“Colour” Clashes in Colonial Coaches: Everyday Experiences of the Baboos in Railways

Abstract

This article examines a distinctive and debated social group called the “Baboos” in late colonial India, particularly in Bengal. The Baboos represented the Western-educated, aspiring middle class who were integral to the British administration. They were often viewed skeptically for adopting the English language and Western lifestyle. This study delves into the quotidian lives of the Baboos, particularly their interactions with the colonial rulers in public transport, which became a crucial contact zone. Despite facing racial conflicts and discrimination in these shared spaces, the Baboos were not passive victims. They used diverse strategies to combat injustices and voice their grievances publicly. Within this larger narrative of discriminating treatment, another power narrative was played out by the Baboos among their own population. Conscious of their distinct functional status, the Baboos sought to distance themselves from those Indians who did not match their ideas of “respect”. Everyday experiences formed the basis of the public outrage reflected continually in regional newspapers and, subsequently, in the larger narratives of resistance and nationalism. How the Baboos negotiated their position in the public spaces sheds light on their claims of civil rights and their ways of using the colonizer’s tropes of equality, justice, and fairness back at them.

1. Introduction

Bengal was connected to the developing railway networks of colonial India from 27 June 1854 (just one year after Indian railways started in 1853 from Bombay to Thane) (Das 1957). Calcutta, the seat of the British Empire, became closely associated with the famous Howrah station across the Ganges. The newspapers reported immense curiosity and enthusiasm among the “natives” when the first trial trip with a passenger train was made from Howrah to Panduah on 15 July 1854. The Bengal Hurkaru (1854) also describes how the “natives” initially perceived the railways as a “car of fire” which might “shorten the journey of human life” just the way it “curtailed the length of every other journey”.1 However, within a few days, the prejudice around railways slowly faded away, and it was “crowded by Calcutta Baboos” (Ibid.). Since its inception, the railways, which provided speed and connectivity to the Indian masses, particularly the middle classes, supporting their “material progress” (Ibid.), also became a fertile ground for racial antagonism, class prejudice, and gender anxieties.

This article aims to study the everyday skirmishes and violence confronted by the Baboos—an aspirational urban social group in late nineteenth-century Bengal—while traveling on railways and incidents occurring in the ancillary areas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, particularly in the province of Bengal.

In the famous Hobson-Jobson dictionary of Anglo–Indian terms, a Baboo is defined as:

BABOO, s. Beng. and H. Bābū (Skt. vapra, “a father”). Properly a term of respect attached to a name, like Master or Mr., and formerly in some parts of Hindustan, applied to certain persons of distinction. Its application as a term of respect is now almost or altogether confined to Lower Bengal …In Bengal and elsewhere, among Anglo-Indians, it is often used with a slight savor of disparagement, as characterizing a superficially cultivated but too often effeminate Bengali. And from the extensive employment of the class, to which the term was applied as a title, in the capacity of clerks in English offices, the word has come often to signify a “native clerk who writes English”.

(Yule and Burnell [1886] 1968, p. 44)

The Baboos, who constituted the Western-educated middle class of Bengal, found themselves ridiculed and despised in colonial newspapers and journals, in official discourse and literature. Ironically, the very fixation on stereotypes that fed the appetite of the colonial discourse of moral and racial supremacy ended up being precisely the factor that got the “natives” to take on the terms of this stereotype in the complex processes of identity construction (Vrudhula 1999). The celebrated novelist of Bengal and composer of the Indian patriotic hymn Vande Mataram, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838–1894), in his satirical essay, Baboo (Chatterjee [1894] 1954, pp. 10–13), elaborates on the multiple connotations of the term Baboo and comments that to the British, Baboos were merely clerks and attendants. To the pauper, Baboo would refer to the relatively affluent. To the servant, Baboo would be his master. Bankim’s observation of Baboo exemplifies the phenomenon of the subaltern condition of the colonized elite, who are simultaneously masters of one world and servants of another. Sutapa Dutta argues that the Bengali Baboo is a lens through which to examine the complexities of identity formation, cultural hybridity, and social aspirations among the Bengali elite during the colonial period (Dutta 2021).

