India Post Turns 170 Years Old: A Brief History Of The World's Largest Postal Network
Did you know that the world's first official airmail delivery took place in India in 1911, only 8 years after the invention of airplanes?
On February 18, 1911, French pilot Henri Pequet carried the first official mail flown by airplane. Pequet carried a sack with about 6,000 cards and letters on his Humber biplane. The flight covered a distance of five miles, from an Allahabad polo field to Naini across the Yamuna river. All mail received a special cancel depicting an airplane, mountains, and “First Aerial Post, 1911, U. P. Exhibition Allahabad.”
On October 1, 2024, India Post will celebrate 170 years of service. Originally started by the British East India Company and known as 'Company Mail', India Post was brought under the Crown as a service in 1854 by Lord Dalhousie, the Governor-General of India from 1848 to 1856. But the long history of postal systems in India goes back much earlier to the Maurya period, particularly the reign of Chandragupta Maurya circa 300 BCE.
Early Postal Systems In Ancient India
Some historians believe that Chandragupta introduced an early postal system in India, using carrier pigeons to communicate between the different provinces of his vast empire stretching from Karnataka in the south to Afghanistan in the north, and Nagaland in the east to eastern Iran in the west.
This early postal system was most probably introduced to India by Alexander III of Macedon, who used it widely during his military campaigns after adopting it from the ancient Persians who trained and used carrier pigeons as messengers as early as the 5th century BCE. Carrier pigeons remained the primary mode of long-distance communication in India over the next thousand years. They were used extensively by rulers from Maurya emperor Ashoka (302-234 BCE) to Mughal emperor Babur (1483-1530 CE).
Horse And Foot Postal Systems In Islamic India
The next innovation in the history of Indian postal systems came during the Delhi Sultanate period. Qutb-ud-din Aybak, the first Sultan of Delhi, introduced a messenger post system in the 13th century CE, which was later expanded into a horse and foot runner based system by Alauddin Khilji in 1296.
In the 1540s, Sher Shah Suri replaced foot runners with horses, and modernised the ancient northern Indian trade route formerly known as ‘Uttarapath’ (the north path). Today, this road is known as the Grand Trunk Road and runs from Bangladesh to Afghanistan, passing through major Asian cities like Chattogram and Dhaka in Bangladesh; Kolkata, Kanpur, Agra, Aligarh, Delhi, and Amritsar in India; and Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Peshawar in Pakistan. Sher Shah Suri also built several Dak Chowki (mail stations) and Serai (inns) along the route to facilitate quick despatches of royal and military correspondence.
The Early Postal Systems Of The Colonial Period
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the British East India Company introduced limited, regional postal systems called ‘Company Mail’ in their territories across India, with the first post office opening in Bombay in 1727. In 1774, Warren Hastings — then the Governor-General of Bengal — finally made the postal service available to the public for a fee of two annas per 100 miles. The postal system used horses and runners called 'Daak Harkara' to deliver letters and parcels. The service was considered so reliable that people often sent and received letters on the mail with only their names.
In 1854, Lord Dalhousie — the Governor-General of India at the time — introduced uniform postage rates and helped pass the India Post Office Act 1854, leading to the formation of the pan-India postal service we know today on October 1, 1854.
During its 170 year history, India Post introduced many firsts in the country. Asia’s first adhesive postage stamps were issued in the British-Indian province of Sindh in July 1852. Post office savings bank accounts were opened to the public in 1882, and postal life insurance policies were introduced as a social welfare measure for post employees in 1884. In 1911, the world’s first official airmail flight took place in India on February 18 across the Yamuna from Allahabad to Naini; and the world’s last pigeon mail service finally shut down in Cuttack, Orissa, in 2008.
Today, India Post is the largest public sector postal service in the world — both in terms of its nation-wide network of 1,64,972 post offices and the 10 million postcards and letters these post offices process daily. Despite the decline in letter-writing since the spread of telephones and emails, India Post remains the lifeblood of India's rural economy with some of the remotest post offices in the world delivering letters, goods, and financial services to even the most inaccessible parts of the country.
Learn more about rare Indian postage stamps here.
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