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APPENDICES

PAGE A. PERSONNEL OF THE POST OFFICE 189 B. EXTRACTS FROM THE EARLY REGULATIONS REGARDING THE MAIL SERVICE 191 C. METHODS OF TRAVEL IN EARLY DAYS 195 D. STATEMENT SHOWING THE WORK OF THE POST OFFICE SAVINGS BANK FROM 1882 TO 1918 197 E. STATEMENT OF INLAND MONEY ORDERS ISSUED IN INDIA SINCE 1880 198 F. HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS OF THE CALCUTTA GENERAL POST OFFICE 200 G. EXTRACT FROM THE NARRATIVE OF THE INTERRUPTION IN THE MAIL ARRANGEMENTS IN THE N.-W.P. AND PUNJAB SUBSEQUENT TO THE MUTINY AT MEERUT AND DELHI ON THE 10TH AND 11TH MAY, 1857, BY MR. G. PATON, POSTMASTER-GENERAL, NORTH-WEST PROVINCES 204 H. THE WORK OF THE FIELD POST OFFICE BETWEEN 1867 AND 1912 210 J. THE POST OFFICE INSURANCE FUND 232 INDEX 241

THE POST OFFICE OF INDIA

THE POST OFFICE OF INDIA AND ITS STORY

THE POST OFFICE OF INDIA

To anyone connected with the work of the Post Office of India it is almost inconceivable that the present institution, with its vast organization and its elaborate system, has grown up in the course of little more than half a century. Previous to 1854 the Post Office was a medley of services in different provinces, each having separate rules and different rates of postage. Regular mails were conveyed over a very few main lines between important towns, and Collectors of districts were responsible for the management of their own local post offices. There were no postage stamps, and since rates were levied according to distance, and distances were often unknown, the position of a postal clerk in a large office was a distinctly lucrative one. In large cantonments a military officer with plenty of other duties was usually postmaster, and his supervision was at best sketchy, especially during the snipe shooting season.

In 1850 a Commission of the kind with which we are now so familiar both in India and England was appointed to consider the state of the postal services, and the result of its deliberations was the Post Office Act of 1854 and the conversion of the Post Office into an Imperial Department under a single head called the Director-General. Uniform rates of postage were introduced and postage stamps instead of cash payments were brought into use. That marvellous set of rules known as the Post Office Manual was prepared, which has since grown into four healthy volumes. Every Official in the Department is supposed to have the contents of these at his fingers' ends, but in reality few have ever read them through, and anyone who attempted to obey all their instructions would find himself sadly hampered in the exercise of his duties. The appointment of a Director-General, by bringing the separate services under a single administration, laid the foundation for future progress. Suitable officers were recruited and were taught their duties, better pay and improved prospects of promotion were a great inducement to the staff to take an interest in the work, and through communications which took no account of district or provincial boundaries were established.

The gradual growth of the powers of the Director-General has largely depended on the needs of the Department, and also, to an appreciable extent, upon his own strength of will and his personal relations with the Member of Council, who controls the Department of Government to which the Post Office is subordinate. The Director-General is assisted by two Deputy Directors, who are, in fact, the Secretaries of the Post Office, and under these again are four Assistant Directors in charge of four main branches of Post Office work. All the above officers have the title "General" attached to their designations in order to increase their self-respect, but I have omitted it to avoid an annoying reiteration. Of the three personal assistants, one has to be a walking encyclopaedia since he is in personal attendance on the Director-General; the others are financial and technical experts. The office itself is under the immediate supervision of a titled Bengalee gentleman of considerable attainments, and his clerks are mostly Bengalee graduates whose abilities are supposed to vary with their salaries.

For the purposes of administration, the whole of India and Burma is divided into eight circles, corresponding with Presidencies and Provinces as far as possible. Each of these is under the control of a Postmaster-General, who is sometimes a member of the Indian Civil Service and sometimes an official of the Department. The powers of a Postmaster-General are great, his patronage is large and the working of the Post Office is dependent on his capacity for railway travelling at all seasons of the year. His circle is divided into divisions in charge of Superintendents, who should be little understudies of himself.

