Speaking in Cambridge in 1880, a high official of the British Raj named Sir John Strachey said that the “first and most essential thing to learn about India” is that “there is not, and there never was an India”. Strachey thought it “conceivable that national sympathies may arise in particular Indian countries”, but “that they should ever extend to India generally, that men of the Punjab, Bengal, the Northwestern Provinces, and Madras, should ever feel that they belong to one Indian nation, is impossible”.
One hundred and twenty-five years after Strachey issued this verdict, I was driving from Patiala to Amritsar, a day’s journey during which I traversed almost the whole breadth of the Indian province of Punjab. Early on, my car was held up by a level crossing. A goods train passed by leisurely, and I read the signs on the wagons – SR, NR, SCR, SER, WR – the “R”standing always for “Railway”, the other letters for the different regional branches of India’s greatest and most genuinely public-service organisation. In the course of their wanderings over the years, the wagons had got all mixed up, so that one which rightfully belonged to the Northern Railway was placed next to one that was the property of the South Central Railway, and so on.
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