Unite and Divide John Sergeant on Tracks of Empire


Unite and Divide

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For many Indians, this may be the greatest legacy of the British Empire.

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Their railway network is the biggest in Asia,

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running on 40,000 miles of track and reaching to every part of the subcontinent.

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This is engineering perfectly matched to an epic task,

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feeding and serving a sprawling country of more than a billion people.

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And the railways have played a crucial role in all the main chapters of modern Indian history.

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The politics, the drama and the excitement which attended the birth of the Indian railways

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are still very much relevant today.

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So I'm going to cross the length and breadth of India on these tracks of empire

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to discover how and why they were built,

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to try to understand why the simple idea of building a railway created a nation.

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I want to reveal how the railways brought triumph

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and sometimes tragedy to the biggest democracy in the world.

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The railways have always been more than a matter of nuts and bolts.

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From the grandeur of their temples to transportation...

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It reminds me a bit of the Houses of Parliament.

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..to the ingenuity and beauty of their design,

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coupled to a brutal pursuit of power.

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I'll cross the fault lines of Indian history which lie

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beneath the railway tracks in this glorious, impossible country.

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I'll see how the empire builders harnessed the power of India with astounding engineering

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and the irreducible logic of the timetable.

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Looking out over this great sea of humanity, with its scores of languages and its thousands of gods,

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what could be more satisfying than saying,

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"I don't care, the train has got to arrive at 12.26"?

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The story of the Indian railways begins not on land, but on sea.

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The British came to rule India

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because, as the world's first superpower, they ruled the waves.

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By the 1850s, the Royal Navy had ensured that the ports of Bombay,

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Madras, and here, Calcutta, were firmly in British hands

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through the offices of the British East India Company.

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Naval power kept the sea routes open, but how could they tap

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the vast trading opportunities across the country?

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How could the British rule the inland sea of the interior?

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'It was a problem which had long exercised successive Governor-Generals of India,

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'but in January 1848, a new figure arrived on the subcontinent,

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'Governor-General James Broun-Ramsay, the 1st Marquess of Dalhousie.

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'This Scottish aristocrat had been president of the British Board of Trade, and he meant business.'

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In 1853, he proposed a hugely ambitious railway network that

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would eventually become the biggest engineering project of its time.

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In just the first ten years, three million tons of railway

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construction materials would be transported to India in 3,500 ships.

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In the 19th century alone,

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ten million people would work on the construction of the Indian railways.

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In a famous memo of 1853, Dalhousie set India's wheels in motion

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when he wrote, "A magnificent system of railway communication would present a series of public monuments

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"vastly surpassing in real grandeur the aqueducts of Rome, the pyramids of Egypt,

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"the Great Wall of China, the temples, palaces and mausoleums of the great Mogul monuments."

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As the biggest trading firm in the world, the British East India Company

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would have to expand its operations in a land with no factories and almost no skilled industrial labour.

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But this had a huge advantage.

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The iron and steel Dalhousie's project needed would keep the British steel mills working overtime

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and provide a boom to British shipping.

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Dalhousie is a forgotten figure in India today,

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but his project became one of the engineering wonders of the world.

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'From here in Calcutta, I'll journey 3,000 miles

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'and back through history from Rajiv Gandhi to the grandeur of the Raj.'

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I'm going to follow the tracks of empire from here in Calcutta

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across the Ganges plain to Delhi and then on to the border with Pakistan.

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I'm not going to stray far from the railways, but the influence

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and importance of this network rises well above the nuts and bolts, the iron and steel.

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If you understand the railways, you can begin to understand India.

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Howrah Station, where I start my journey.

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It's the biggest station in India, and when it was built in 1906,

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Calcutta was still the capital of India.

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'Calcutta was the natural place to begin building

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'the great east-to-west rail route across the country.

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'Several experiments had been carried out

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'on short sections of track since 1850, trying out the new technology,

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'but it was Dalhousie who proposed the grand, unified plan

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'on which much of today's railway is based.'

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How can you tell that these railways were designed by British engineers?

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Well, all the measurements, of course, are feet and inches and yards and all those things.

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Look at this big bolt, here we go... one inch.

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And if you measure the gauge...

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How much is it on the inside?

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66 inches.

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Five foot six, five and a half feet, the standard gauge of the Indian railway.

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As master architect and with an iron determination,

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Lord Dalhousie envisaged a network which would reach right across the subcontinent.

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It would be a network of steel, bringing the country together for the first time.

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The track was laid here in Calcutta in 1854, and within years, the railway was carrying nearly

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20 million passengers and more than three million tons of freight.

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'As I travel across India, I hope to discover the ways in which the railways

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'produced a clash of cultures, the new technology sometimes riding roughshod over ancient India.

