In a recent conversation with Garvita Khybri of The Quint, Professor (Dr.) Arup K. Chatterjee elucidated the intellectual and affective impulses that shaped his latest monograph, The Purveyors of Destiny: A Cultural Biography of the Indian Railways (Bloomsbury 2017). Across a range of topics—from imperial historiography to Bollywood iconography—Dr. Chatterjee’s reflections underscore the railway as both public institution and cultural protagonist in South Asia’s modern narrative.

Genesis of the Project

When asked why he elected to centre his study on the railways, Dr. Chatterjee explained that his longstanding engagement with British imperial history, particularly its nineteenth-century articulations in India, naturally led him to examine a public institution that encapsulates colonial ambition and postcolonial transformation. “I wanted to write something about a public institution,” he noted, and he quickly recognized that “there is no better character or protagonist to reflect the destiny of India than the Indian railways.” Here, Dr. Chatterjee positions the railway as a metonym for national experience, capable of encompassing legislative debates, engineering feats, and popular memory.

Nostalgia and Lived Experience

Khybri’s inquiry into Dr. Chatterjee’s personal railway memories elicited candid anecdotes of unconfirmed tickets, nocturnal vestibule sojourns, and episodic lavatory travel. Far from mere nostalgia, these recollections became meaningful additions to his railway “repertoire.” Dr. Chatterjee further acknowledged that his experiences, ranging from humiliations in third-class compartments to moments of aristocratic travel, afforded him an embodied understanding of social hierarchies and affective intensities that feature prominently in his cultural analysis.

Bollywood’s Railway Imaginary

The interview then turned to the cinematic portrayal of trains, an arena where popular culture and national imagination intersect. Dr. Chatterjee observed that until the Partition era, railways in Indian cinema functioned primarily as signifiers of oppression or aristocracy, often accompanied by depictions of bloodshed. However, with the advent of Eastman Color in the 1960s, trains acquired a “national character”, shedding earlier colonial connotations and assuming roles in romantic narration. In films such as Aradhana, the song “Mere Sapno Ki Rani” exemplifies how the Darjeeling–Himalayan Railway transcended mere backdrop status to become intimately linked with the persona of its protagonists—notably Rajesh Khanna, Sharmila Tagore, and, in later decades, Shah Rukh Khan.

Macrocosm of India within the Coach

Dr. Chatterjee’s analysis extends beyond individual song-and-dance sequences to the social microcosm enacted within railway compartments. He highlighted Kishore Kumar’s repertoire of songs set in moving coaches, where diverse communities, castes, and gender roles converge in transit—an affective tableau that mirrors India’s pluralism. Moreover, in contemporary titles such as Dil Se, Saathiya, and Parineeta, the male protagonist frequently “subsumes the characteristics of the railways,” becoming both narrative driver and symbolic locus of national aspiration.

Toward a Cultural Biography

Throughout the dialogue, Dr. Chatterjee reaffirmed his commitment to the cultural biography approach: treating the railway’s material artifacts—tickets, timetables, station architecture—as primary sources for historiographical inquiry. In The Purveyors of Destiny, he traces a lineage of representations—from parliamentary debates in the 1840s to documentary filmmaking in the twenty-first century—demonstrating how each medium reconfigures the railway’s meaning and social function.

This interview with Garvita Khybri offers a tempered yet compelling overview of Dr. Chatterjee’s project. By weaving together imperial archives, personal memoir, and filmic representation, he crafts a multifaceted narrative in which the Indian railways emerge not only as an engineering system but also as a living repository of cultural memory. As The Purveyors of Destiny attests, the railway’s tracks chart more than geography—they map the aspirations, conflicts, and affective lives of a nation in motion.