Taking a significant intersectional approach, the article is framed around three socio-cultural categories of differentiation—race, class, and gender2—which are historically and globally omnipresent and function simultaneously at macro- (societal) and micro- (individual) levels. My analysis is thereby informed by an analysis of domination and subordination in a colonial society. At the same time, each segment of this article will capture the zones of anxiety in micro-spatial units, like railway coaches (which were divided into various ranked classes), waiting rooms (mostly segregated based on color), railway platforms, refreshment stalls, etc., thereby joining together these spaces for drawing the larger picture of day-to-day experiences and confrontations in public spaces.

Baboos were not mere bystanders but active participants in both spheres of politics—civil and political society—as conceptualized in the postcolonial context. The socio-political responses of the educated “natives” to everyday dilemmas were instrumental in shaping the political conformations at a micro-level. The ‘natives’, starting from respectable administrators to bus conductors (who had greater or lesser access to Western education), played a crucial role in the participatory public politics of Bengal as they essentially formed the urban middle class with an emerging sense of practicing legal rights. However, at the same time, at certain moments of crisis, a part of this social group adopted violent means as spontaneous reflexes to unfair treatments meted out to them. A deeper analysis of the cases highlighted in this article would hint at “… civil and political society as two styles of political engagement that are available to people—the former style is more available to an urbanized elite, the latter to the rest. The availability is fluid and contextual” (Menon 2010, pp. 11–12).

Outside Europe, scholars such as Sudipta Kaviraj (2001) and Partha Chatterjee (1993) have reworked the notions of the public and civil society. Kaviraj, for instance, takes the traditional European scholarly notions of civil society and reworks them to reach certain interesting conclusions: first, people must be political in nature to participate in civil society; second, the ideal member of the civil society must also be a rational human being capable of reasoning and criticism. While Kaviraj is concerned about the fundamental theoretical moorings of the institution, Chatterjee uses this concept to understand the peculiar predicament of the urban poor, especially in the context of postcolonial India. A caveat seems necessary here. Although Chatterjee uses this concept in the context of postcolonial India, his ideas are not entirely isolated from his views regarding colonial politics. He insists that the structural split between political and civil societies is, in a way, reminiscent of the schism between elite and subaltern spheres. Chatterjee refuses to accept everything outside the sphere of the State as falling under the purview of civil society. Between the State and the elite, the English-educated public remains a vast mass of people who cannot demand individual rights as citizen subjects. Instead, they are often treated as population groups subjected to the harassment of the State. Chatterjee terms this population group as “political society” (Ibid.).

The current historical research on railways in colonial India focuses on various aspects, such as the economics of colonialism, technology transfer, infrastructure development, and labor politics within the railway sector. However, there are gaps in understanding the general opinions and responses of the colonial public towards daily public transportation. Recent studies in socio-cultural contexts explore the concept of “space” created by railways in colonial India.

Scholars like Manu Goswami explore the representation of railways in the colonial imagination, the “homogenization” and “differentiation” in colonial political economy, the shaping of unevenness in colonial practices, and, most importantly, the idea of “mobile incarceration” (Goswami 2004, pp. 103–31). The representational aspects of Indian railways also received appropriate attention in Marian Aguiar”s monograph, which posits an intricate connection between “mobility” and “modernity”, a relation cemented by travel, displacement, and exploration (Aguiar 2011). An ethnographic study by Laura Bear examines the formation of the Anglo-Indian community as a “railway caste” due to their preferential recruitments to upper-subordinate posts along with Europeans domiciled in India (Bear 2007, chp. 2). Harriet Bury deals with personal accounts in the Hindi public sphere, which throws light, particularly on the journeys undertaken to sites of colonial economic and political power and pilgrimage centers in the late nineteenth century (Bury 2007, chp. 1). Barbara Ramusack (1995) and Kumkum Chatterjee (1999) introduced tourism and railway travel in their works. Chatterjee has indicated in her work how the travel narratives by Bengali Bhadraloks made an interesting distinction between “travel-as-pilgrimage” and “travel-as-nationalism” (Ibid., p. 204). Moving on parallel tracks, the “pleasures” of lavish first-class travel and the “pains” of travel in the most inferior conditions of the third class are captured in Satow and Desmond’s Railways of the Raj (Satow and Desmond 1980). Ritika Prasad’s work provides knowledge about the experiences of railway passengers, explaining “how the colonial public used, domesticated, and deployed this radically new technology, even as their everyday life was transformed by it” (Prasad 2015). Aparajita Mukhopadhyay’s critical analysis of late nineteenth—and early twentieth-century railway guides, tourist pamphlets, and travelogues trace the historical roots of “national space” through railway journeys in colonial India and captures the “complex”, dynamic interaction between Indian railway passengers and the Indian railway system (Mukhopadhyay 2018). These travels transformed the imagination of a geographical entity called desh (nation) into a tangible experience. These erudite studies shed light on how railways influenced colonial society and transformed the perception of national space through travel experiences.