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'The formidable difficulties posed by the landscape,

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'the extreme heat, the vast distances,

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'and the unforgiving terrain of desert, jungle and mountain.'

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It is busy, at least I don't have to carry that thing!

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'It's going to be quite a journey.'

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Look at this!

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It's amazing, isn't it? I've just got my bag.

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Perhaps I should put it on my head.

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This is still the most important railway line in India, cutting right across the north of the country.

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It goes through six states and covers more than 1,000 miles.

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First, I'm heading for a town built for the railways and by the railways.

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It's a small hop by Indian standards, but it'll take me all night.

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Right, this is my carriage.

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HA1, that's good.

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First AC, that's first air conditioning.

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Cum AC, two tier, that means you're on two tiers.

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'Right up until independence,

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'Indians were expected to travel third class,

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'whilst the Brits travelled in relative luxury.'

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FAN WHIRRING

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Well, that's good. OK, we've got the fans working.

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I feel cool, feel refreshed, ready for anything.

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Well, we're off.

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'The British rulers never encouraged nationalism.'

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India, with its size and all its diversity, had never existed as an independent nation state.

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But as early as 1885, an Indian official put his faith

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in the railways as a possible means to this end.

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And this is what the official said.

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"If India is ever to achieve solidarity, it must be by means of the railways."

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There are so many questions.

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What did it really take to build this railway?

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And the biggest question of all, why were the railways important,

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first of all in uniting India and then finally, in the end, dividing it?

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'Attention, please. 2321 hours...'

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'Seven hours into our journey, and we've travelled just 290 miles.

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'We're now entering the agricultural heartland of India.'

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This is the great, fertile Ganges plain.

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It looks... It looks green, it's...it's...it's amazing.

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It looks beautiful, but building a railway across this plain was an enormous challenge.

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Swampy marshland for much of the year

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and then a raging overflow from the Ganges during the monsoon.

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The track had to be raised on embankments.

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But this boggy plain was also home to the great curse

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of the railways builders, malaria, and building embankments only created more stagnant water

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in which the malaria-carrying mosquitoes could breed.

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I'm now in Bihar State.

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It's always been one of the poorest areas of India and one of the most troublesome.

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Tourists are put off by the long-running and violent campaign

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mounted by left-wing guerrillas who call themselves Maoists,

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and one of their main targets is the railways.

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'My train arrives at Jamalpur two hours late.

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'As I slept, there was a major incident just a few miles along the track.'

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HORN BLARES

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Well, this is why we were delayed for two hours.

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"Train movement paralysed," it says, "as Maoists blow up the tracks."

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It was an explosion on the line, not our line, thankfully,

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but on a line adjoining us,

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and that put out the system for quite some time.

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It's interesting that it's still an absolute guarantee point that if

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you want to attack the government, first attack the railways.

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Jamalpur owes its existence to the railways.

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It was built for railway workers in 1862.

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Even today, 10,000 rail employees and their dependants live in the town.

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'The British have long since gone,

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'but ghosts are everywhere.'

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Many of the road signs hark back to the Raj.

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Queen's Road, but no longer a Queen.

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The clipped hedges, the manicured lawns.

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Everyone knows his place.

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This is the home of a senior mechanical engineer.

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And the Empire was built like that, on rules and regulations meticulously observed.

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From the Viceroy downwards, continuity was the key.

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Not too much flashy individualism - that might rock the boat.

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The rulers of the Raj could boast that these railway towns - there were quite a few of them -

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would bring progress and prosperity,

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but they were strictly divided on racial lines.

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Indians could work on the railways and as servants, but they couldn't live in this British part of town.

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That would be unthinkable.

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The architect of this great rail network, Governor-General Lord Dalhousie,

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would later claim his railway revolution in India had unleashed the engines of social improvement.

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He believed in the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

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By transforming Indian society, the British, he was convinced,

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would bring material progress and development to India.

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And Lord Dalhousie believed his great railway project could play a major part in transforming society.

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And this is the Anglican church, which I must say looks rather forlorn.

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That's the sign, St Mary's Church, Jamalpur.

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Established 1867.

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And the laundry service, well, I think that's up to the parishioners.

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'For many years, Christian missionaries had been active in India.

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'Any town plan designed for the senior rail staff

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'wouldn't be complete without its churches.'

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This is the Catholic church of the railway workers.

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About 200 families regularly worship here.

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There's also an Anglican church and a Baptist church.

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But if you look in here,

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this is the railwaymen at prayer.

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CONGREGATION SINGING

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The 19th century children's almanac,

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Every Boy's Book Of Railways And Steamships,

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left no room for doubt.

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"Into whatever part of the world the white man penetrates," it said,

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"He takes the Gospel with him."

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So the trains brought the word, and the word was God.

