There is perhaps an even starker illustration of imperial amnesia, and how it mingles with nostalgia to produce dysfunctional attitudes to empire, in Britain’s obsession with India’s railways. It feels impossible in the third decade of the third millennium to turn on the TV on any evening and not happen across a show like Indian Hill Railways, Great Indian Railway Journeys, India’s Frontier Railways or Extreme Railway Journeys in which an invariably white presenter travels on trains in India and informs us how they were a gift British empire bestowed upon India.
