Lines of the Nation radically recasts the history of the Indian
railways, which have long been regarded as vectors of modernity and
economic prosperity. From the design of carriages to the architecture of
stations, employment hierarchies, and the construction of employee
housing, Laura Bear explores the new public spaces and social
relationships created by the railway bureaucracy. She then traces their
influence on the formation of contemporary Indian nationalism, personal
sentiments, and popular memory. Her probing study challenges entrenched
beliefs concerning the institutions of modernity and capitalism by
showing that these rework older idioms of social distinction and are
legitimized by forms of intimate, affective politics.
Drawing on historical and ethnographic research in the company town at
Kharagpur and at the Eastern Railway headquarters in Kolkata (Calcutta),
Bear focuses on how political and domestic practices among workers
became entangled with the moralities and archival technologies of the
railway bureaucracy and illuminates the impact of this history today.
The bureaucracy has played a pivotal role in the creation of idioms of
family history, kinship, and ethics, and its special categorization of
Anglo-Indian workers still resonates. Anglo-Indians were formed as a
separate railway caste by Raj-era racial employment and housing
policies, and other railway workers continue to see them as remnants of
the colonial past and as a polluting influence.
The experiences of Anglo-Indians, who are at the core of the
ethnography, reveal the consequences of attempts to make political
communities legitimate in family lines and sentiments. Their situation
also compels us to rethink the importance of documentary practices and
nationalism to all family histories and senses of relatedness. This
interdisciplinary anthropological history throws new light not only on
the imperial and national past of South Asia but also on the moral life
of present technologies and economic institutions.
