Dining cars on tracks, chugging on race, caste and food choice lines

The British colonisation in India was marked by the deeply disturbing phenomenon of racism.

- Chinmay Damle

India formed a cornerstone in the arch of European imperialism in Asia, and it was there that racism reached its high watermark in the heyday of the British Rule. It permeated all the services and constituted a cardinal feature of the alien rule throughout the nineteenth century and beyond.

On August 9, 1929, the Marathi newspaper “Dnyanprakash” reported that the Great Indian Peninsular (GIP) Railway's advisory committee had met in Bombay the previous week and had decided to attach separate dining cars for Indian passengers to three trains originating from Bombay — the Bombay ~ Poona Express, Bombay ~ Calcutta Express via Allahabad, and the Punjab Mail.

There were four classes of carriage run by Indian railway companies — viz, “First Class”, used only by wealthy Europeans and government officials; “Second Class” patronised generally by Europeans throughout India; “Intermediate Class”, filled principally with natives and servants of Europeans travelling by the train; and “Third Class” for the so-called “lower caste” natives. Dining cars in trains till then were reserved only for First Class European passengers.

It was not the first time that the railway authorities had thought of providing Indian passengers with a dining car. In 1924-25, separate dining cars for the natives were attached to the aforementioned trains, However, according to the railway officials, the experiment was unsuccessful since very few Indians used the facility.

The GIP Railway had since then been taken over by the Government of India, and its officials felt that there was some demand for a dining car for Indians. They hoped that it could generate some income for the railway company while facilitating native passengers.

The demand for separate dining cars rose partly from the growing affluence of the native population and from the inspiration derived from the racial struggle elsewhere in the world, particularly in the US.