2. Problems and Arguments

My central argument is based on two sets of hypotheses. First, the “respectable” class of Baboos redefined their unique class position by trying to assert the notion (and often translating it into practice) of a distinct private space within a particular public domain. This private space was defined through the transformation of notions of public space: a typical example is the Baboos’ demands for special railway carriages for “respectable” Indian women. In the process, binary dichotomies between “secluded” family spaces and “open” state spaces, and more broadly between the private and the public realms, were problematized and redefined. Second, I also argue the “native” gentlemen demanded an “exclusive” secured space for themselves. As a fallout, the public and the private domains were often intertwined in the larger arena of the colonial public sphere. While postcolonial studies often harp on the mutual exclusives of public and private domains, spaces of belonging and those of social interaction, political and non-political spaces, my spatial study intends to obscure these neat binaries and try to show that the interstices of these spaces were often murky and grey, where quotidian practices relating to race, caste, class hierarchies, and gender relations re-shaped a middle-class identity. The Bengali middle class could carve out occasional niches of “native privacy” even within the supposedly “open” material space of the public domain. My argument further qualifies the postcolonial understanding that nationalist autonomy could only be located within the domain of the private, as Partha Chatterjee (1993) has argued.

3. Subsections

The selected case studies cited in this article will show how “class” had a predominant influence over “race” and “gender” issues, thereby underscoring the ruptures between the colonizers and colonized and the colonized themselves. A perusal of these incidents, culled from various spatial units (railway compartments, waiting rooms, refreshment stalls, etc.) enables us to pinpoint certain burning issues that repeatedly appeared in these stories, which later became the rallying point for public debates against the maltreatment and discriminatory practices of colonial government.

3.1. Discrimination, Deprivation, and Maltreatment

Indian newspapers frequently reported discriminatory practices of the railway authorities in maintaining suitably catered refreshment rooms for European travelers provided by Messrs. Kellner & Co. In contrast, Mitrayalas, or the Indian refreshment rooms founded by Baboo Charoo Chunder Mitter, were shut down.3 Moreover, the sellers of sweet meat (the only food available to Indians) were heavily taxed (sometimes as high as INR 5135), which had a direct impact on the poor consumers, mostly traveling in the third and intermediate classes (Ibid.).

However, discrimination against Indian passengers was challenged by educated “natives” who used the legal apparatus to claim their rights as right-bearing, citizen-subjects. It was reported that a Bengali gentleman traveling in intermediate class was asked by the station master to get down from the carriage to create space for three Europeans, who forcefully entered the overcrowded compartment at a station called Bankipur (in present-day Bihar). The Bengali gentlemen quietly exited the carriage, parting with his luggage. The Bengali gentleman took legal action by serving a notice to the agent of the East India Company demanding compensation of INR 2500 for the loss and damage of his belongings.4

Newspaper reports also shed light on the extreme inconveniences of intermediate-class passengers. Basumati (1900) once reported a complaint about two reckless European soldiers who got drunk, barged into the compartment of a train on the Bengal Central Railway, vomited, and got down at the Dum-Dum cantonment station. In this regard, it was highly recommended to reserve one or two compartments in each train for European soldiers to save the poor Indian passengers from their rude behavior.5