The real business of the Department, however, is performed by post offices, and these are divided into head, sub and branch offices. The head office is the account and controlling office of one or more districts and is in charge of a postmaster, who in large towns ranks as a divisional officer. The sub-office is under the control of a head office for account purposes. It does all kinds of postal work and is always opened where there is a sufficiency of correspondence to justify its existence. The branch office is only intended for villages and places where there is no need of a sub-office. It is really the pioneer of the Department for the purpose of opening up new areas to postal communications. In small places a branch office is put in charge of a schoolmaster, a shopkeeper or any other local resident who has sufficient education to keep the very simple accounts required, and by this means the Post Office is able to give the advantages of its great organization to villages which could never support a departmental office. A still cheaper agency is used for the outlying hamlets, which only receive and send a few letters a week. These are visited periodically by the village or rural postman, who is a kind of perambulating branch office. He delivers letters and money orders, and also receives articles for despatch. He sells stamps and quinine, and being a local man he has to face a certain amount of public opinion if he doesn't act fair and square towards the villagers in his beat. In some hill tracts he is provided with a bugle to announce his arrival, and to the inhabitants of these he brings news of the outside world; he writes their letters and explains to them his own conception of the mysteries of the money order system.

But what would be the use of all these offices and all this organization without lines of communication? The chief lines are, of course, the railways, but they form a separate organization and will be discussed in another chapter. For places off the railway there are motor lines and tonga services, such as that sung by Kipling between Kalka and Simla but now a thing of the past owing to the completion of the hill railway. The romance of the Post Office, however, must always lie in the mail runner, or hirkara as he is called in old books on India. The number of tigers sated with his flesh is past count, the Himalayan snows have overwhelmed him, flooded rivers have carried him off and oozy swamps sucked him down. But in the face of all these dangers, has the runner ever failed to do his duty? According to the stories, never, and in real life perhaps not more than once or twice.

Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim. Has the rain wrecked the road? He must climb by the cliff. The service admits not a but, nor an if, While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail In the name of the Emperor--the "Overland Mail."--KIPLING.

Postal runners are largely drawn from the less civilized races of India, many of whom are animists by religion. They will face wild beasts and wandering criminals, but will go miles to avoid an evil spirit in a tree. With them the mail bag is a kind of fetish which must be protected and got to its destination at all costs. Dishonesty among them is almost unknown and they are wonderfully true to their salt, which with them seldom exceeds twelve rupees a month. To prove that the old stories are not all myths, a case came before the Director-General recently in a rather peculiar manner. The Audit Office, that soulless machine which drives executive officers out of their minds, sent in an objection to a gratuity being given to the family of a runner who, when carrying the mails, had been eaten by a tiger. The objection was that gratuities were only given for death in special circumstances, for instance, when death occurred in the performance of some specially courageous action, and that, since carrying the mails was part of the man's ordinary duty, his family was not entitled to any consideration. The actual story of the runner's death, as told by the villagers and the village watchman, is this: The runner's beat had been recently frequented by a man-eating tiger, and several of the country people had been carried off by him during the previous few days. On the afternoon in question the tiger was known to be in the neighbourhood, and when the mails arrived the villagers warned the runner not to go then, but to wait until next morning. Since the man-eater was an early feeder--that is to say, he killed his prey early in the afternoon, the runner waited until five o'clock and then persuaded the village watchman to accompany him. He hadn't gone more than two miles when out came the tiger and seized him. The watchman escaped and took the mails to the next stage, and the family of the man who nobly faced death in the execution of his duty was deprived of its wage-earner. This is a very bald account of a really heroic deed, and it is pleasing to learn that Mr. Levett Yeats, the Accountant-General of the Post Office at the time, who was the very soul of romance and chivalry, dealt with his objecting subordinate in a manner worthy of the heinous nature of his offence.