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It's very moving, so much that's familiar, the figure of Christ, the altar, the structure of the mass,

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and so much that's unfamiliar, that warmth, that informality that's particularly Indian.

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And what we're seeing here in this railway town is the way that this

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technology came into India, but all sorts of other things came too with the European rulers.

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Religion, obviously, technology, and India managed to absorb all these influences and, instead of

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rejecting them, they all became part of India, and that's what gives India this extraordinary richness.

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60 years since independence, and another influence is still deeply felt in Indian society.

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Millions of people learn the English language,

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more so than under the Raj.

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But in Jamalpur, it was not the church that ran the school.

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It was the railways.

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'The railways permeate every aspect of life here.

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'In towns like this, people were brought together from all over India.

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'Gujaratis and Tamils, as well as Bengalis, came to live side by side as never before.

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'The people here are railway, through and through.

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'They're in no doubt what they owe to the railways.'

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Are you from all over India?

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What do you do on the railways?

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You want to be an engineer?

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And does your father work on the railways?

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This is your father?

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And what for you is the attraction of working on the railways?

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Belong to the railway?

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And you want to belong to the railway?

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And if you have a son, what would you say to your son?

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So it'll go on and on and on! Yeah. Yeah, I see.

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It carries on, yeah.

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Do you think of yourselves first of all as railwaymen?

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Is that what you think of yourselves as?

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Rail service?

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That's quite a sense of community, isn't it?

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BELL RINGS

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'The nationalised Indian rail network employs one and a half million people.

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'It's the country's biggest employer and the fifth largest in the world.

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'Here, the Prasad family are laying on a special Hindu ceremony to commemorate a railway veteran.'

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It's remembering the father of the family, who died nearly a year ago, and they think that he was 100.

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He's remembered both as a family man and as one of the people that kept the railways going.

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The British ruled India for so long because the majority of Indians gave them active support.

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'Railway staff and their families, then and now,

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'proved to be a first line of defence against those who might be keen to bring down governments.

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'I'm leaving Jamalpur to head to a small town called Ara.'

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Chai!

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Chai! Chai! Chai!

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Chai! Chai! Chai!

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Chai!

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Thank you.

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70 miles further west in Bihar State, Ara is deep in the heart of poor rural India.

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'There, I want to discover how the iron fist of the railways came up against the belligerence of Bihar.'

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'At Ara, the newspapers tell us

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'about more violence from yesterday, which makes me think of yesteryear.'

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For the second day running, terrorists have caught the headlines.

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"Maoists blow up rail tracks, torch vehicles."

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Unrest in Bihar, that would have sounded awfully familiar to the British forces stationed here

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150 years ago at the time of the Indian Mutiny.

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By 1857, the railway builders had achieved what seemed an unstoppable momentum.

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In just three years, they had laid nearly 1,000 miles of track across the subcontinent.

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The engineers had brought Dalhousie's main line to Ara

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just at the moment resentment against Britain boiled over into rebellion.

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And it happened a few hundred metres from the railway.

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Historians in India don't describe this as the Indian Mutiny.

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To them, it's the Rebellion, or more heroically, the First War of Independence.

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In July 1857, a violent mob surrounded this house,

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which belonged to a British railway engineer, Richard Boyle.

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He was one of the great pioneers of the Indian railways.

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At this time, there were just a few hundred British engineers scattered across the subcontinent.

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And like many of them, he'd come to India to make his name

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in the greatest civil engineering project of its time.

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15 Brits and 50 well-armed Sikhs withstood attacks

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from nationalist forces outside of several thousand.

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You can see from this picture from the Illustrated London News what it was like during the siege,

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all round here, how the sandbags were put up to help the defence,

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and here is the plaque which was put up by the Viceroy, Lord Curzon.

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Richard Boyle writes a vivid account of what happened.

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Boyle was amused to begin with when the attackers opened up with two cannons.

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This is what he wrote.

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"There was some degree of amusement when it was ascertained that the contents of the cannon,

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"which came rattling through the defences, consisted chiefly of heavy brass castors,

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"torn by mutineers from pianos, easy chairs and couches."

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But soon it was the defenders who were rattled, and Boyle's tone changes markedly.

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He says, "Hope and trust and reliance on providence and on each other

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"cheered and supported the little band of heroes."

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'Boyle's story, The Siege Of The Little House At Ara,

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'was perfectly judged propaganda to prepare the way for a savage British response to the mutiny.

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'After eight days, the siege ended with something of an anticlimax.

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'The rebels withdrew, perhaps encouraged by the fact

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'that 400 British soldiers were on their way to retake the town.'

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Boyle, the railway engineer, lived to tell the tale

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and went on to help build the Japanese railways.

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For the first time, the railways and what they represented had become a battleground.

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This is a portrait of the rebel leader, Kunwar Singh,

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and he is, of course, a local hero, a nationalist.