Indian community paying first- and second-class fares strongly criticized the “monstrous distinction”6 made in the décor of the waiting rooms separately allotted to Europeans and Indians. They complained that the waiting rooms for European passengers were furnished with “recherché style”; the one intended for Indians was converted into a “repository of rickety furniture” (Ibid.). This affluent section of the Indian community often asked whether the “coins tendered by Indian passengers were of less value than those tendered by Europeans?”7

The problems concerning the lack of lavatories in the third-class coaches, which were not installed until 1891, and the consequent discomfort experienced by third-class passengers were often reflected in letters and petitions written by the passengers. One passenger named Okhil Chandra Sen wrote to the Divisional Office of the East Indian Railway after his awkward experience.8

Beloved Sir, I am arrive by passenger train at Ahmedpore station and my belly is too much swelling with jackfruit. I am, therefore went to privy. Just as I doing nuisance the guard making whistle blow for train to go off and I am running with “Lotah” [brass pot] in one hand and “dhoti” in the next when I am fall over and expose some of my personal thing to female women on the platform. I am got leaved at Ahmedpore station. This is too much bad, if passenger got to make dung the damn guard not wait train five minutes for him[?] I am therefore pray your honour to make big fine on that damn guard for public sake, otherwise I am making big report to papers. Yours faithfully, Okhil Ch. Sen

The “natives” often used the legal apparatus and peaceful means of redressing their grievances by writing in newspaper columns. However, ill-treatment of “native” passengers often manifested in serious verbal and physical assaults, resulting in spontaneous retaliation by the “natives” to redress their grievances, violating all the established laws framed by the colonial administration.

Exploring social hierarchies and segregation within railway coaches and the ancillary areas sheds light on the intricate ways colonial structures manifested in everyday interactions. The delineation of spaces based on class, social status, and race underscores the profoundly entrenched divisions that characterized colonial society. By highlighting these divisions, this section reveals how public transport served as a microcosm of broader societal inequalities, where one’s position in the colonial hierarchy determined access to and treatment within these spaces.

3.2. Verbal and Physical Abuse, Transgression, and Resistance

Daily skirmishes in public transports often manifested in verbal abuse, particularly targeted towards third-class “native” passengers, who were often treated as “dumb-driven cattle”.9 Hierarchical modes of address, such as “sir” for first-class passengers, the absence of it for second-class passengers, and the use of the pejorative Indian abuse “sala” (Ibid.), show the nature of colonial reaffirmation of class hierarchies through the means of everyday speech.

Violent clashes emanating from racial animosity were witnessed in the shared spaces of first and second-class waiting rooms, as well, where the “white” privileged class often tried to assert their unabated supremacy, as affirmed by this “sensational” affair. A Bengali gentleman traveling from Ajmer to Calcutta, was waiting for his train in a first-class waiting room and happened to occupy the only sofa in the room. A European gentleman came in and rudely asked him to give up the sofa as a “nigger” had no right to be there and, doubting the fact of his being a first-class passenger, asked the doctor to produce his valid ticket. Through a heated argument on this issue, the “native” corrected the Englishman’s attitude, which revealed the “white skin as his passport”10 to assert his authority over Indian fellow passengers. The Bengali gentleman challenged the “aggressive intruder”. He asked if he dared to take the ticket out of his pocket to convince himself because the railway authority had the sole right to demand a passenger’s ticket. The enraged Sahib, at this audacious behavior of what he deemed derogatorily to be the “nigger”, tried to use force until things were brought under control by the people around (Ibid.).

