Abstract
Abstract This chapter provides an introduction to the history of the infrastructures of modernity in India that begins during the era of the Indian Mutiny, the end of rule by the East India Company and that coincides with direct rule from Great Britain. It deals with the varied interpretation of colonial information infrastructures in India, highlights in particular the advent of railways and the telegraph, and the ways in which infrastructure as spectacle reinforced the conceits to do with imperial prowess, ingenuity, and superiority. It also highlights the fact that even in colonial times, infrastructures were contested—with the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 as a potent example of deliberate attempts made by “natives” to subvert and curb the uses of railways and the telegraph as a means to control native populations.
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