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He led the forces that surrounded this place,

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and he, of course, is commemorated and not our man, Richard Boyle.

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'Professor Anil Sree teaches history and politics, here at the university.'

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Why were the railways the target of the nationalist forces?

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Will be captured by them, so the nationalist forces, the railway was the first target.

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-Yes, that was the first target.

-The interesting point here is that the railways had arrived at Ara.

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It was in fact the main line from Calcutta that had come here.

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So we see the dissatisfaction with the railways very early on.

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1857, there comes the mutiny, what do you attack? The railways.

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Cripple the British economy.

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The siege at Boyle's house in Ara came at the beginning of India's long struggle for freedom.

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And even today, the spirit of revolution lives on.

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The rebel leader, Kunwar Singh, who was 80 at the time, is revered by today's students.

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They see him as one of the first great nationalists, a freedom fighter, fully endorsed by history.

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-Vir Kunwar Singh!

-Amara!

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-Vir Kunwar Singh!

-Amara!

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THEY ALL CHANT

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Tell me what you were saying on the podium.

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We were chanting, "Vir Kunwar Singh, amara."

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Why is he such a great man?

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But when we look at this and we see the house and we see the plaque,

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which obviously celebrates the heroism of the British who were in there...

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And he was the hero.

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-He was the only hero.

-Yes, yes.

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So the men in the house...

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But they were brave, though, weren't they?

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Right, whereas he was...

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he was there... to save the country?

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But what aspects of the British rule do you think were good?

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-Than any of these things? Your own freedom.

-Yes.

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-do you ever think that the British did some good things for India?

-Yeah, of course.

0:29:320:29:36

They have given us railways!

0:29:360:29:39

The Mutiny of 1967 marked a dramatic change in British relations with India.

0:29:430:29:49

'The myth that continuing British rule was somehow inevitable had been exploded.

0:29:490:29:56

'There was plenty of soul-searching. At Westminster, the reaction was not to go easy, but to get tough.'

0:29:560:30:03

Lord Dalhousie was the Governor-General who took much of the blame for the Indian Mutiny.

0:30:030:30:08

He was particularly criticised for annexing large areas of the country

0:30:080:30:12

and putting them under direct British rule.

0:30:120:30:14

But paradoxically, it was his brainchild, the railway network, which helped quell the revolt.

0:30:140:30:21

For the first time, troops could be moved quickly and easily.

0:30:210:30:25

It was, in every sense, a grip of iron,

0:30:250:30:27

and some years later, a senior British official boasted,

0:30:270:30:32

"Provided with this additional source of energy and strength,

0:30:320:30:37

"should an enemy again be rash enough to threaten our territory,

0:30:370:30:41

"he would find a wall of iron, bristling with British bayonets,

0:30:410:30:45

"our munitions of war at hand and our guns in position.

0:30:450:30:49

"Work so formidable to our enemies, so useful to ourselves,

0:30:490:30:54

"the power of the paramount authority in India."

0:30:540:30:58

'For the British, the Mutiny underlined the importance of tightening the Imperial grip.

0:31:030:31:07

'In 1857, the East India Company was relieved of its position as the go-between.'

0:31:070:31:13

Her Majesty's Government was put directly in charge.

0:31:130:31:17

The Raj was born.

0:31:170:31:21

And the railway network consolidated British rule.

0:31:210:31:24

This new phase in India's history was marked by a boom in railway building

0:31:270:31:32

that would see the network expand across the country.

0:31:320:31:36

In just ten years, another 3,000 miles of track were added.

0:31:360:31:40

The rapid mobilisation of troops, the distribution of weaponry and ammunition,

0:31:400:31:46

even a special armoured gun train, all added to British power.

0:31:460:31:52

By 1871, the railways employed 70,000 permanent staff,

0:31:550:32:02

and there were many workshop towns like Jamalpur.

0:32:020:32:05

India was experiencing an industrial revolution, courtesy of the British Empire.

0:32:060:32:12

For the first time, India, under the Raj, had a government

0:32:160:32:20

which could effectively control the entire country.

0:32:200:32:24

As the nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi ruefully observed,

0:32:240:32:28

"But for the railways, the English could not have such a hold on India as they have."

0:32:280:32:35

By the 1880s, over 10,000 miles of track had been laid.

0:32:470:32:52

Advancing at the rate of almost two miles a day, the railways builders

0:32:520:32:56

were conquering a country five times the size of France.

0:32:560:33:00

Jungles were tamed, deserts crossed, and mountains tunnelled through.

0:33:000:33:05

Never in history had an engineering project been so ambitious in scale.

0:33:050:33:10

From Ara, the railway forces its way for 110 miles

0:33:140:33:19

across the great Ganges flood plain, to arrive on the banks of the River Ganges at Varanasi.

