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The Problem of Traffic: The street-life of modernity in late-colonial India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

DAVID ARNOLD
DAVID ARNOLD*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In India in the early twentieth century the modern socio-technological phenomenon of traffic brought together many visible and accessible forms of everyday technology. However, in India modern motorized transport had to operate alongside earlier, seemingly ‘pre-modern’, modes of street-life. The emergence of traffic helped foster the expansion of late-colonial policing and the growth of the ‘everyday state’. It stimulated a new sense of a middle class identity and the proper ordering and disciplining of those who used the modern highway. But the technology of traffic was also contested—by those who evaded traffic rules as well as by those who were critical of technological modernity or the rising human cost of traffic accidents. The street at times became a site of open opposition to state authority or, through the deliberate disruption of traffic, a significant location for the exercise of political defiance and control.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 1: Everyday Technology in South and Southeast Asia , January 2012 , pp. 119 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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13 In Bombay horse-drawn trams were introduced in 1874 and by 1905 carried over 71,000 passengers a day. The first electric trams appeared in 1907, followed by motorbuses in 1926. By 1947, 150 city buses carried 100 million passengers a year. Kosambi, Meera, Bombay in Transition: The Growth and Social Ecology of a Colonial City, 1880–1980 (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1986), p. 70Google Scholar.

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17 Report of the Motor Vehicles Insurance Committee, 1936–37 (Delhi: Government of India, Manager of Publications, 1937), pp. 11–12. The Indian Trade Journal, 3 August 1933, p. 294, reports 133,216 cars, 21,033 motorcycles, and 39,772 trucks and buses, totalling 194,021 in all.

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26 See, for example, Madras Mail, 6 July 1906, p. 1, for a case in which an outraged European took an Indian to court for ‘rash and negligent’ driving; the case was dismissed. For a similar complaint against ‘native drivers’, see Madras Mail, 1 January 1913, p. 5.

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31 Bombay Chronicle, 13 January 1927, p. 11. As late as 1935, Bombay still had 2,189 horse-drawn victorias: see Annual Report on the Police of the City of Bombay, 1935, p. 42.

32 Administration Report of the Corporation of Madras, 1912–13, Appendix I, p. 91; Administration Report of the Corporation of Madras, 1934–35, Appendix I, p. 119.

33 Annual Report of the Police Administration of the Town of Calcutta, 1928, p. 13; Gallagher, Rob, The Rickshaws of Bangladesh (Dhaka: University Press, 1992), pp. 37–39Google Scholar.

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36 Richards complained of the ‘hundreds of bullock carts, heavily laden with jute’ that were ‘found moving slowly, jamming, stopping, and moving again, in every conceivable direction’ in north Calcutta: see Richards, E. P., Report on the Condition, Improvement and Town Planning of the City of Calcutta and Contiguous Areas (Ware: Jennings and Bewley, 1914), p. 113Google Scholar. On the possible banning of ox-carts, see Calcutta Tramways Committee, p. 9.

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39 Report of the Rangoon Traffic Enquiry Committee, 1925 (Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing and Stationery, 1925); Report of the Special Commission Appointed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to Report on the Transport System of Ceylon (London: Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1937). See also the paper by Tilman Frasch in this volume on Singapore and Rangoon for related issues of traffic and urban control.

40 Tyrwhitt, J., Patrick Geddes in India (London: Lund Humphries, 1947), pp. 57–58Google Scholar.

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43 See, for example, Calcutta Tramways Committee, pp. 5–9.

44 For example, Richards, Report, p. 55, cited the Royal Commission on London Traffic (1905).

45 See, for example, Hollins, S. T., No Ten Commandments: Life in the Indian Police (London: Hutchinson, 1954), pp. 105–10Google Scholar; Annual Report on the Police Administration of the Town of Calcutta and its Suburbs, 1915, pp. 9–12.

46 Annual Report of the Police Administration of the Town of Calcutta and its Suburbs, 1908, p. 7.

47 Report on the Administration of the Police of the United Provinces, 1912, p. 35.

48 Administration Report of the Corporation of Madras, 1927–28, p. 6.

49 Report of the Police Administration in the Punjab, 1922, p. 8; Report of the Police Administration in the Punjab, 1926, p. 13.

50 Report of the Police Administration in the Punjab, 1931, p. 9; Report of the Police Administration in the Punjab, 1940, p. 9.

51 Report of the Motor Vehicles Insurance Committee, pp. 11, 14–15, 53. India still has the highest number of road fatalities, put at 130,000 a year in 2008: see The Guardian, 11 October 2008, p. 25.

52 Report of the Motor Vehicles Insurance Committee, p. 17; Annual Report on the Police of the City of Bombay, 1935, p. 41.

53 An example is the horrific episode in Madras in which a drunken European, L. F. Collett, collided first with a party of bandsmen travelling by rickshaw, injuring two bandsmen and two rickshaw-pullers, before driving on and hitting four Muslims carrying an empty bier, two of whom were killed. Collett was fined Rs 500 and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment: see Statesman (Calcutta), 20 December 1928, p. 10.

