also used to move supplies to the front. In the Second World War, the Indian railways were even more important, and the Indian Army in the World Wars relied on the railways for the movement of more than 2.5 million Indian soldiers to the various theatres. The railways were also important for the movement of supplies to the Burma front, and they played an important role in the British defeat of the Japanese in the Burma campaign.

The wartime demands of the railways, in particular the Ledo Road and the railhead operations in Manipur, were the largest engineering project undertaken by the British Empire in the Second World War. The success of the Burma campaign, in the view of the historian Christopher Bayly, depended on the railways.

The Post-Independence Indian Railways

The Indian railways continued to operate as a unified system after the partition of 1947, although the system was divided between the new states of India and Pakistan. The partition produced major logistical difficulties, and the new governments had to negotiate the division of the rolling stock, the railway workshops, and the railway staff. The Indian railways have been an important part of the Indian economy ever since, and they have been the subject of major investment. The Indian railways remain one of the largest railway systems in the world, and they are a long-term legacy of the British period in India.

Historiographical Note

The historiography of the Indian railways was, for a long time, dominated by the British engineering tradition — J. G. Bruce’s A History of the Indian Railways (1935) and the technical histories of the major railway companies. The revisionist work of the last thirty years, led by Ian Kerr, has produced a more political account, in which the railways are read as instruments of imperial policy. The current debate, exemplified in the work of Daniel Headrick and the contributors to the New Cambridge History of India, is over how far the railways can be credited with the modernisation of India and how far they should be understood as a system of extraction.

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