The road establishment of the Indian Post Office amounted to 18,160 persons out of a total staff of 108,324 on the 31st March, 1918, so there is some excuse for having devoted so much space to it. The postal staff had to deal with over 1200 millions of articles during the year, of which, according to the Annual Report of 1917-18, only .22 per cent failed to reach their proper destination. When one considers that there are more than twenty written languages in India in common use, and that a large number of addresses are almost illegible and are mixed up with invocations to the Deity and many other high-sounding phrases, one can only say, "Bravo, the Post Office! How do you do it?" With such a large correspondence a handsome revenue might be expected, even when the minimum rate for letters is a halfpenny; but the Indian is a frugal person and he does most of his correspondence on farthing postcards, on which he can cram a great deal of information by carefully using every available portion. Postcards were introduced in 1879 and now account for nearly half of the articles handled. The private card, with a figure of some favourite god or goddess, is competing strongly with the ordinary Government postcard, and wonderful ingenuity is employed to enable the writer to avail himself of more space than the regulations permit. The unpaid letter is also much in evidence in India. There is an idea that a letter on which postage has to be collected is much more certain to reach its destination than a prepaid one. This heretical doctrine has been strongly condemned in several pamphlets issued by the Director-General, but with little effect. And who knows? Perhaps there is a certain amount of truth in it, founded on bitter experience. Unpaid postcards had to be abolished recently, when it was discovered that they were universally read and then returned to the postmen as refused. The writer generally concealed his identity from the officials, with the result that it was useless to try and recover the postage due.

"Postal cards are now a rage all over India. There are men who, to make the contents of the cards unintelligible, make them altogether illegible. Some express themselves in hints which are not only unintelligible to the postal clerk and peon, but to the person addressed also. Others have got a notion that all letters, to be sent either through the Post or through private harkaras, must be written on postcards, that being the hookum of the Sirkar; and it is not unusual to see a fat and ignorant, though extremely loyal and law-abiding, zemindar sending his letters to his steward written on half a score of postcards, one or two not sufficing to contain his great thoughts. There are others who write their thoughts on postcards and enclose them in an envelope, and attach a half-anna stamp before posting. These men have naturally raised a loud complaint against the unconscionable exactions of Government, and native papers given to writing sedition should not let slip this opportunity of indulging their profitable pastime. But the great difficulty is to teach the people on which side of the card the address is to be written, and we think it will be some years before they are enlightened in this respect. But really does it matter much if the address is written on the wrong side? We think that the people of India living under the enlightened rule of the British should have the privilege of writing the address on whichever side they like."

The Post Office of India must be congratulated upon its good fortune in never having been regarded by Government as a revenue-producing Department, and as long as it paid its way with a small surplus the Powers were satisfied. Any excess was devoted to improvements in the service, and full advantage has been given to this concession in past years by the introduction of many reforms destined to meet the growing needs of the country. Recently, postage rates were reduced to such an extent that for a few years the Post Office worked at a loss, a most unsatisfactory state of affairs; however, a marked recovery is noticeable already and it is again a self-supporting institution, the gross revenue for the year ending the 31st March, 1918, being more than 416 lakhs of rupees, which gave a net surplus of nearly 50 lakhs on the year's working.

From being merely an agency for the conveyance and distribution of letters and light articles, the Post Office has gradually undertaken an enormous amount of what may be called non-postal work. It deals with vast numbers of money orders, collects the price of goods for tradesmen, pays pensioners, sells quinine, deals in Government loans, and is the poor man's bank, all of which matters will be dealt with separately. It is to be hoped that no new line of business is going to be taken up in the near future, such as the sale of railway tickets, which was once seriously proposed, or else the principal duty of the Department may be forgotten in the turmoil of the side shows.

FOOTNOTES:

This is at present the Department of Commerce.

Order.

Landholder.