0:33:190:33:26

Nothing, not even a sacred river, was going to get in the way of Dalhousie's Imperial railway.

0:33:260:33:33

This was the scene of one of the most ambitious feats of construction so far -

0:33:400:33:45

the mile-long Dufferin bridge.

0:33:450:33:48

A local engineering professor, PK Singh, promotes this fine example

0:33:480:33:53

of Victorian engineering in his classroom.

0:33:530:33:55

-It's a magnificent bridge, isn't it?

-Yeah.

0:33:550:33:58

-A miracle?

-Yeah.

0:34:160:34:17

I've got some pictures here of the time. They're actually of bridge building in general.

0:34:170:34:22

Some of them are of this bridge. It's extraordinary, isn't it?

0:34:220:34:25

Building great big pillars, sinking them into the ground.

0:34:250:34:29

7,000 men worked on the project.

0:34:290:34:32

An entire town had to be built simply to house them and their families.

0:34:320:34:37

They even had their own narrow-gauge railway.

0:34:380:34:44

The British engineers in charge of the construction had to adapt their building techniques for India.

0:34:440:34:50

The vast rivers of the subcontinent demanded immensely strong bridges

0:34:500:34:56

to withstand the devastating floodwaters of the monsoon.

0:34:560:35:00

It meant that millions of tons of material for the bridge's vast iron and steel spans

0:35:000:35:07

had to be shipped from Britain.

0:35:070:35:09

That's from the top of the bridge, looking down over it.

0:35:090:35:12

You can see some of the thousands of workers at work on it.

0:35:120:35:16

Yeah, working. A large number of labourers working.

0:35:160:35:19

They are busy with the completion work, yeah.

0:35:190:35:22

Later, these came to be called Meccano bridges.

0:35:240:35:28

But this was no toy.

0:35:280:35:29

Using the latest technology and an army of native workmen,

0:35:310:35:35

they built huge brick pillars to support the structure.

0:35:350:35:39

Some had to be sunk as deep as 140 feet beneath the river bed.

0:35:390:35:45

But the bridge was completed on time for Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887.

0:35:450:35:50

The chronicler of empire, Rudyard Kipling, caught the intense drama of the bridge builders at work.

0:35:540:36:01

He wrote, "And the very look of their toil, even in the bright sunshine, is devilish.

0:36:030:36:08

"Pale flames from the fires for the red-hot rivets sought out from all parts of the black ironwork,

0:36:080:36:15

"where men hang and cluster like bees."

0:36:150:36:18

But the bridge had been built directly above the holiest site in the country - the Ghats of Varanasi.

0:36:180:36:25

The scene was set for a clash of cultures.

0:36:250:36:28

The latest foreign technology matched against one of the greatest forces of Indian religion

0:36:280:36:36

along the River Ganges, Mother Ganga herself.

0:36:360:36:39

When the bridge was built, how much opposition was there from the people here?

0:36:460:36:50

'Rudyard Kipling, who was born in India, recognised this as a huge struggle

0:37:240:37:29

'between ancient India and the modern British Empire.

0:37:290:37:33

'He wrote a short story called The Bridge Builders.

0:37:330:37:36

'It was a metaphor, in which an engineer battles with

0:37:360:37:39

'India's holy river as it threatens to sweep away his railway bridge.'

0:37:390:37:44

This is what he wrote. "Government might listen, perhaps, but his own kind, engineers,

0:37:500:37:55

"would judge him by his bridge as that stood or fell.

0:37:550:38:00

"His side of the sum was beyond question.

0:38:000:38:04

"But what man knew Mother Ganga's arithmetic?"

0:38:040:38:08

And so we're back to the eternal argument about

0:38:110:38:14

technical development, whether it really does mean progress.

0:38:140:38:20

'When this bridge was built, there were plenty of people

0:38:200:38:22

'on the banks of the Ganges who would happily have done without it.'

0:38:220:38:26

It's hard to exaggerate the importance of the opposition to

0:38:330:38:37

the bridge when it was first built. The Ganges, India's holiest river.

0:38:370:38:42

And to have this great 19th century intrusion of the ruling power

0:38:420:38:46

plonked into these waters was horrendous for the people here.

0:38:460:38:51

It was like a mob suddenly rushing through into a cathedral during a service.

0:38:510:38:55

This is a very sacred area, and to have the modern world

0:38:550:39:00

suddenly imposed upon it was a terrific shock to the community.

0:39:000:39:05

In Kipling's story, the bridge survives.

0:39:070:39:10

Victorian engineering triumphs over India's ancient gods and the great River Ganges.

0:39:100:39:17

But here in Varanasi, people eventually came to embrace the railway age.

0:39:170:39:24

To bathe in the Ganges is for many a holy rite,

0:39:240:39:27

and the railways made that possible for millions of pilgrims.

