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Planning, traffic and the city: railway development in colonial Delhi, c. 1899–1905

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2016

RAGHAV KISHORE
RAGHAV KISHORE*
Affiliation:
SOAS, University of London, London, WC1H 0XG, UK
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Abstract:

This article examines how the management of railway traffic was problematized in urban plans for colonial Delhi after the 1890s. It reveals how Delhi was reconstituted as a space of circulation in municipal plans attempting to combat railway-induced ‘traffic congestion’. Yet, even as new gardens, localities and footpaths were envisaged as enabling smooth flows of traffic and generating a commercially healthy city, policing anxieties and concerns over political security dominated in such plans. Finally, this article shows how the process of railway-inspired ‘urban planning’ was itself driven by a contestation between different ‘scales’ of the colonial state.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 253 - 269
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

1 Delhi State Archives (DSA), Chief Commissioners Office (CCO), S.No.50, B-10, 1899, box 56: note recorded by Mr Clarke, commissioner of Delhi, under section 176 (1) of the municipal act and submitted for the consideration of the municipal committee of Delhi, 18 Feb. 1899.

2 Ibid .

3 A large and significant corpus of literature exists on the political, economic, cultural and social aspects of the railways in India. For a compilation and discussion of such writings, see the recent handbook complied by Kerr, Ian and Hurd, Jon: Kerr, I. J. and Hurd, J. (eds.), India's Railway History: A Research Handbook (Leiden, 2012 Google Scholar).

4 As Kerr and Hurd point out, the relationship between urban cities and the railways has received ‘little direct attention’. Ibid., 54. Kerr has himself tried to rectify this shortcoming by assessing the impact of railway development on the urbanization of Bombay and Lahore. See I.J. Kerr, Bombay and Lahore. Colonial Railways and Colonial Cities: Some Urban Consequences of the Development and Operation of the Railways in India, c. 1850–1947 (online article) www.docutren.com/HistoriaFerroviaria/Aranjuez2001/pdf/07.pdf accessed 6 Jan. 2016. A similar perspective that examines how new modes of communication like the railways shaped commercial and political relationships between Bombay and Deccan towns is in Macdonald Gumprez, E., ‘City–hinterland relations and the development of a regional elite in nineteenth century Bombay’, in Kerr, I.J. (ed.), Railways in Modern India (New Delhi, 2001), 97–125 Google Scholar. Lastly, Laura Bear's work contains a brief but important account of the significance of railway stations for the expression of colonial authority. See Bear, L., Lines of the Nation: Indian Railway Workers, Bureaucracy, and the Intimate Historical Self (New York, 2007), 36–45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 The exception here is David Arnold's recent article. Although Arnold does not explicitly deal with the effect of railway traffic on urban planning, he problematizes the notion of ‘traffic’ in colonial India, highlighting its interpretative potential in, for example, understanding the constitution of colonial governance and the articulation and contestation of categories such as the public, nation and state. See Arnold, D., ‘The problem of traffic: the street-life of modernity in late-colonial India’, Modern Asian Studies, 46 (2012), 119–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 On the relationship between capital and space, see for example Lefebvre, H., The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford, 1991 Google Scholar). For a historically informed study on how material changes shaped and remade European cities, see David Harvey's excellent study of Paris’ transformation in the nineteenth century: Harvey, D., Paris, Capital of Modernity (New York, 2003 Google Scholar).

7 For a ‘scalar’ approach examining the political-economic processes that shaped the formation of distinctly ‘colonial’ and ‘national space’ in India, see Goswami, M., Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space (Chicago, 2004 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). This article builds upon Goswami's notion of the territorialization of sovereign power, as part of larger political-economic processes, but examines how this worked in tension with other state agencies encouraging circulatory modalities at the level of the city. For another perspective that considers spatial scalar politics in colonial Delhi, but in a more Foucauldian vein, see Legg, S., Prostitution and the Ends of Empire: Scale, Governmentalities and Interwar India (Durham, NC, 2014 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

8 Gupta, N., Delhi between Two Empires, 1803–1921: Society, Government and Urban Growth, (Oxford, 1981 Google Scholar).

9 On architecture, see Hosagrahar, J., Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism (London, 2005 Google Scholar); on the environment, see Sharan, A., In the City, Out of Place: Nuisance, Pollution, and Dwelling in Delhi, c. 1850–2000 (Oxford, 2014 CrossRefGoogle Scholar). On social geography, see Legg, S., Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi's Urban Governmentalities (Oxford, 2007 CrossRefGoogle Scholar), and also Legg, Prostitution and the Ends of Empire.

