Overcrowded trains serve as metaphor for India in Western eyes – but they are a relic of colonialism and capitalism
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Ritika Prasad, University of North Carolina – Charlotte
(THE CONVERSATION) A devastating rail crash that left almost 300 people dead has refocused international attention on the importance of railways in the lives of Indians.
Indeed, to many Western observers, images of men and women crammed into overcrowded cars serve as a metaphor for modern India.
Take, for example, a report by German newspaper Der Spiegel on India’s population surpassing China’s. Published just weeks before the accident in Odisha province on June 2, the now much-criticized cartoon depicted a shabby Indian train crammed with passengers rushing past a streamlined Chinese train with only two people in it.
Where does this enduring image in the West of Indian railways – and of India – come from?
As a scholar of Indian history and author of 2015 book “Tracks of Change: Railways and Everyday Life in Colonial India,” I believe the answers lie in the...