THE ORIGIN OF THE POST OFFICE

The Postal System of India, like that of other countries, had its origin in the necessity of maintaining communication throughout the various parts of a great Empire in order that the Emperor might be kept continuously informed of what was taking place and might be able to keep in constant touch with the officers in charge of Provinces at a distance from the Capital. When Ibn Batuta was travelling in India in the middle of the fourteenth century he found an organized system of couriers established throughout the country governed at that time by the great Mahomed Din Tughlak. The system seems to have been very similar to that which existed in the Roman Empire, and is thus described:

"There are in Hindustan two kinds of couriers, horse and foot; these they generally term 'El Wolak.' The horse-courier, which is generally part of the Sultan's cavalry, is stationed at a distance of every four miles. As to the foot-couriers there will be one at the distance of every mile occupying stations which they call 'El Davah' and making on the whole three miles; so that there is, at the distance of every three miles, an inhabited village, and without this, three sentry boxes where the couriers sit prepared for motion with their loins girded. In the hands of each is a whip about two cubits long, and upon the head of this are small bells. Whenever, therefore, one of the couriers leaves any city he takes his despatches in one hand and the whip, which he keeps constantly shaking, in the other. In this manner he proceeds to the nearest foot-courier and, as he approaches, shakes his whip. Upon this out comes another who takes the despatches and so proceeds to the next. For this reason it is that the Sultan receives his despatches in so short a time."

The British do not appear to have found any established system of communication when they began to extend their dominion in India, and in the beginning of the eighteenth century it was a matter of no small difficulty to send a letter more than a distance of one hundred miles. A regular postal system was first introduced by Lord Clive in 1766, and the zemindars or landholders along the various routes were held responsible for the supply of runners to carry the mails. For this service a deduction was made in their rents in proportion to the number of runners supplied. The order recorded in the Minutes of Consultations of the 24th March is as follows:--

"FOR THE BETTER REGULATION OF DAUKS"

"Ordered that in future all letters be despatched from the Government House; the postmaster or his assistant attending every night to sort and see them sent off; that the letters to the different Inland Settlements be made up in separate bags, sealed with the Company's seal; that none may open the packets except the Chiefs at the different places, who are to open only their own respective packets; and

"Ordered that they be directed to observe the same rule with respect to the letters sent down to Calcutta."

The following is an extract from the Public Proceedings 7th July, 1766;--

"As there have been of late frequent miscarriages of packets to and from Madras without possibility of tracing the cause, not knowing the stages where they do happen, as no advice is ever sent us by the neighbouring Residencies, and as this on any emergency may be attended with the worst of consequences, it is agreed to establish the following Rules and communicate them to the Presidency of Madras, recommending the same to be circulated to the factories and Residencies subordinate to them, as we shall do to those dependent on Bengal:--

"That the packets henceforward be numbered in regular succession for the present season from this time to the end of the year, and in future from the 1st January to the last of December.

"That the day and hour of despatch as well as the number be noted on the tickets affixed to the packets; that on every packet the number and date of the next preceding despatch be noted.

"That in order to have the earliest information of the loss of a packet at any time, the Resident or Chief of a factory shall regularly give advice of the receipt of each packet to the Resident of the stage from whence it came last.

"That when any packets are found to be missing the Chiefs or Residents at the two nearest stages shall immediately make it their business to examine the Dauks or Tappies very particularly, and punish them severely when they do not give a satisfactory account how the packets came to be lost, giving advice in the meantime to each Presidency.

"That the Postmaster at Calcutta and Residents at Balasore, Cuttack and Ganjam do keep separate registers of despatches to and from Madras.

"That all packets be sealed with the Governor's as well as the Company's seal to prevent their being opened till they arrive at the destined place.

"And as we have reason to believe that by proper attention to the Tappies, the communication with Madras may be more expeditious, particularly between Vizagapatam and Bandermalanka, where making allowances for passing the Rivers, it is remarked they are very tardy, it is agreed to write to the gentlemen at Madras to mention this to their subordinate factories that they may fall upon proper measures to remedy it, and recommending small boats or saugarees to be stationed at the different rivers."