0:39:270:39:31

The railways seemed to be a force for good.

0:39:310:39:35

But India's spiritual leader, the great nationalist Mahatma Gandhi, did not approve.

0:39:350:39:42

Gandhi argued that the railways soon devalued the purity of pilgrimages.

0:39:420:39:48

The wrong sort of people were attracted.

0:39:480:39:50

He wrote, "The holy places of India have become unholy.

0:39:500:39:55

"Formerly, people went to these places with very great difficulty.

0:39:550:39:59

"Generally, therefore, only the real devotees visited such places.

0:39:590:40:04

"Nowadays, rogues visit them to practise their roguery."

0:40:040:40:09

But the economic effect on religious centres such as Varanasi was incredible.

0:40:090:40:15

Quickly, pilgrimages became big business.

0:40:150:40:18

And even now, on a typical day, a million people will come here.

0:40:180:40:23

Most of them will travel by train.

0:40:230:40:25

DRUMS BEATING, BELLS RINGING

0:40:280:40:31

And what is it representing?

0:40:410:40:43

-What are we doing?

-We are offering prayer to the Mother Ganges.

0:40:430:40:48

'Every evening, pilgrims from all over India make offerings at the water's edge.'

0:40:480:40:53

This is our way of thanking... thanking her.

0:40:530:40:57

Thanking and offering our prayer.

0:40:570:40:59

She provides us salvation in the end.

0:40:590:41:03

By the early 20th century, 35,000 miles of railway track

0:41:030:41:08

had been built, carrying 80 million tons of goods every year.

0:41:080:41:13

The railways were bringing industry,

0:41:180:41:20

untapping India's vast natural resources

0:41:200:41:23

and transporting nearly 500 million passengers.

0:41:230:41:27

India as an idea became possible.

0:41:300:41:33

Communities separated by vast distances,

0:41:330:41:37

intense local traditions and a plethora of languages

0:41:370:41:42

found, often to their surprise, that they could work well together.

0:41:420:41:46

But one important figure, Mahatma Gandhi,

0:41:460:41:49

endlessly attacked the railways as little more than evil.

0:41:490:41:54

After becoming leader of the Indian National Congress, he gave full vent

0:41:540:41:59

to his ideas on how the power and scale of the railways were the means by which Britain plundered India.

0:41:590:42:06

'An historian, Dr Rudrimshu Mukherjee, is an expert on Gandhi.'

0:42:060:42:13

One part of him, the practical part of him, if you like, was reconciled

0:42:130:42:19

to railways and the benefits that the railways brought in terms of travel.

0:42:190:42:24

But, as an idea, I don't think he ever accepted that modernity,

0:42:240:42:30

-of which the railways were a part, could be anything but evil.

-That's a very strong statement, isn't it?

0:42:300:42:37

It is strong, but Gandhi strongly believed in this because he believed that

0:42:370:42:41

the railways were bringing in modern - and by modern, he meant western/industrial -

0:42:410:42:49

-civilisation into India.

-Which he disapproved of?

0:42:490:42:53

Completely. Because he believed industrial civilisation

0:42:530:42:56

was based on greed and violence, and he stood for non-violence.

0:42:560:43:00

Therefore, railways were an agent of evil.

0:43:000:43:02

Gandhi is also extolling the virtues of a simple life,

0:43:020:43:07

and he says, "Good travels at a snail's pace."

0:43:070:43:10

So he doesn't even like the speed of the railways.

0:43:100:43:13

He didn't like the speed of anything.

0:43:130:43:15

You know, he didn't believe that things could happen fast and overnight.

0:43:150:43:20

He neither liked good travelling fast or goods travelling fast.

0:43:200:43:26

In fact, he didn't believe goods should travel any great distance at all.

0:43:260:43:30

You should be self-sufficient.

0:43:300:43:32

Self-sufficient in that small little area that one lived in.

0:43:320:43:38

Gandhi saw the railways' huge growth as a threat to Indian society itself.

0:43:440:43:49

An exploitation of its resources, sucking away its wealth and destroying its culture.

0:43:490:43:56

But there's a paradox at the heart of Gandhi's stance.

0:43:570:44:00

The railways were the only way he could tour the country, and only by using the railways

0:44:000:44:06

could nationalist literature be disseminated across the subcontinent.

0:44:060:44:12

Gandhi needed the railways he despised to turn himself into a nationalist hero.

0:44:120:44:18

And on 15 August 1847, it seemed Mahatma Gandhi and the nationalists had finally got their way.

0:44:200:44:28

India became an independent state.

0:44:280:44:31

But what should have been India's greatest moment would quickly turn into its greatest tragedy.

