The Incredible Journey
I have always enjoyed traveling by trains in India; you get to see lots of the countryside, you meet interesting people in your compartment, some trains even provide huge meals, and it's much less hassle than catching a plane, especially in the security-obsessed Indian airports.
This past Wednesday, Molly and I cheerfully boarded a Rajdhani Express for a 16 hour train ride from Delhi to Bombay. 16 hours might sound bad but it's not-- you get on in the early evening, you receive a snack, you receive dinner, you read your book, you go to sleep on the bunk, you wake up in the morning, you receive tea, you receive breakfast, you arrive. An hour out of New Delhi train station, however, we learned that the train was being diverted due to riots in Rajasthan that had torn up some track. We'd have to take a different route, moving far out to the east before progressing southward. This detour, announced the ticket collector, would cause AT LEAST an eight hour delay.
I went to sleep around 11, hoping that we would move swiftly in the night, and woke up at 8 to learn that this had not at all been the case. My cabin mates informed me that, despite ours being a high priority train, there was so much conjestion on the route due to all the diverted trains that we'd hardly moved during the night and that we couldn't expect to reach Bombay before the evening (we had been scheduled originally to arrive at 8:30 am). At 10 am we arrived at the station of Bhopal, which is not even between Bombay and Delhi at all, and certainly nowhere near Bombay.
The day continued in a similar manner, that is, of the train chugging along until pulling into a station, me assuming that said station must be located in Maharashtra (the state surrounding Bombay), or at least in Gujarat (the state above Bombay), me consulting a map or a fellow passenger and learning to my horror that said station was actually hundreds of miles from Bombay... After many rounds of cards and comments about what privileged tourists we were to be able to visit such places as Ujjain Central Junction and Mandu Terminal Station, we finally pulled into Mumbai Central at 1:30 am. That is, a full 17 hours after we were supposed to arrive, bringing the total time on the train to a whopping 33 hours.
And what of the riots, that caused it all? A week later, they are only beginning to subside. The essence of the problem is that the Gujjars, a caste group in Rajasthan, began agitating for Scheduled Tribe status after having been denied this for several years. In India there is a complex system of affirmative action that reserves government postings and school positions for the members of Scheduled Tribe, Scheduled Caste, and Other Backward Caste groups. Certain traditionally low-caste groups have risen to relative power after being labelled as one of these categories, and the Gujjars, who have not been given such a label, despite their history as low-caste hill farmers, are fighting to earn one.
While this system of caste reservation could potentially contribute some good to lifting up those of low caste, it obviously brings about problems of ethnic stratification. I read an opinion columnist in the Times of India today who noted that in the 19th century the Gujjars sought to prove themselves as a relatively high caste, members of the Kshatriya, or Warrior class, but that now, this same group attempts to portray itself as the very bottom of the social hierarchy. It is no wonder that regional, ethnic, caste, and religious identities are so strong in India, when there exist systems such as this one that seem designed to bolster these identities.
This past Wednesday, Molly and I cheerfully boarded a Rajdhani Express for a 16 hour train ride from Delhi to Bombay. 16 hours might sound bad but it's not-- you get on in the early evening, you receive a snack, you receive dinner, you read your book, you go to sleep on the bunk, you wake up in the morning, you receive tea, you receive breakfast, you arrive. An hour out of New Delhi train station, however, we learned that the train was being diverted due to riots in Rajasthan that had torn up some track. We'd have to take a different route, moving far out to the east before progressing southward. This detour, announced the ticket collector, would cause AT LEAST an eight hour delay.
I went to sleep around 11, hoping that we would move swiftly in the night, and woke up at 8 to learn that this had not at all been the case. My cabin mates informed me that, despite ours being a high priority train, there was so much conjestion on the route due to all the diverted trains that we'd hardly moved during the night and that we couldn't expect to reach Bombay before the evening (we had been scheduled originally to arrive at 8:30 am). At 10 am we arrived at the station of Bhopal, which is not even between Bombay and Delhi at all, and certainly nowhere near Bombay.
The day continued in a similar manner, that is, of the train chugging along until pulling into a station, me assuming that said station must be located in Maharashtra (the state surrounding Bombay), or at least in Gujarat (the state above Bombay), me consulting a map or a fellow passenger and learning to my horror that said station was actually hundreds of miles from Bombay... After many rounds of cards and comments about what privileged tourists we were to be able to visit such places as Ujjain Central Junction and Mandu Terminal Station, we finally pulled into Mumbai Central at 1:30 am. That is, a full 17 hours after we were supposed to arrive, bringing the total time on the train to a whopping 33 hours.
And what of the riots, that caused it all? A week later, they are only beginning to subside. The essence of the problem is that the Gujjars, a caste group in Rajasthan, began agitating for Scheduled Tribe status after having been denied this for several years. In India there is a complex system of affirmative action that reserves government postings and school positions for the members of Scheduled Tribe, Scheduled Caste, and Other Backward Caste groups. Certain traditionally low-caste groups have risen to relative power after being labelled as one of these categories, and the Gujjars, who have not been given such a label, despite their history as low-caste hill farmers, are fighting to earn one.
While this system of caste reservation could potentially contribute some good to lifting up those of low caste, it obviously brings about problems of ethnic stratification. I read an opinion columnist in the Times of India today who noted that in the 19th century the Gujjars sought to prove themselves as a relatively high caste, members of the Kshatriya, or Warrior class, but that now, this same group attempts to portray itself as the very bottom of the social hierarchy. It is no wonder that regional, ethnic, caste, and religious identities are so strong in India, when there exist systems such as this one that seem designed to bolster these identities.
posted by Molly at 11:03 AM
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