Under the administration of Warren Hastings the Post Office in India was placed on a better footing and steps were taken to make the posts which were established for official purposes more generally available for private communications. In January, 1774, the details of a regular system were laid down, which was brought into force on the 31st March, 1774. A Postmaster-General was appointed and postage was charged for the first time on private letters. The lowest rate of letter postage was two annas per hundred miles, and copper tickets of the value of two annas, to be used solely for postal purposes, were specially struck for public convenience.

In November, 1784, revised regulations for the Post Office were laid down which took effect in the province of Bengal from December of that year. In 1785 Madras followed suit upon proposals made by Mr. J. P. Burlton, a junior civilian in Government service. He suggested the adoption of a regular postal system on the lines of Bengal, under which all letters except those on the public service should pay postage. In 1786 Mr. Archibald Campbell was made Postmaster-General, Madras, and arrangements were made for fortnightly services to Calcutta and Bombay. There was some dispute between the Court of Directors and the Madras Government regarding the appointment of a Postmaster-General. The former refused to accept Mr. Campbell and nominated Mr. Burlton; the latter objected to Mr. Burlton and appointed Mr. Legge Wilks, who was shortly afterwards succeeded by Mr. Oliver Colt.

For the next fifty years the history of the Post Office is obscure. The territory occupied by the East India Company in 1784 consisted of three isolated portions adjoining the three presidency towns of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. The Company obtained the administrative control of part of the Carnatic and the provinces known as the Northern Circars in 1761. The fiscal administration of the provinces of Bengal, Behar and Orissa was handed over by the Delhi Emperor in 1765, and by the Treaty of Salbai in 1782 the Bombay Government retained the islands of Elephanta and Salsette.

In 1798 Lord Wellesley arrived in India inspired by Imperial projects which were destined to change the map of the country. In 1799 Tippoo, Sultan of Mysore, was defeated and slain at Seringapatam, and the Carnatic or south-eastern portion of India ruled by the Nawab of Arcot, as well as the principality of Tanjore, were placed under British rule. These territories constitute the greater part of the present Madras Presidency. In 1801 the whole of the tract between the Ganges and Jumna, known as the Doab, with Rohilkhand, were obtained by purchase from the Nawab Vizir of Oudh. In 1803, after the second Mahratta War, Orissa was forfeited to the British and Berar to the Nizam of Hyderabad. In 1815 the Himalayan States were taken from the Nepalese, in 1817 the Pindaris were crushed in Central India and in 1818, after the third Mahratta War, the Bombay Presidency was formed. Assam was annexed in 1826, and Bharatpur taken in 1827.

The extension of postal services over this vast increase of territory can be traced only by scattered references in official documents. There was no general postal system in the country prior to 1837. A few main lines of couriers connecting the principal towns in the various provinces with the seat of Government had been established for the conveyance of Government letters and parcels, but the use of these mail services by private persons was conceded only as a privilege. The local posts in districts between police stations and head-quarters were maintained by the zemindars or landholders of each district, and their duties in this respect are laid down in Bengal Regulation XX of 1817. The postmasters of Presidency towns exercised the functions of a Postmaster-General in their own provinces up to 1785, and the Collectors or district officers were responsible for post office and mail lines within the limits of their own jurisdictions. There was no central authority to secure the co-operation of postal officials in different provinces or to maintain uniformity of procedure, and the charges for the conveyance of letters, which, in the absence of postage stamps, were levied in cash, varied according to weight and distance. Thus the cost of conveyance of a letter from Calcutta to Bombay was one rupee a tola , and from Calcutta to Agra twelve annas a tola. As postal officials were inclined to get as much as possible out of the public, private posts existed everywhere and were able to compete successfully with the Government services.

The letters of Victor Jacquemont, who travelled in India in 1830 as Naturalist to the Royal Museum of Natural History, Paris, throw some light on the working of the Post Office at the time. The post was carried altogether by runners, and the travellers' bungalows on the various routes were under the Post Office. According to Jacquemont, three servants were attached by the postal administration to each bungalow, to look after the comforts of travellers and to supply them with palanquin bearers. Letters seem to have had very uncertain careers. The usual time from France to Upper India was eight months. Jacquemont had no great faith in the post. On several occasions he trusts his letters to the Almighty to watch over during their travels.

