Ghandi

For the Europeans, the railroad was a symbol of power, wealth, and above tout ensemble else, a progressing late civilization. A nation could not be advanced(a) if it did not possess a railroad. Thus, when the time came for the British to allay on how to modernize India, the construction of railways became of ut well-nigh importance, as Micheal Adas argues the following, When railways were introduced in North America in the 1830s and India in the 1850s, umpteen Europeans observers amend upon them as the key symbol of the superiority, material as healthful as moral, that Western societies had attained over all early(a)s (Adas 223). The British were, in their opinion, improving the squalid state India was in by introducing railways; they were crafting India in the image of England, or in other words, a modern, civilized image: The railroad as a system, as Leo Marx has observed, incorporated most of the essential features of the rising industrial order: the substation of meta l for wood construction; fit need power; vastly enlarged geographical case; speed, rationalness, impersonality, and an scarce emphasis on precise timing.

(Leo Marx as quoted by Adas 222) Of the aspects pointed extinct as embodied by the railroad system, rationality was the most important to the British without rationality India would never be modern, or as the British would put it, check, for if a farming was not like England, it was low and vulgar. The railroad was simply a must- engage. match to M.K. Gandhi, however, the railways were in fact a way for England to upkeep its reach on India, and sprea d its disease of civilization: It must be ma! nifest to you that, but for the railways, the English could not have much(prenominal) a hold on the India as they have.Without them, cumulation could not move from place to place (Gandhi 46). Gandhi here points to a difficulty with both railways and modernity; The British view of bump and modern was the India equivalent of degradation. That is, while the railways were...If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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