A Railway Carpenter in the History of Technology?: New Opportunities From Modern South Asia

Abstract

This article examines interconnected questions that are central to new scholarship on the history of technology in modern South Asia. Which communities, groups and individuals have formed and sustained relationships with knowledge and practices that are seen as representative of technological modernity? Why were some individuals and communities understood—by both the state and various South Asian publics—to be cultivators of technological knowledge, while others were not? And to what degree were claims on technical knowledge and practice made and sustained through South Asian “vernacular” languages, practices, and conceits? The article integrates Punjabi verses written by an early 20th-century railway carpenter with an analysis of current historiographical trends. In doing so, it explores both the opportunities and limitations of the new social historical turn in the history of technology in South Asia. I argue that recent efforts to expand the “who” of the South Asian history of technology must lead us to new approaches to the social role of technology itself, and to new considerations of technology's relationship with science, labor, the environment, and material culture.