Everyday Technology in South Asia David Arnold
Technologies do not need to be large—and expensive—in order to make an impact. Although scholars conventionally focus on heftier technologies, like the railroads, steamships, and telegraphs that helped transform the economy and society of colonial South Asia, many other transformative technologies were much smaller in scale, less imposing in appearance, and yet, cumulatively, far-reaching in consequence. Take the humble bicycle. Bicycles were brought to South Asia in substantial numbers in the early twentieth century: by the late 1930s, 150,000 a year were in India, and a decade later over 250,000. Millions are now in use. In colonial times bicycles were adopted by Europeans and middle-class Indians but also, increasingly, by working men to ride to work or to carry goods home and to market. Bicycles became people carriers—with passengers perched on the carrier or riding on the crossbar. Bicycles brought a new animation to cities, contributing to the confusion of traffic, their bells adding to the rich cacophony of street sounds. Bicycles helped open up the countryside, making villages barely connected by road far more accessible, and allowing children to travel further for school. But bicycles were not gender-neutral: they might be fit for girls to ride but their use by adult women met with disfavor—and still does in South Asia. Bicycles fostered small-scale entrepreneurship—cycle-hire shops sprang up in towns and villages; cycle repairmen plied their trade on sidewalks and at roadsides. Policemen took to bicycles, but so too did flag-waving, slogan-shouting protestors. Although early machines were imported (most came from Britain), India began to make its own cycle parts and accessories—saddles, bells, carriers—and, from the 1940s, started manufacturing the full bicycle at a lower cost than imported machines, helping to strengthen India’s Harvard South Asia Institute 9