‘Liberating Technology’ or Two-Wheeled ‘Tool of Empire’? The Social Lives of the Bicycle in Colonial India (c. 1870–1920)

This article explores the social lives of the bicycle under the British Raj by bringing together the history of technology with cultural history and gender history. It first examines the discursive dimension of the bicycle and cycling in India, demonstrating that the new mobility technology was celebrated as an emblem of techno-modernity and, by extension, European superiority. The second part concentrates on analysing the practical uses of the ‘steel horse’ by the imperial establishment. It enhanced the reach of administrators, soldiers, police and missionaries, and thus helped stabilise imperial power. The third part turns to South Asian engagements with the bicycle, tracing how different groups resisted, appropriated and reworked the technology. Taken together, they reveal that the diffusion of the bicycle in colonial India was far from a straightforward instance of Western technological imposition. Rather, it constituted a dynamic, interactional process shaped by friction and the continual renegotiation of power.Footnote1

Colonialism · Social life · South asia · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Indian Economic and Social Development · Social and Economic Development in India