54 Report on the Administration of the Police of the Madras Presidency, 1937, p. 27.

55 Statesman, 25 June 1922, p. 9; Bombay Chronicle, 15 December 1926, p. 5.

56 Gandhi, ‘A Tragedy’, Young India, 27 June 1929, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Government of India Publications Division, 1970), Vol. 41, p. 86.

57 See, for example, O'Dwyer, Michael, India as I Knew It, 1885–1925 (London: Constable, 1925), p. 140Google Scholar; Maclaren-Ross, J., ‘A Bit of a Smash in Madras’, in Memoirs of the Forties (London: Alan Ross, 1965), pp. 272–91Google Scholar.

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59 Report on the Administration of the Police of the Madras Presidency, 1939, p. 59.

60 See, for example, Madras, Judicial, Government Order [GO] 1427, 1 June 1916, Tamil Nadu Archives [TNA], Chennai.

61 Annual Report on the Administration of the Motor Vehicles Acts in the Province of Bombay, 1937–38, p. 10; Administration Report of the Police of the Madras Presidency, 1937, p. 58.

62 Madras, Home, GO 3755, 1 July 1939, in Report on the Administration of the Police of the Madras Presidency, 1939, p. 63.

63 Ibid, p. 57.

64 Report on the Administration of the Police of the United Provinces, 1914, p. 28.

65 For instance, the Bombay Chronicle had a regular ‘Talk of the Suburbs’ column, which addressed such issues as poor bus services, the menace of stray dogs, and the causes of traffic accidents: see, for example, 1 June 1939, p. 5; and 6 June 1939, p. 5. On the utility of the Habermasian ‘public’ in colonial India, see Joshi, Sanjay, Fractured Modernity: The Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), IntroductionGoogle Scholar.

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67 Bombay Chronicle, 30 June 1938, p. 5.

68 Illustrated Weekly, 9 August 1936, pp. 45–46.

69 Bombay Chronicle, 29 June 1938, p. 12.

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71 Illustrated Weekly, 12 July 1936, Supplement, p. vii; and 26 July 1936, pp. 12–13.

72 Illustrated Weekly, 15 January 1939, p. 74.

73 See, for example, Police Traffic Signals: To Be Used by the Police and Drivers of Vehicles (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Book Depot, 1906).

74 Annual Report on the Police of the City of Bombay, 1935, p. 34.

75 Report on the Administration of the Motor Vehicles Act and Rules and the Madras Traffic Rules, 1940–41, p. 8.

76 Report on the Administration of the Police of the Madras Presidency, 1923, p. 57. By 1940–41, the number of convictions had reached 21,892 under the Motor Vehicles Act alone, with a further 52,663 under the Traffic Rules and 163 under the Indian Penal Code: see Report on the Administration of the Motor Vehicles Act and Rules and the Madras Traffic Rules, 1940–41, p. 13.

77 Report of the Police Administration in the Punjab, 1939, p. 11; Report of the Police Administration in the Punjab, 1940, p. 11.

78 See, for example, Report of the Police Administration in the Punjab, 1931, p. 10; Report of the Police Administration in the Punjab, 1934, p. 11.

79 For complaints about policemen demanding bribes from bus and lorry drivers in Calcutta, see Indian Chamber of Commerce, Annual Report of the Committee, 1936 (Calcutta: ICC, 1937), pp. 260–61. This raises the wider question of the role that changing technology played in the development of the ‘everyday state’: see Gupta, Akhil, ‘Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State’, American Ethnologist, 22 (2), 1995, pp. 375–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 On the ‘invaluable’ nature of police wireless vans in Bombay during the city mill strike of March 1940, see Annual Report on the Police of the City of Bombay, 1940, pp. 17–18. The Commissioner of Police reported that: ‘Without the use of wireless it would have been impossible to marshal in time a sufficiently strong force to deal with the situation.’ A police lorry that was not equipped with a wireless arrived at the disturbance 20 minutes too late. Ibid, p. 17.

81 Madras, Home, GO 224, 16 January 1942, Tamil Nadu Archives.

82 As in Delhi in the early 1930s: see India, Home (Police) 74/7/33, National Archives of India [NAI], New Delhi.

83 See, for example, Masselos, James, ‘Some Aspects of Bombay City Politics in 1919’, in Kumar, R. (ed.), Essays on Gandhian Politics: The Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 178–79, 185–86Google Scholar.

84 Krishnadas, , Seven Months with Mahatma Gandhi: Being an Inside View of the Indian Non-Co-operation Movement of 1921–22 (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1951), pp. 122–53Google Scholar.

85 As in Madras in 1930–31: Special File 683-D, 22 April 1931, Under-Secretary's Secret Files, Tamil Nadu Archives.

86 Bourke-White, Margaret, Halfway to Freedom (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1949), pp. 16–17Google Scholar.

87 Ibid, pp. 18–20; also Tuker, Memory, pp. 156–63. Street-level violence and disruption to traffic continued in Calcutta during September 1946: see Statesman, 6 September 1946, pp. 1, 7; and 8 September 1946, p. 1.

88 For examples, in addition to Bourke-White, Halfway to Freedom, see Khosla, Gopal Das, Stern Reckoning (New Delhi: Bhawnani, 1950)Google Scholar; Moon, Penderel, Divide and Quit: An Eyewitness Account of the Partition of India, new edition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.