10 One notable exception, which traces continuities from provincial Delhi through to its ‘capital’ era, is Legg, Prostitution and the Ends of Empire.

11 Gupta, Delhi between Two Empires, 42–3.

12 Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities, 59.

13 Government of Punjab, Gazetteer of the Delhi District: 1883–4 (Gurgaon, 1988), 143. In 1884, the three railway lines included: the East Indian Railway, the Sindh, Punjab and Delhi Railway and the Rajputana State Railway.

14 See Kerr, I.J., Building the Railways of the Raj, 1850–1900 (Oxford, 1995 Google Scholar), and also Kerr, I.J., Engines of Change: The Railroads that Made India (London, 2007 Google Scholar).

15 Goswami, Producing India.

16 Ibid ., 45–59.

17 Gupta, Delhi between Two Empires, 171–2.

18 National Archives of India (NAI), Public Works Department (PWD), Railway Construction (RC), Jul. 1895, No. 429–230 A: No. 429 letter from the government of India, PWD to the secretary to the government, Punjab, 24 Jul. 1895.

19 NAI, PWD, RC, Jul. 1896, No. 1–22 A: No. 1 letter from Col. T. Gracey, R.E. Maclagan, director general of railways to the secretary to the government of India, 30 Dec. 1895. There were six major railways centring at Delhi by this time: the East Indian Railway (through Tundla), the North Western Railway (through Meerut and Ghaziabad and through Bhatinda and Rohtak), the Oudh and Rohilkhand Railway (through Muradabad and Ghaziabad), the Rajputana Malwa Railway (through Rewari), the Bombay Baroda and Central India Railway (through Nagda and Bara) and the Indian Midland Railway (through Agra and Mathura).

20 Ibid .

21 DSA, CCO, S.No.50, B-8, 1899, box 56: letter from the secretary to government of India, PWD, to the secretary to the government of Bombay, PWD, Railway Branch, and the consulting engineer, government of India for railways, Calcutta and Lucknow, 3 Aug. 1899.

22 Gupta, Delhi between Two Empires, 171.

23 Using the case of Uttar Pradesh as a study, Ian Derbyshire points out that rail usage only started gaining momentum in north India after the 1880s. A reason he cites is that there was an overall reduction in freight rates per maund (from 0.4 pies in the mid-1860s to 0.25 pies by the mid-1880s) and a decrease in the average rates per passenger mile (from 3.5 pies to 2.5 pies in the same period) in the north Indian plains. See Derbyshire, I.D., ‘Competition and adaptation: the operation of railways in northern India: Uttar Pradesh 1860–1914’, in Srinivasan, E., Tiwari, M. and Silas, S. (eds.), Our Indian Railway: Themes in India's Railway History (Delhi, 2006), 50–76 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 DSA, CCO, S.No.43, 10A, 1888, box 41: letter from Robert Clarke, deputy commissioner, Delhi, to the commissioner and superintendent, Delhi, 18 Apr. 1888.

25 Arnold, ‘The problem of traffic’, 136.

26 Sharan, A., ‘In the city, out of place: environment and modernity, Delhi 1860s to 1960s’, Economic and Political Weekly, 25 Nov. 2006, 4905–11Google Scholar.

27 Joyce, P., The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London, 2003), 66 Google Scholar.

28 See Sharan, ‘In the city, out of place’, and M.R. Anderson, ‘Public nuisance and private purpose: policed environments in British India, 1860–1947’, SOAS School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series, Research Paper No. 5/2011 (SOAS Law Department Working Paper No. 1, Jul. 1992).

29 Prakash, G., Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton, 1999), 132 Google Scholar.

30 See Scott, J.C., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, 1998 Google Scholar)

31 DSA, CCO, S.No.50, B-10, 1899, box 56: note by Clarke, 18 Feb. 1899.

32 Ibid .: note recorded for the consideration of the municipal committee by the commissioner of Delhi under Sec. 176 (1) (D) of the Municipal Act, 4 Mar. 1899.

