ABSTRACT
The history of railways, has been one of the important strands of modern Indian history. The history of deforestation induced by railways is important to understand the ecological costs of the British colonial rule in India. The nature of colonial rule and the transformation of socio-economic and political structures brought about by it in India has been the centrality of modern Indian history. The historical versions of modern India are largely conditioned by ideological affinity of historians. The impact of railways on Indian society has been a contested issue in Indian historiography. The nationalist historians in colonial India highlighted the logic of introducing the railways at the cost of important sectors like irrigation and welfare policies. The ecological dimension of the Indian railways during the colonial period has been explored by colonial forest historians. The pioneers of environmental history proposed that deforestation and degradation of the Indian environment is a product of British colonial rule.
