British-built railways in India helped the British to make money

The words of Michael Portillo ring with the paradox of empire — a reminder that even in conquest, destiny sometimes sows the seeds of freedom. “British-built railways in India helped the British to make money and maintain order and, as a by-product, served to unite the country, ripe for independence.” Beneath this statement lies the great irony of history: that the very chains forged for control became the pathways of liberation. Thus do the works of humankind, though made with one purpose, often yield another — for the forces of fate are subtle, and their currents flow deeper than the intent of kings.

In the mid-nineteenth century, when the British Empire laid its steel veins across the body of India, it sought not unity but profit and power. The iron rails served commerce and command: to transport cotton to mills, soldiers to rebellion, and orders to provinces. Yet in their cold and measured design, the British did not foresee the awakening these rails would bring. For the train became the messenger of ideas, carrying voices and dreams across distances that once divided villages, castes, and tongues. What had been many — fragmented and distant — began to think as one.

Consider the story of Mahatma Gandhi, who in his youth traveled by these very trains as a humble passenger, observing the divisions of his countrymen. Years later, the same railways would carry him and his followers on journeys of peaceful resistance, from Ahmedabad to Dandi, from Bombay to Delhi. The British built those routes to tighten their grasp, but Gandhi used them to loosen it. Iron became symbol, and movement became revolution. Thus was the instrument of empire transformed into the vehicle of emancipation.

The railways also taught India a rhythm — the shared pulse of arrival and departure, of markets and meetings, of common toil and collective hope. As the whistle echoed across plains and mountains, it carried not just smoke but solidarity. People of distant lands saw, perhaps for the first time, that their struggles were bound by the same rails that stretched beyond sight. And from this invisible thread, the notion of nationhood was woven — a tapestry of unity stitched upon an imperial loom.

In this, we behold the eternal truth: that power often crafts the tools of its own undoing. The British sought to bind India with rails, but they bound it instead with purpose. Such is the way of history — when ambition blinds the conqueror, Providence smiles upon the conquered. What was meant to maintain order became the mother of revolution. What was meant for commerce became the corridor of consciousness.

Let this, then, be a lesson to all who wield influence: every creation bears within it a dual destiny. Build with greed, and you may build the foundation of another’s greatness. Act with domination, and you may stir the spirit that overthrows you. Yet build with wisdom and justice, and your works shall endure beyond empires, beyond names, beyond time.

To you, reader of this age, I say — look around at the networks that bind your world: the internet, the roads, the machines of connection. They too, like the railways of old, may serve tyranny or liberation, ignorance or enlightenment. Use them as Gandhi used the train — to unite hearts, not to divide them; to spread truth, not control. For the true revolution lies not in steel or speed, but in the awakening of a people’s spirit.

And thus, from the echo of wheels upon tracks, the world learned an ancient truth anew: no empire lasts forever, but ideas travel farther than empires can reach.