33 Ibid .: note by Clarke, 18 Feb. 1899.

34 Ibid .

35 Glover, W.J., Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a Colonial City (Minnesota, 2007), xx–xxiGoogle Scholar.

36 Ibid ., xxv.

37 DSA, CCO, S.No.50, B-10, 1899, box 56: note by Clarke, 18 Feb. 1899.

38 Ibid .

39 Ibid .

40 See Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities, 15–45.

41 DSA, CCO, S.No.50, B-10, 1899, box 56: note by Clarke, 18 Feb. 1899.

42 Ibid .

43 Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities, 140.

44 Foucault, M., Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the College de France 1977–78, ed. Senellart, M., trans. Graham Burchell (London, 2007), 135 Google Scholar.

45 Legg, Spaces of Colonialism, 25.

46 DSA, CCO, S.No.50, B-10, 1899, box 56: note by the commissioner, 4 Mar. 1899.

47 Ibid .

48 R. Kishore, ‘Colonial governmentality and the city: Delhi in the age of empire’, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Ph.D. thesis, 2013, 135–6.

49 See Gooptu, N., The Politics of the Urban Poor in Early Twentieth-Century India (Cambridge, 2004 Google Scholar), and Kidambi, P., The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1880–1920 (Aldershot, 2007 Google Scholar).

50 Singha, R., A Despotism of Law: Crime and Justice in Early Colonial India (New Delhi, 1998), 44 Google Scholar.

51 DSA, CCO, S.No.33, CB-42, 1888, box 42: copy of a letter from H.C. Fanshawe, commissioner and superintendent Delhi, to the secretary to the government of Punjab, Judicial and General Department, 7 (?) Apr. 1901.

52 Ibid .

53 DSA, CCO, S.No.50, B-10, 1899, box 56: note by the commissioner, 4 Mar. 1899.

54 Ibid .

55 Ibid .

56 DSA, CCO, S.No.50, B-10, 1899, box 56: copy of a letter from Captain W.M. Douglas, deputy commissioner, Delhi, to G. Walker, commissioner and superintendent, Delhi, 5 Feb. 1902.

57 Prasad, R.S.M., The History of the Delhi Municipality: 1863–1921 (Allahabad, 1921), 141 Google Scholar.

58 DSA, CCO, 50-B (8) 1899, box 56: letter from Major M.W. Douglas, deputy commissioner, Delhi, to T. Gordon Walker, commissioner and superintendent, Delhi Division, 18 Feb. 1903.

59 Ibid .

60 DSA, CCO, 13-II, box 64: report on the Administration of the Delhi Crown Lands (Lahore, 1910), 1.

61 DSA, CCO, 13-I, box 64: report on Nazul Lands Administered by the Delhi Municipality by R.B. Whitehead, Delhi, 1907, 2.

62 DSA, CCO, 50-B (8) 1899, box 56: letter from Major M.W. Douglas, deputy commissioner, Delhi, to T. Gordon Walker, commissioner and superintendent, Delhi Division, 18 Feb. 1903.

63 NAI, PWD, RC, Nov. 1909, No. 128–151 A: No. 128 letter from the Hon. Mr E.D. Maclagan, chief secretary to government, Punjab, to the secretary, Railway Board, 3 Jun. 1908.

64 Ibid . Thus, making a case for space to be reserved for over bridges, the commissioner stated: ‘It is a matter of common knowledge in the city that people coming to and going from the city by this route in hackney vehicles find it more convenient and expeditious to pay off their conveyance at the level crossing when the gates are shut, walk across and reengage another vehicle from the crowd waiting at the other side.’

65 Ibid .

66 DSA, CCO, 50-B (8) 1899, box 56: Douglas to Gordon Walker, 18 Feb. 1903.

67 NAI, PWD, RC, Nov. 1909, No. 128–151 A: No. 128 letter from the Hon. Mr E.D. Maclagan, chief secretary to government, Punjab, to the secretary, Railway Board, 3 Jun. 1908.

68 Ibid . No. 146 letter from the deputy commissioner and president, municipal committee, Delhi to the agent, Great Indian Peninsular Railways, 2 Aug. 1909.