Interestingly, the echoes of everyday politics in the colony, which constantly reverberated in the native press, were also heard at the House of Commons’ debates regarding the physical assaults on the “natives”. For instance, the action of the Secretary of State for India was probed on a disgraceful incident brought into the Indian court. An official of the Bengal Nagpur Railway beat a Hindu clerk with his slippers; the magistrate dismissed the case on the ground that “it was more a lesson in politeness than an assault”, whereas beating with a man’s own slippers is considered by Hindus to be the greatest insult. However, in defense of the shameful act, it was argued in the House that these cases were entirely within the competence of the local authorities and did not require the attention of the Secretary of State for India.11

The theme of resistance and negotiation in challenging colonial authority within public transportation highlights the agency of colonized social groups, notably the Baboos, in asserting their identities and resisting oppressive structures. These groups aimed to address immediate grievances and establish their presence within the colonial system through acts of resistance that often led to violent clashes. This section emphasizes the fluid power dynamics and the tactics marginalized communities utilized to navigate and challenge the prevailing colonizer-colonized narrative in a civil society.

3.3. Harassments and Assaults of Female Passengers

Transcending gender barriers, instances of sexual assault, and harassment of female passengers became one of the biggest scandals in the everyday travel experiences by public transport. The “respectable” Baboos redefined their “unique” class position by trying to appropriate a secluded private space within the existing public domain, particularly for their “respectable” females.

The case of an Indian woman being molested by a fellow Eurasian12 passenger in a third-class compartment of Bengal Nagpur Railway created a sensation among her fellow female passengers, who were threatened by the Eurasian while trying to remonstrate. Though the accused absconded due to prompt action by the railway authorities, the Eurasian was brought to the woman for identification and hauled up before the SDO (Sub Divisional Officer) at the Court of Sessions.13

While the colonial legal apparatus was sometimes used for the assistance of Indian female passengers, as in the incident described above, yet there were many disgraceful moments, too, when narratives were tweaked and tainted to work in favor of Europeans or Eurasians if they were the ones accused. One serious incident of sexual harassment of some Indian women by three European railway guards led to an inquiry by the railway police, who collected clinching evidence against the suspects. However, Mr. Colvin, the District Traffic Superintendent, wrote to the Assistant Inspector General of Police to drop the prosecution on specific sympathetic grounds: “that the guards were all married men and have uniformly borne a good character; that is their first offence, and that the European station master reports that the guards were fooling themselves under the influence of liquor”.14 Cases like this bring out the unfairness with which “native” women were treated in public transports and how the protectors of colonial legal apparatus guarded the “white” subaltern classes.

Condemning the biased decisions of the courts of justice, Baboos demanded separate spaces not just along the racial divide but along class divides, too, based on their perception of “respectability”. It was also strongly recommended that the words Reserved for Indian ladies be inscribed in “ineradicable color and in different languages on the doors of the compartments so intended”,15 replacing easily perishable paper labels. This was to stop the unwanted encroaching by the Europeans or those who dressed like Europeans [possibly the Eurasians] and forcefully occupied seats in compartments reserved for “native” females.

As proposed in my second hypothesis, the “native” gentlemen demanded an “exclusive” secured place. As a fallout, the public and the private domains were often intertwined in the larger arena of the colonial public sphere. Primarily, my concern is to understand how the perceptions of “honor”, “morality”, and “respectability”, which were closely associated with the “uncolonized” domain of the colonized people, nevertheless were a subject of intense public debate. I will cite examples drawn from the arrangements of plague examination during railway travel to study how the inconveniences caused to female and male “bodies” problematized these colonial narratives.16

The Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897 required the segregation and inspection of individuals suspected of bubonic plague during travel by rail, water, and road. Female passengers, whether European or native, were to be inspected by female inspectors. In carriages with ample space, inspections were conducted inside the carriage; passengers could be asked to vacate for inspection on the platform if overcrowded. In third-class compartments without space, females were to undergo inspection on the platform behind a screen”.17

Eminent Indian leaders, including Surendranath Banerjea,18 also known as the Rashtraguru, raised concerns in the Legislative Council of Bengal about the medical examination of female passengers on railways during the colonial era. Allegations surfaced that the rules were not consistently enforced, leading to public unease, especially among high-class Hindu and Muslim women, regarding the examination process. Newspaper reports highlighted these issues and the demand for female inspectors to conduct examinations to ensure the privacy and comfort of female passengers.19

