THE SINGLE LARGEST institution etched in the popular consciousness as representative of the nation’s history might be the Indian Railways. So powerful has been the impact of pop culture representations of the Railways on the Indian psyche that the train called Toofan Express became virtually rechristened in public memory as Toofan Mail, after the release of Jayant Desai’s Toofan Mail (1934) and Aspi Irani’s The Return of Toofan Mail (1942). And who can forget that a shot of the Victoria Terminus (later the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus) in Indian cinema, even as a passing spectacle, is enough to signify Bombay, not least because of its depiction in Manmohan Desai’s legendary Coolie (1983).
The first steam engine hissed into Thane from Bombay’s Bori Bunder on April 16, 1853. Since then, the Railways has carried the nation’s dreams on its iron wheels for nearly 175 years. India may be divided by states, languages, and religions, but it is united by its Railways.
Among some of the greatest moments of railway iconography is Ramesh Sippy’s breathtaking railway chase sequence in Sholay (1975). Like the famed bookstalls of A.H. Wheeler’s and Higginbotham’s, the dak bungalows of Rudyard Kipling’s stories, R.K. Narayan’s fictional town of Malgudi or Ruskin Bond’s countless fictional and semi-fictional towns in the Himalayan foothills, Sholay’s township of Ramgarh would probably have never existed without the Railways.
Since the unforgettable trains of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995)—first in Europe and England, and then in Punjab—began globalising Indian consciousness, Indian popular culture has indeed come far in recreating fascinating railway spaces, as seen in Ghadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001), Saathiya (2002), Gangs of Wasseypur: Parts 1 & 2 (2012), Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013), among several others.
Going back in time, one finds the ubiquity of the Railways, first as saloons of imperial leisure and then as theatres of Indian nationalism. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, nationalist leaders who, like Mahatma Gandhi, began as vociferous critics of the institution, actively used the Railways for their campaigns of civil disobedience, swadeshi, and Quit India. What I elsewhere refer to as the Gandhian paradox of the Indian Railways is best observed in his once-banned book, Hind Swaraj (1909)—which vehemently condemned railway authorities—getting morphed into travelogue-cum-nationalist propaganda in his book Third Class in Indian Railways (1917). The two books offered two sides of the same anti-colonial coin with which Gandhi and others bought out British proprietorship over the Indian Railways (and the nation).
In independent India’s films of the 1950s through 1970s, trains took on symbolic roles. Railway platforms and compartments seemed perfect for emotional realities. A runaway bride might board a train to a new life, or long-separated lovers could finally embrace on the platform. The song ‘Meri Sapno Ki Rani’ in Shakti Samanta’s Aradhana (1969), famously staged around a toy-train of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, became an indelible tribute to the city’s Batasia Loop and its history.
Sholay
Lekh Tandon’s Jhuk Gaya Aasmaan (1968) and Pradeep Sarkar’s Parineeta (2005) also featured iconic moments set in and around Darjeeling’s railway tracks—now a UNESCO World Heritage Site—along with India’s other mountain railways in Shimla and the Nilgiris. Interestingly, the song ‘Chakke me Chakka’ in Bhappi Sonie’s Brahmachari (1968) featured the adopted children of the hero taking a ride in the open carriages of a steam engine, plying on a 12-inch gauge. And in Nasir Hussain’s Zamane Ko Dikhana Hai (1981), a Nilgiri Mountain Railway train bound for Mettupalayam became the setting for another love story.
At times, the representation of the Railways is subversive to the national story, as in Ravi Chopra’s The Burning Train (1980), a story of disaster relief where the train becomes our vehicle into the lives of several Indian stereotypes and the socioeconomic realities behind them. In the equally memorable trains of Basu Chatterjee’s Baton Baton Mein (1979) and Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox (2013), they facilitate heart-warming human relations shown through provincial realities.
Among Indian filmmakers who stand out for their unconcealed love of the Railways, Satyajit Ray arguably ranks foremost. Ray’s much-celebrated Apu Trilogy (1950s) uses the arrival and departure of trains to mark critical turning points in the lives of his characters. In much of Bengali imagination, Durga and Apu—the children in Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhay’s 1929 novel Pather Panchali—still run through the tall grasses of wild sugarcane, chasing a train that disappears into the distance, throwing thick clouds of steam into the sky. In Ray’s Nayak (1966), the action is staged through the memories of a celebrity in a luxury train that functions as the site of modern Indian desires. And if the Railways were a passage into human psychology, they offer a glimpse into the deep past and previous births in Ray’s Sonar Kella (1974).
The highs and lows of Indian life have been extraordinarily captured by Indian cinema’s railway sequences. If first-class carriages dominated railway scenes in Vinod Kumar’s Mere Huzoor (1968) and Kamal Amrohi’s Pakeezah (1972), the trains of India’s partition in M.S. Sathyu’s Garam Hawa (1973) and Govind Nihalani’s Tamas (1988) presented a more sober reality. The bleakness was then tempered by Rajesh Roshan’s Julie (1975), Shekhar Kapur’s Masoom (1983) and Gulzar’s Kitaab (1977) and Ijaazat (1987), wherein the Railways acted as a beacon of optimism and new beginnings.
In June 1853, Karl Marx had argued that the Indian Railways would galvanise modern industrialism and foster ancillary industries in the country. Seen in that light, the cultural industry of India’s cinematic and literary railway iconography has thrived beyond imagination.
Arup K. Chatterjee is an author and cultural historian