In March 2025, the India International Centre in New Delhi hosted the official launch of Professor Arup K. Chatterjee’s The Purveyors of Destiny: A Cultural Biography of the Indian Railways (Bloomsbury, 2017). The event was convened under the aegis of O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) and presided over by its Founding Vice Chancellor, Professor (Dr.) C. Raj Kumar. The Honorable Minister for Railways, Mr. Suresh Prabhu, served as Chief Guest. Also present as the Guest of Honor was Mr. Shakti Sinha, Director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, alongside members of JGU’s faculty, student body, and invited scholars from related disciplines. The panel discussion was attended by bestselling author and eminent scholar, Dr. Manu Pillai, the author and scholar, Professor (Dr) Amit Ranjan, and the renowned publisher, Paul Vinay Kumar of Bloomsbury.

Institutional Framing and Inaugural Address

Professor C. Raj Kumar opened the proceedings by situating The Purveyors of Destiny within the broader trajectory of Indian nonfiction. He observed that the volume defies easy categorization as conventional history or literary memoir, instead constituting a “cultural biography” that treats the railway network as a “living institution.” In so doing, he argued, Professor Chatterjee elucidates how the Indian Railways both shaped and were shaped by colonial imperatives, nationalist movements, and popular culture. The Vice Chancellor quoted the author’s own assertion that the railway’s material culture—including locomotives, stations, tickets, and timetables—functions as a primary archive through which to interpret India’s socio-political transformations.

Ministerial Commendation

In his message, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu conveyed his deep appreciation for Professor Chatterjee’s erudition and narrative skill. He noted that the book’s examination of the railway’s multiple dimensions—economic, administrative, architectural, and cultural—offers invaluable insights for policymakers, historians, and the general public alike. Minister Prabhu further commended JGU for fostering interdisciplinary scholarship that extends institutional study beyond technical and economic analyses to encompass the symbolic and affective life of one of India’s most critical public enterprises.

Scholarly Reflections by Shakti Sinha

Following the formal addresses, Mr. Shakti Sinha offered a critical appraisal of the volume’s methodology and thematic scope. Drawing upon his experience at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Sinha praised the book’s non-linear structure, which interweaves detailed archival research with evocative vignettes from railway literature and film. He highlighted two salient contributions: first, the author’s demonstration that the railway originated as an outsourced, profit-driven enterprise serving imperial logistics; second, the sustained analysis of how literary and cinematic texts—from Rudyard Kipling’s hill-station ballads to Gandhi’s mass mobilization tours—have represented and reconfigured the railway’s symbolic import. Sinha characterized The Purveyors of Destiny as both a corrective to triumphalist histories and a call to attend to the railway’s ongoing cultural salience.

Authorial Response

Professor Chatterjee’s address acknowledged both the scholarly and logistical challenges of composing a study of such institutional magnitude. He emphasized that every railway journey constitutes a “mobile social microcosm,” in which disparate classes and communities converge within shared carriages and stations. Recounting personal experiences—ranging from sleeping in vestibules to negotiating third-class lavatories—the author demonstrated how even the most mundane aspects of travel encode profound social hierarchies and affective histories. Visual excerpts from the book’s illustrative plates accompanied his remarks, including nineteenth‐century maps of coal-transport lines near Chennai and architectural drawings of Gothic‐style stations at Howrah and Victoria Terminus. These images were deployed to substantiate two central claims: that colonial railway expansion prioritized strategic resource extraction and troop movement, and that its subsequent representations in literature and film have perpetually reshaped national narratives of modernity, mobility, and resistance.

Interdisciplinary Significance and Future Directions

In concluding the event, Professor Kumar underscored JGU’s commitment to interdisciplinary inquiry, noting that The Purveyors of Destiny intersects with fields as diverse as postcolonial studies, urban sociology, economic history, and spatial theory. He proposed that the book’s cultural-biographical approach might serve as a model for future examinations of India’s public institutions, from postal services to higher education. Both Kumar and Chatterjee expressed hopes that the volume would catalyze further research into the symbolic dimensions of infrastructure, encouraging scholars to move beyond statistical and policy analyses to attend to the emotional geographies and narrative genealogies that underlie India’s public life.

Audience Engagement and Concluding Remarks

The formal launch was followed by an interactive question-and-answer session, during which attendees inquired about the author’s archival strategies, his use of film and literary sources, and the relevance of his findings for contemporary railway policy. Chatterjee responded with reflections on the challenges of synthesizing vast technical data with cultural interpretation, and on the importance of preserving oral histories and ephemeral ephemera—such as station posters and hand-written tickets—that often elude institutional archives.

It was evident that The Purveyors of Destiny had not only garnered high-level endorsement but also stimulated robust scholarly dialogue. In hosting this launch, O.P. Jindal Global University reaffirmed its role as a site for rigorous, boundary-crossing research, and the Indian Railways—as reflected in Professor Chatterjee’s cultural biography—emerged as an institution whose iron pathways continue to shape the nation’s economic structures, cultural imaginaries, and collective destinies.