ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on railway carriages – a contested historiographical terrain, which investigates the imposition of colonial travel-discipline and its wider impact on Indian society. The chapter offers a historiographical as well as a methodological departure by focusing exclusively on railway carriages, expanding the purview of analysis to all kinds of carriages, a focus missing in existing scholarship. Building upon, yet deviating crucially from present historiographical assumptions, this chapter suggests diverse social outcomes of railway carriage experiences and underlines agency of colonisation in interpreting railway travel experiences.