0:44:310:44:38

Under the Raj, the two biggest communities, the Hindus and the Muslims,

0:44:380:44:43

had managed to live together, often in separate areas, but not in separate states.

0:44:430:44:49

The British held the ring. Only when independence was threatened by Muslims

0:44:490:44:54

demanding a state of their own did the British reluctantly agree.

0:44:540:44:59

West and East Pakistan were formed.

0:44:590:45:02

But the partition of India would turn into a tragedy on an almost unbelievable scale.

0:45:020:45:08

And a large part of that tragedy would be played out on the railways.

0:45:080:45:11

'Journalist Kuldip Nayar, a Hindu, was 25 when he discovered,

0:45:140:45:19

'to his horror, he was trapped on the Muslim side of the new frontier.'

0:45:190:45:23

I'm travelling with him to the Indian city of Amritsar,

0:45:250:45:29

which is only 18 miles from the present-day border with Pakistan.

0:45:290:45:33

The railway station at Amritsar was the scene for an atrocity which left a terrible legacy.

0:45:330:45:40

We're going to go to Amritsar because you have

0:45:400:45:43

a personal story to tell, don't you, about partition?

0:45:430:45:46

Kuldip was from a small town called Sialkot in the Punjab.

0:45:550:46:01

Because of partition, he, like millions of others,

0:46:010:46:04

awoke one day to find himself no longer welcome in his own country.

0:46:040:46:09

For many people, partition was the worst moment in Indian history. It was just so violent.

0:46:150:46:20

As politicians desperately tried to make the new agreement work, millions of people took their lives

0:47:020:47:07

into their own hands and fled in terror.

0:47:070:47:11

The refugees wanted to escape as far and as fast as possible. And that meant travelling by train.

0:47:110:47:18

The price of failure was often just all too apparent.

0:47:180:47:23

Stations became battlegrounds.

0:47:230:47:26

Bodies were abandoned.

0:47:260:47:28

Where the refugees were trying to go depended solely

0:47:280:47:32

on where they thought they could find a friendly reception.

0:47:320:47:35

Muslims were desperate to travel across the Pakistan border.

0:47:350:47:40

Hindus to go the other way, to India.

0:47:400:47:43

The Sikhs of Amritsar were thankful their town and their holiest shrine was on the Indian side.

0:47:450:47:53

That is the scene, isn't it?

0:47:550:47:57

It was a savage time.

0:48:320:48:34

In just a few months, 2.5 million people had crossed the borders in search of a new home.

0:48:390:48:45

They were transported in almost 700 trains.

0:48:450:48:49

Each journey carried the threat of sudden violence.

0:48:490:48:54

So, Kuldip, take me back to that date in September. What happened?

0:48:540:48:59

You were on the other side of the border. What happened?

0:48:590:49:02

Really?

0:49:230:49:24

-You had to prove that you were a Hindu?

-Yes.

0:49:270:49:30

And how did you do that?

0:49:300:49:32

Circumcision?

0:49:380:49:41

A trial? Yeah.

0:49:420:49:44

You had to take your trousers down?

0:49:490:49:53

The feelings and the emotions of the people who remember what happened

0:50:210:50:25

here on this station, they're so raw still, they're so vivid.

0:50:250:50:30

This happened more than 60 years ago, but they can remember it

0:50:300:50:34

with tremendous clarity, but also with a sense of loss, that the life

0:50:340:50:39

that they led before was so much better in terms of relations between Hindus and Sikhs and Muslims.

0:50:390:50:47

And they now realise that there's no going back and that this argument between India and Pakistan goes on

0:50:470:50:54

and on, and relations between the two countries are still as bad

0:50:540:50:58

as ever because of what happened in this area more than 60 years ago.

0:50:580:51:04

Between the great bridge-building projects of the late 19th century

0:51:090:51:14

and 1947, the rail network doubled in size, to 40,000 miles in length.

0:51:140:51:21

But because India's railways had been constructed to serve British

0:51:210:51:24

interests first and foremost, partition had a devastating effect on the railways themselves.

0:51:240:51:32

The network was ruthlessly dismembered in a way which made little practical sense.

0:51:330:51:40

Both India and Pakistan's main lines simply stopped at their new political border.

0:51:400:51:45

'Pakistan was left with lines whose prime purpose

0:51:470:51:51

'was to transport goods to the ports and cities of the old Indian empire.

0:51:510:51:57

'The east-west main line, as envisaged by

0:52:030:52:06

'the rail network's creator, Governor-General Lord Dalhousie,

0:52:060:52:11

'today stretches from Calcutta to just past Amritsar, a distance of nearly 1,200 miles.

0:52:110:52:18

'These tracks are, in effect, going nowhere.'

0:52:200:52:24

Just two trains a week cross into Pakistan.

0:52:290:52:33

I'm stopping here at the border.

