To eat or not to eat?

This chapter focuses on refreshment arrangements for Indian passengers. In post-colonial scholarship such arrangements or rather the lack of arrangements was usually argued to be indicative of the way in which Indian passengers were treated. It is also seen as a major contributing factor in forging a feeling of imagined belonging to a common identity. This chapter broadly concurs with these conclusions. But by bringing new evidence the chapter claims that Indian passengers demanded differential behaviour and refreshment arrangements on the basis of their social rank and rarely displayed any ‘national’ feelings.