The “natives” appreciated the appointment of Indian doctors and Eurasian lady doctors at railway stations, believing it would reduce oppression compared to European or Eurasian doctors. However, dissatisfaction arose as only third-class passengers had to disembark for examination, leading to physical contact between male and female bodies, viewed as indecent by colonial society. Public opinion criticized the poorly organized process and blamed the railway authorities for the discomfort caused during the examination rather than attributing it to the disease itself.20

The case studies shed light on colonial intervention and management in controlling epidemic diseases, such as the plague, in public spaces. Of many scholarly studies on plague, divergent views are presented in two celebrated monographs by David Arnold (1993) and Rajnarayan Chandravarkar (1998).21 While David Arnold has argued how the body became state property and was fully colonized due to an asymmetrical power quotient between the State and the individual body, Chandravarkar, on the other hand, has countered this view by arguing how the colonized controlled or resisted State intervention and restricted the body from being fully colonized through their “rational choices”. Considering both views, my empirical study tries to form a dialogue between these two opposing views by analyzing the choices that the natives made to change the power equation for negotiating the politics of the colonial State and individual body. While they strongly opposed and criticized the plague-related measures that subjected their body to oppression and agony, on the other hand, they fully supported the amicable measures implemented by the colonial government, such as appointing native doctors for checkups, which, in their view, brought upon less oppression and harassment to the individual body.

3.4. Class Hierarchies and Internal Tensions

Colonized society experienced internal tensions due to class hierarchies, leading to conflicts between respectable “native” gentlemen and lower-class individuals. “Native” gentlemen distanced themselves from low-class “natives” who did not meet their standards of respectability. Some Indians protested against overcrowding in public transport, sparking debates. Wealthier “native” passengers opposed lower-class passengers being pushed into higher-class carriages if the lower-class ones were full, especially if they did not meet specific criteria of respectability.22

The colonial administration faced objections from “natives” regarding allowing prostitutes to travel with respectable “native” females in the same carriage. This issue arose in the 1860s when separate female compartments were unavailable. Pressure was put on the colonial government to create a secluded space for respectable female passengers to avoid contact with low-class prostitutes. However, the challenge was raised that it might be difficult to identify and separate prostitutes based on their financial status if they held valid tickets for a specific class of the train.

While the House of Commons occasionally raised the issues about “incivility” and “disrespect” meted out to Indian passengers, the “natives” took the opportunity to voice their opinions at the railway conferences and asked for some means to mitigate the distress and inconveniences caused to the Indian passengers, especially those of the third class. The “natives” were represented by “distinguished leaders of Indian opinion”, for example, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Pratap Chunder Mozumdar, Babu Bipin Chunder Pal, and Baboo Surendranath Banerjea, who placed their grievances before the “distinguished heads of railway administrations”.23 The questions addressed at the railway conferences of 1902 were: the incivility resulting in insult and humiliation of third-class passengers; overcrowding in third-class compartments; the absence of latrines and water closets in third and intermediate-class carriages, especially in female carriages; the absence of water supplies and refreshment rooms for Indian passengers and the imposition of heavy license fees vendors of Indian sweet-meats on railway platforms; waiting rooms instead of shades should be provided to intermediate and third class passengers; the intermediate and third class tickets should be allotted in such a way so that there should be a line of demarcation between the two classes; inform the passengers how long the trains would halt at a particular station.24

The distinction between esteemed “native” gentlemen and individuals of lower social standing highlights the entrenched class divisions in colonial society. The resulting conflicts and tensions shed light on the intricate nature of social dynamics and power relations within the colonized community. Examining class disparities and internal frictions provides insight into the diverse fabric of late nineteenth-century India, where social hierarchy, power dynamics, and advocacy efforts converge to influence daily interactions. It emphasizes the hurdles encountered by various groups within the colonized population and the approaches taken to navigate and contest established social conventions and systems.