0:52:330:52:36

CHANTING AND SHOUTING

0:52:470:52:51

At the official border crossing, a ceremony is held which has the effect of

0:52:530:52:58

highlighting the differences between the two countries.

0:52:580:53:02

CHANTING AND SHOUTING

0:53:020:53:06

What they're shouting is, "Long live India! Long live India!"

0:53:100:53:14

And you've got this extraordinary, theatrical scene,

0:53:140:53:17

both sides of the border shouting out their slogans, showing how patriotic they are.

0:53:170:53:23

Every evening, the Indian and Pakistan border guards try to outdo each other in military swagger.

0:53:350:53:42

Crowds on both sides raucously chant their support.

0:53:420:53:46

This is one of the two official crossings between India and Pakistan.

0:53:460:53:52

In this nightly ritual, the guards briefly set foot

0:53:520:53:56

in their neighbours' territory, only to slam the gate shut on their shared history.

0:53:560:54:02

It's a pantomime which disguises the tragedy of modern India.

0:54:020:54:07

Mahatma Gandhi became the spiritual leader and father

0:54:070:54:11

of an independent India at the cost of India itself.

0:54:110:54:15

The India of the Raj, partly created and sustained by the railway network, was now derailed.

0:54:150:54:23

FANFARE

0:54:280:54:31

If there was a real war between India and Pakistan, it wouldn't be a phoney confrontation like this.

0:54:340:54:40

Both sides are armed with nuclear weapons,

0:54:400:54:42

and Armageddon would beckon.

0:54:420:54:45

But for the time being, they are content with having these mock battles,

0:54:450:54:48

where they spend their time sprucing up and then flaunting their improbable uniforms.

0:54:480:54:56

'I came to India to ride the rails, to discover

0:55:040:55:07

'how they were constructed and to explore their legacy.

0:55:070:55:11

'Here at the border, it's obvious that railways aren't always built along straight lines.

0:55:110:55:17

'They bend, and sometimes break, with the politics of the country - and nowhere more so than here.'

0:55:170:55:24

To have the Indian railways effectively stopping here, on the border with Pakistan,

0:55:240:55:30

would have seemed particularly pointless

0:55:300:55:33

to the 19th century Governor-General and railway pioneer, Lord Dalhousie.

0:55:330:55:38

For him, the railway network was a way of exerting power

0:55:380:55:42

from West Pakistan right across the subcontinent to Burma.

0:55:420:55:47

To have this great divide between India and Pakistan

0:55:470:55:51

would have seemed to him like the total failure of his Imperial dream.

0:55:510:55:56

What has come across so strongly in my journey is that both Dalhousie

0:55:580:56:02

and Gandhi, in their own ways, had exactly the same aim -

0:56:020:56:07

to unite India.

0:56:070:56:10

Gandhi lived to see independence and the tragedy of partition.

0:56:100:56:14

But he died before the last of the British troops left the country.

0:56:140:56:19

In life, he claimed the railways were inherently evil.

0:56:190:56:23

But in death, his ashes would be taken across India in state by train.

0:56:230:56:29

Not only that, but his ashes were scattered in the holy waters of Mother Ganga,

0:56:300:56:36

the river Ganges, which the Victorians' love of technology had threatened to defile in Varanasi.

0:56:360:56:43

'After all their work to unite India, it was a cruel irony

0:56:460:56:50

'that when the British left here, India was divided.'

0:56:500:56:53

The benefits of the Imperial legacy are still open to argument.

0:56:530:56:58

The tracks of empire are made of more than iron and steel.

0:56:580:57:02

The English language, the legal system, even democracy, they too spread out across the country.

0:57:020:57:07

And it was the railways which helped take them there.

0:57:090:57:13

First proposed by Lord Dalhousie 160 years ago, the railways have become central

0:57:130:57:18

to the life of the independent nation Gandhi fought so hard to create.

0:57:180:57:22

He's revered above so many others in India, and so are the railways.

0:57:220:57:29

As Dalhousie himself wrote in his famous memorandum,

0:57:310:57:35

"A magnificent system of railway communication would present

0:57:350:57:38

"a series of public monuments vastly surpassing in real grandeur the aqueducts of Rome, the pyramids

0:57:380:57:46

"of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, the temples, palaces and mausoleums of the great Mogul monuments."

0:57:460:57:53

But the rail network is far from being a monument or a mausoleum.

0:57:560:58:00

The legacy left by the railways builders enables 13 million Indians every day

0:58:000:58:05

to travel the length and breadth of their nation -

0:58:050:58:09

the fourth biggest railway in the world in the largest democracy.

0:58:090:58:15

India without the railways?

0:58:150:58:17

It just wouldn't be possible.

0:58:170:58:19

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0:58:400:58:43

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0:58:430:58:46

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