For the nation of traders who intend to expand its market reach, the end result of the introduction of railways in India was something that the English Eastern India (EIC) and its successor, British Raj, did not negotiate or anticipated: the award of the jewel in the crown.
India lagging behind England and her other colonies in the attachment of her railways. The steam horse was brought after many reflections and financial guarantees to British capital, especially for the military and freight movement. But when he arrived, the most unexpected reaction was Gusto with which the Indians took as passengers. Liberation from their domestic restrictions and provision of freedom to travel, truthfully in the third grade (or fourth until 1885), the popular support that the railroads enjoyed it to a cash cow for several private companies that operated a number of lines.
The newly found mobility gave the Indians several freedom -bes, exchange of ideas, thought processes. They opened them to recognize, accept and respect the differences in a diverse country. Traveling gave them a feeling of tangibility to places that were only words. In the midst of futile protests of forced reality inter-meinging and commentality between cings or religions, social or economic considerations, they also experienced a common and indeed unity-all started their way to nationality-prepared to use freedom leaders.
Medium, mode and methods
When Sepoy Mutina descended on EIC, barely four years after introducing personal services from Bombay to Thane in 1853, the nascent rail network fulfilled the primary defense target by the placement of military trains to move soldiers and weapons and siege creators for counterattacks. This rebellion was suppressed. It was only a matter of time before nationalists, fired by the vision of free India, got on the railways – not only as a regime to go for long distances, but also proportionate it as a medium to resist, urged and liberate colonial oppression.
Between the Mahatma Gandhi movement from 1857-Sepoy and the 1920 co-operation movement, the railway network grew from 571.14 km to 59 119.25 km, connecting cities and inland. The crown, which in 1858 fired EIC and took over the leadership, continued to expand the railways (and education and contributions and telegraphs), allowing political mobilization to be at distance. Do not forget the creation of railways as an employer of a huge number, thus creating organized labor, although at lower levels, resulting in frustration, aspiration and collective negotiation through trade unions, one of several entry points into public life for political leaders and tanks for mass mobilization. Although their requirements had to do with the working conditions that they also provided, because GD Khosla characterizes in its history of Indian railways, the “term of the national rise” against the exploitation system, which will satisfy foreign power. The period was also marked by several strokes that were not limited to railways or fully connected, but together with the non -cooperating movement initiated by the Indian National Congress (INC).
People from a nearby village gather at the station to see Jawaharal Nezru when his train stopped in a balsar on his way to Bardoli. | Photo Credit: Hinde Archives
For Gandhiji, trains were a way of traveling through which he touched popular hearts and thought of a deep political and empathetic level through his travels across the country in the third grade, instilling Indian identity. His surveys also exposed him first hand with specific problems, such as those suffered by indigo farmers in Champaran in Bihar, and general poverty for ordinary Indian livelihoods that make a living. It was also during one such visit to Madurai (Madras Presidential, now Tamil Nadu), allegedly threw a shirt as a clothing, moved the situation of the peasant in the fields of Loincloth and fought for existence.
The instrumentation of railways as a media of protest came in the form of direct violent behavior and non -violent defiance. The former category included sabotage of infrastructure – an attempt to derail trains bearing colonial ruler, manipulation of traces and permanent ways and other disturbances. Defiance came in the form of traveling without tickets and meetings and other forms of protests at railway stations.
Trains were also the objectives of armed attacks of extremists. On August 9, 1925, revolutionaries from the Hindustan Republican Association robbed the train as they approached the goal, Lucknow. Report of the Intelligence Office, Terrorism in India, 1917-1936, presents this description of the robbery of the train robbery 9. August 1925, adapted to the conciseness: “After successful in (earlier) crimes, a party focused on a larger game. The passenger was immediately shot.
Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel will arrive by train to attend the Gandhi Seva Sangha meeting in Brindaban, a city in Bihar. | Photo Credit: Hinde Archives
The railway platforms became Darshans whistles for nationalist leaders, especially Mahatma Gandhi, when he walked through the ground again in the third grade, except when he was well. The nation’s father got a reception on the train stations, which would be places of meetings and interactions with the mass. This journey also stopped him to get the pulse of people on important questions, such as the demand of Mohammed Ali Jinnaha for Pakistan. The stations also had a cash dimension. While they served as places for passing wallets including collections made at public meetings, it was also theaters where the financial battle with reason was played: traveling without tickets, slogan, Mahatma Gandhi Ki Jai rented air because protesters filled coaches and set out on their journeys.
Railway financing was another problem. How Christian Wolmar, author of Railways & The Raj: As Age of Steam Transformed India, emphasizes, a matter of who paid for the railways “aroused a lot of anger among Indian nationalists who considered them unnecessary and used to neglect the British government”. The position of the Inc on the railway was the position of recognition of his contribution, but against how it was operated and what is important, for whom. In his premature phase of the petition he saw railways as an asset granted to the country. Given that the nature of the party has evolved to become the bearer of the freedom of the flag, it was critical of its exclusivity operations and exclusive results and required greater inclusivity.
When the Quit India movement launched a movement as a “final struggle” (the history of the Indian National Congress, Volume II), the railways together with other state machines such as contributions and telegraphs and police, were the aim of the demonstrators. These transplanted non -violent means such as strikes and stops. “There has been extensive destruction of the assets of railways and contributions and telegraphs. One hundred and four railway stations were attacked and damaged, 15 were burned; 16 derails were caused; about 100 examples of sabotage on the railway line were reported,” he read the United States administration report (later UTTAR Pradesh).
Give national reach of leaders
Not surprisingly, it was at the railway station or that Gandhiji and his Protégé, Jawaharlal Nezru, met “a spacious pavilion, built opposite the Lucknow railway station,” in assumption. Clip, and on a clogging, and that it is in the assumption, and that it is sought for the station, between. Both of them reassessed in 1936 in 1936.
The railways were influential in receiving reports not only by Gandhi and Nezru, but also of those from geographical extremes to the audience far beyond their local spheres of influence, giving them national reach. To Name Just Three: Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan in the Northwest Frontier Province, WHO WAS HONORED WITH The Bharat Ratna in 1987, Gopinath Bordoloi (WHO WOULD BECOME ASSAM’ Presidency, Later The Last Governor-General of India, and the first recipient of the bharat rattn in 1954).
Students wave the Indian tricolor during the ceremonial broadcast of the flag of the first air -conditioned EMU train to the eastern railway at the Sealdah station in Calcutta 10 August | Photo Credit: PTI
When EIC planned to “modernize India”, albeit for her own profits, she set fire to the forces that would marry the return path of colonialism: English education (1835), Post & Telegraphs (1852) and Rail (1853). About centuries, a strong mix was created; Prepared to harvest the leaders of all shades long for freedom of India. Research years and the resulting transmission of power “to the midnight hours” 15th August 1947 were historical consequences and the final result for which Lords Dalhousie and Bentinck and their successors did not register.