4. Conclusions

Two main approaches to documenting everyday life are the antiquarian and ethnographical methods, which focus on material culture and social practices, and the cultural theory perspective, which is rooted in studying social relations at the grassroots level. Scholars like Ladurie ([1967] 1988), Ginzburg (1980), and Thompson (1963) represent the former, while Bakhtin ([1975] 1981), Lukas (1970), and others embody the latter. This approach expanded to include marginalized groups and became known as Alltagsgeschichte, microstoria, and microhistory in different regions. Eisenstadt’s (2000) view on modernity emphasizes its diversity beyond Western paradigms, while Chatterjee’s (1993) work explores how the colonized experience modernity differently from colonizers, highlighting the complex relationship between colonialism and modernity.

Railway carriages enabled a situation where the two contrasting worlds—the public and the private—were accommodated within a common setup. In other words, the railway carriages were seen as an extension of parloured homes, where people often traveled with their families, servants, and food (especially in first and second classes). The “native” passengers desired home-like comforts, for example, suitable lavatories, provisions for drinking water, appropriate refreshments, some sort of equality irrespective of race and color, and above all, secured spaces for Indian women far from the gaze of unknown male co-passengers. Thus, what is essential in these acts is the worldview of the Baboos in which gender identities were negotiated, symbolized, and refashioned in everyday life. The dispute over gender-related issues is one of the distinct features of public transport, which makes the case different from other colonial sites of power struggle.

In this article, the public spaces where the colonizers and the colonized shared spaces or services—like railway carriages and waiting rooms—reacted to each other’s presence and interaction. These were spaces where the larger dynamics of modernization, racial discrimination, assimilation, and resistance played out in everyday forms. The examples considered in this article portray the racially fraught confrontation—mostly verbal and sometimes physical—that the “natives” encountered in these spaces. Contrary to the claim that the Baboos maintained a decolonized or “authentic” identity only in their private spaces (Chatterjee 1993), the case studies presented in this paper reveal that they also did so in public spaces. Indeed, the Western-educated “natives” embraced these amenities of the modern world and made these a part of their daily lives. However, adopting these British-introduced material changes or modern conveniences did not make them unresisting to injustice and unfair treatment fuelled by racial discrimination. This article, through its examination of everyday incidents in public spaces, demonstrates how discrimination was rampant, for example, in segregated waiting rooms and segregated carriages, as was deprivation, like the absence of water closets in third and fourth-class carriages. As mentioned above, verbal and aggravated physical abuse was widespread, preying on all classes of “natives”—from Baboos to coolies and women. Within this larger narrative of unfair treatment and outright hostility meted out by the colonizers, another power narrative was played out by the class-conscious “natives” among their own population. Conscious of their distinct or privileged status, the Baboos sought to distance themselves from those who did not match their ideas of respect or honor. Even in the public domain of shared spaces like transport, they tried to carve out a private space based upon their perceptions of honor and their sense of unique identity that aimed at keeping “other” “natives” and European intrusion separate. The significance of these everyday incidences highlighted in this article lies in the fact that these daily stories formed the basis of the public outrage that was reflected continually in regional newspapers and, subsequently, of the larger narratives of resistance and nationalism. How the Baboos negotiated positions in public spaces sheds some crucial light on their claims of civil rights and their ways of using the colonizers’ tropes of equality, justice, and fairness back at them.

Therefore, the Baboos, despite their exposure to Western education, experienced mistreatment from the State and established a “political society” within the colonial public sphere. Partha Chatterjee (1993) suggests that upon closer examination of the strategies employed by the Baboos, it becomes apparent that they had access to the same political tools as members of civil society. This challenges the conventional view of a clear-cut division between civil and political societies in the colonial or postcolonial eras, as proposed by Nivedita Menon (2010). Instead, these categories should be seen as tools available to all segments of the colonized society for engaging with the State.25 Through case studies focusing on everyday journeys in railways, this article explores how discussions on discriminatory practices and calls for improved travel amenities for “native” gentlemen unfolded in the emerging public sphere. The Baboos utilized various forms of activism, such as petitioning, writing newspaper columns and letters, circulating pamphlets, and publishing articles and caricatures in popular periodicals, to assert their rights as subject citizens like their European counterparts. These instances provide insights into the concept of the public within a colonial society.