Once upon a time: How India went from local clocks to one standard time

How the Valley Fields Railway Crash Led to Time Zones

What links a photograph taken in 1853 of a railway accident in the USA with the Indian government’s recent notification that Indian Standard Time (IST) had to be strictly followed across India? This notification came as a surprise since no one was challenging IST. But the government fears potential problems from digital devices linked to non-IST sources.

The 1853 daguerreotype — an early photographic process — was visual proof of why time coordination was first imposed. The collision took place on August 12 in Valley Fields, Rhode Island. It may be the first photograph from the scene of a train collision. The primary cause was determined to be different times on the watches of the train conductors.

Until the mid-19th century time was local. Clocks were set by when the sun was overhead at noon. Different times in other places didn’t matter since life was mostly lived locally. The problems started when railway lines started connecting different places – and different times. Accidents like Valley Fields led to railways companies ordering that the same time be used across their operational areas. These were the first time zones.


British railways had taken the lead here with the Great Western Railway synchronising its times in 1840. But exact local time where, for example, the difference between Delhi and Mumbai is 17 minutes and 24 seconds, is too confusing. So, countries operate with time zones, with local time usually only used for ritual purposes. Astrologers may convert IST to local time when calculating kundalis. Parsi fire temples often display clocks set to local time since this affects some rituals.

Madras Time

In the real world, the linking of the Bombay to Calcutta railway line led to calls for a common Railway Time in India. Using Madras Time seemed to make most sense. This had been established in 1802 by John Goldingham, official astronomer of the East India Company. Madras was closest to the central longitude of India, rather than the Company’s other main bases in Bombay and Calcutta.

Neither Calcutta nor Bombay was happy about this. In his essay ‘Bombay Time’ historian Jim Masselos has chronicled how the western city became the main opposition. Bombay’s traders were more independent and willing to question their Governor who, from 1880-85 was the notably authoritarian Sir James Fergusson.

People in Bombay felt that Madras Time for railways could coexist with Bombay Time. But in 1881 Fergusson decided that the whole Presidency should shift to Madras Time. It was rumoured he had once missed a train due to a time slip up.

But the Bombay Municipal Corporation was no pushover — and controlled the main clock towers that people used as reference, like the ones on Crawford Market. Fergusson’s main control of timing only came from the firing of the noonday gun at the Fort.

Fergusson then found an opportunity with the Rajabai Clock Tower, the tallest structure in the city at that time. Funded by the broker Premchand Roychand Jain, he named it after his mother who was blind. Jain wanted a way for her to tell the time from its chimes. It followed Bombay Time, but it was lacking in funds to illuminate it at night. Fergusson offered to pay for illumination, as long as it told Madras Time. The Corporation refused. Rajabai Tower stuck to Bombay Time and Fergusson finally paid for its illumination, but with a twist. He decreed that the city could keep Bombay Time, but the rest of the Presidency would use Madras Time. Bandra was just beyond the island city’s limits then, and Madras Time began from there.

IST is Set in Washington DC

An event held just three years ultimately undermined Bombay Time. This was the International Meridian Conference in Washington DC in October 1884 which established Greenwich as the global line from which all other time zones could be set. Most countries opted for time zones in advance or behind Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) by intervals of an hour.

British India was represented by Sir Richard Strachey who agreed that IST would be calculated at 82.5˚ East, which was five and a half hours ahead of GMT. This wasn’t Madras Time any longer. The city closest to this longitude is Mirzapur in UP, whose clock tower is often taken as the closest official indication of IST.

The British government in India realised this might provoke even more resistance, because it was now complex. Bombay, for example, was getting used to the roughly half hour difference from Madras Time, but now the difference was 38 minutes and 50 seconds. The government decided to let things take their course, until 1906 when another authoritarian, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy, decided that IST had to be used across the subcontinent.

India was even larger then, stretching from Balochistan to Burma, and there was a very credible case for two time zones. But the British Raj, always intent on centralising power (except when it could be conceded to safe allies, like the Princely states), decided on a single time zone. Concessions were only allowed when it made economic sense, like tea estates in the Northeast which could maintain local “plantation time”.

It was announced that it would take place on 30 June 1905 and only apply to Railways and Telegraph — but if cities like Bombay and Calcutta would change, the government would give them all assistance. Adoption of standardised time zones across the world also provided powerful support — opponents could be characterised as opposing science and progress.

Again, Bombay provided the main opposition. Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, whose statue still stands outside the municipality, addressed a huge public meeting demanding that the city be allowed to stick with Bombay Time. But Masselos writes: “Whereas then (in 1881) there had been a unity of opposition between leading Indian and English opponents, in 1906 the issue had polarised along racial lines.”

In a vote in the Corporation the supporters of Bombay Time won — but by only a single vote. Local time had really lost, and by the 1960s when Masselos first came to Bombay, he found “Bombay Time” persisted only as a figure of speech, a joke to explain the habitual tardiness of people in the city, with most of them not realising it was “a linguistic link with... the nineteenth century debate over time...”

‘Around the World in 80 Days’ Effect

Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days (1873), played a huge role in raising awareness of what time meant in an interconnected world. The bet on which the plot revolves starts when Phileas Fogg notes that the recent completion of the Bombay to Allahabad railway line, which continued to Howrah, means that India can be traversed in a fixed time. In the novel, Fogg discovers that the rail line hasn’t actually been finished but he is able to buy an elephant to cover the gap. The book’s real lesson in time comes in the end when Fogg thinks he has lost by reaching London on the 81st day. But because he travelled east he gained a day, and still wins the bet.

Off The Clock

Most time zones sit whole hours apart from UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), the world’s time standard. These places add a twist of 30 or 45 minutes

In The End...

Yet, there has always been an argument for two time zones. The idea that India has to have a single zone is based on the misrepresentation of the map where India seems longer than it is wide. Even this though is not as bad as China which should have about four different time zones, but officially only has one. But then Russia is happy to have 11 time zones, which is proudly seen as evidence of the size of the country. When it comes to time it seems that local logic rarely prevails.