ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at station spaces (platforms; waiting room,s and sheds and toilets at the stations) to explore impositions of travel-discipline on colonial Indian society and its wider implications. In both colonial and post-colonial appraisals, the interactions between station spaces and Indian passengers have been invested with the capacity for broader social transformation, especially underlining the role of such experiences in forging a common identity based on collective, national sentiments. Using colonial archival sources alongside travelogues written in Bengali and Hindi, this chapter interrogates our current historiographical assumptions about social impact of station spaces.
