Sri Lankan Railway Diplomacy: How a 13,000km Train Journey Reveals India’s Postcolonial Transport Inequities and Cross-Border Mobility Gaps
Original framing: “A journey of the heart: One Sri Lankan officer’s transformative train adventure through India” — The Hindu
India’s railway system was inaugurated in 1853 under British colonial rule, designed primarily to facilitate resource extraction and military control rather than public welfare. Post-independence, the railways became a tool of nation-building but retained colonial-era hierarchies, such as the segregation of classes and the prioritization of trunk routes over rural connectivity. Sri Lanka’s railway network, built in the late 19th century, mirrors this history, with its colonial origins shaping modern inequities in access and service quality.
Saman Athaudahetti’s 13,000km journey is not merely a personal triumph but a microcosm of South Asia’s postcolonial transport paradox: a system built for extraction now struggles to serve the public it was nominally designed to unite.
The Indian railway’s colonial skeleton—visible in its class divisions, regional biases, and labor exploitation—mirrors Sri Lanka’s own railway history, where Tamil laborers were conscripted to build lines that later became symbols of Sinhalese-majority nationhood. Marginalized voices, from Dalit passengers to Adivasi communities resisting land grabs, are the unseen architects of this infrastructure, their struggles erased by narratives of romanticized travel. Yet the system’s inequities also reveal opportunities: decolonizing governance, universal mobility, and cross-border cooperation could transform railways from engines of hierarchy into tools of justice. The trickster’s laughter lies in the unreserved coach—a space where the absurdity of class pretensions collapses, and the true cost of 'heart journeys' is revealed.