The principle on which the District Post was based was the liability of landholders to maintain communications for Government purposes between the executive head of a district and his subordinates in outlying places--a responsibility which in many instances they were glad to discharge by a money payment to the magistrate who undertook the organization of the requisite agency. The laws under which it was administered were framed with the object of levying a small cess in each district. This was used, at the discretion of the magistrate, for the payment of dak-runners and other persons who conveyed correspondence between police stations and district officials. This local post undoubtedly existed from ancient times, and its maintenance was a liability to which the landholders had been subject from a period long before the advent of British rule.

The District Post in India, which was an important, though not very efficient, auxiliary to the Imperial Post, thus owed its origin to the need for maintaining the means of official communication between the head-quarters of each district and the revenue and police stations in the interior, where the general wants of the locality were not such as to call for the provision of Imperial post offices. It consisted of lines of communication connecting such stations, and was maintained primarily for the conveyance of official correspondence in accordance with the requirements of each district, but subsequently it was also made available for private correspondence.

In some parts of the country the cost of the District Post lines was met by local cesses specially levied for the purpose, and in other places it was met from Imperial or provincial grants as a charge on the general revenues of the country.

Originally the District Post in India was managed by district officers or other local officials quite independently of the Imperial Post, but, in order to increase the efficiency of the service, Local Governments and Administrations were asked to transfer the management to the officers of the Imperial Post Office. The North-Western Provinces Government was the first to accept the proposal, and the management of the District Post there was taken over by the Postmaster-General of the circle in the year 1864. This arrangement did not constitute an incorporation of the District Post with the Imperial Post, but merely a transfer of the management of the former to the officers of the latter, the financial control of the District Post remaining as before with the Local Government. As was anticipated, this measure led to rapid development of private correspondence, an acceleration of the speed at which the mails were carried and a marked improvement in the postal arrangements in the interior of districts. Consequently the objections which were at first raised in many quarters were silenced, and the other Local Governments and Administrations soon fell into line, so that in the course of the next fourteen years the management of the whole of the District Post throughout India was gradually transferred to the Imperial Post Office.

As the number of Imperial post offices increased the primary object of the District Post became less important and its funds were devoted more and more to the extension of rural delivery and postal facilities in backward rural tracts. As these tracts developed and the postal traffic produced sufficient revenue to cover the expenditure the Imperial Post took them over, and the money thus set free was used to start offices, lines and rural messengers in country not yet opened. In this way the District Post acted the part of pioneer to the Imperial Post and greatly assisted its progress.

In 1903, in connection with the revision of the Provincial Settlements, the Government of India decided to abolish the exceptional arrangement under which, in some provinces, a portion of the revenue and expenditure in connection with the District Post was included in the Provincial accounts. It was ordered that from the commencement of the new settlements all such receipts and charges which were then Provincial would be made Imperial. In accordance with this decision all the District Post establishments in the Presidencies of Bengal and Madras and the Province of Assam, which were formerly paid from Provincial funds, were brought directly on the general establishment of the Imperial Post Office with effect from the 1st April, 1904. Two years later the Government of India decided to take over the remaining District Post charges in India, and the District Post was abolished entirely with effect from the 1st April, 1906. It was at the same time ordered that from that date every postal charge would be an Imperial one and that no postal charges of any description whatsoever might be incurred from Provincial or Local funds.

In 1850 three Commissioners, Messrs. Courtney, Forbes and Beadon, were appointed by the Government of India to inquire into the methods for making the Post Office more efficient and more conducive to the convenience of the public than it had been hitherto.

In 1851 the Commissioners, after making exhaustive inquiries, presented a report which dealt with every phase of Post Office work, and on this report has been based the whole fabric of the present administration. The most important questions discussed were:

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