Project Gutenberg's Third class in Indian railways, by Mahatma Gandhi

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Third class in Indian railways

Author: Mahatma Gandhi

Release Date: January 31, 2008 [EBook #24461]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THIRD CLASS IN INDIAN RAILWAYS ***

Produced by Bryan Ness, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

THIRD CLASS IN INDIAN RAILWAYS

BY
M. K. GANDHI

GANDHI PUBLICATIONS LEAGUE
BHADARKALI-LAHORE

THIRD CLASS IN INDIAN RAILWAYS[1]

I have now been in India for over two years and a half after my return
from South Africa. Over one quarter of that time I have passed on the
Indian trains travelling third class by choice. I have travelled up
north as far as Lahore, down south up to Tranquebar, and from Karachi to
Calcutta. Having resorted to third class travelling, among other
reasons, for the purpose of studying the conditions under which this
class of passengers travel, I have naturally made as critical
observations as I could. I have fairly covered the majority of railway
systems during this period. Now and then I have entered into
correspondence with the management of the different railways about the
defects that have come under my notice. But I think that the time has
come when I should invite the press and the public to join in a crusade
against a grievance which has too long remained unredressed, though much
of it is capable of redress without great difficulty.

On the 12th instant I booked at Bombay for Madras by the mail train and
paid Rs. 13-9. It was labelled to carry 22 passengers. These could only
have seating accommodation. There were no bunks in this carriage whereon
passengers could lie with any degree of safety or comfort. There were
two nights to be passed in this train before reaching Madras. If not
more than 22 passengers found their way into my carriage before we
reached Poona, it was because the bolder ones kept the others at bay.
With the exception of two or three insistent passengers, all had to