Bahawalpur’s Post before Its Stamps: Official Dak, the 1870 Agreement and the Railways

Bahawalpur’s own stamps came late, in the 1930s and 1940s, but its posts are much older. For most of that time its mail travelled under Indian stamps and agreements with the Punjab post.

Official dak before 1866

The official Gazetteer separates a general postal service from the earlier official dak. Before 1866 the State’s official letters were carried by camel riders and by the barqandazes and golandazes of the State troops. That does not mean the country had no mail before its stamps, nor that those early arrangements were a public postage service.^[34][35]

From 1866 until 15 September 1870 the State kept runners between Bahawalpur and MacLeod Ganj, and a horse dak towards the Sindh border. The Gazetteer places this alongside the British Government’s Multan–Karachi horse dak: overlapping arrangements, not a single route. Aitchison also records a Sind proposal of 1855 for a camel train through Bahawalpur; it stays a proposal until evidence shows it was carried out.^[34][35]

The transfer of 1870

In 1870 the State handed its postal arrangements to the Postmaster-General of the Punjab and agreed to pay a yearly subsidy of 20,000 rupees. The Gazetteer gives four conditions, all of which it says were carried out: the northern line extended to Fazilka, then in Sirsa District; a branch from Khanpur to Mithankot; a mail cart in place of the Bahawalpur–Multan horse dak; and State official dak exempt from postage.^[34][35]

The State also paid 5,000 rupees a year to the Deputy Commissioner of Multan for the upkeep of the mail-cart road. A deputy postmaster and eleven head peons were added to the regular dak staff, and the State supplied 31 runners. In 1872 a further 240 rupees a year was agreed for runners between Minchinabad and Pakpattan. These are payments for administration and transport, not postage paid by letter-writers.^[34][35]

1878: free franks inside, Indian service stamps outside

The Gazetteer dates the end of that arrangement to 21 February 1878. With the Indus Valley State Railway open between Multan and Sukkur, the subsidy came down to 6,000 rupees. The new terms separated mail inside the State from mail going beyond it. For official letters outside the State the Darbar received Indian service stamps worth 1,300 rupees a year free of charge, and could buy more at face value if needed.^[34][35]

Inside Bahawalpur, official State letters went free under the franks of officers approved by the Director-General of Post Offices. Further clauses covered the official mail of State vakils posted to neighbouring States or to Deputy Commissioners’ courts, and of authorised officers sending official mail from outside. These were particular privileges, not free post for everyone. The Gazetteer adds that the State received no share of the income from stamps sold in its territory.^[34][35]

The offices in 1904

The Gazetteer of 1904, printed in 1908, describes Bahawalpur as the State’s only head post office. The offices at tahsil headquarters, Bahawalnagar, Samasata and Bahawalpur city were sub-offices, and the rest branches. As a rule the larger offices delivered twice a day and once on Sundays; Bahawalpur city, a despatch office only, was the exception, and branches delivered once a day.^[34]

In some villages the bags went to the police stations, and the Deputy Inspector had the dak distributed by village chaukidars. Takings were paid into the head or tahsil treasuries, or a nearby thana for branch offices, and State police or chaukidars guarded the offices at night. The same passage separates the postal telegraph offices at Bahawalpur and Ahmadpur from the railway telegraph offices. It is a picture of one date, not a list of openings or a description still true in 1945.^[34]

The Khanpur–Chachran railway

The railway agreement of 21 August 1912, printed by Aitchison as No. XL, concerns the Khanpur–Chachran line, 23.27 miles long on the 5 ft 6 in gauge. The Darbar paid for construction, rolling stock excepted, and the North Western Railway built, maintained and worked the line for the Government of India. Clause 22 required the railway to run the prescribed mail services and carry postal staff on duty under its usual conditions and rates: an obligation, not free carriage, a timetable or proof that any particular cover went by that train.^[35]

Fiscal stamps before the postal pictorials

The Gazetteer’s revenue chapter keeps fiscal stamps apart from the post. Before 1901 court-fee stamps were made to order in England, and non-judicial stamps were printed on paper made in the State Jail. After losses through theft and resale, impressed sheets were brought in for both purposes in January 1901 and the embossed stamps were given up. By the Gazetteer’s date the only adhesive still in fiscal use was the one-anna receipt stamp; impressed and receipt supplies came from England as required, and were sold through the Head Treasury and treasury agents at the courts. No English printer is named.^[34]

The Rab sale catalogue gives the receipt stamps a printer history: Waterlow’s one-anna receipt stamp of 1876 lithographed, its successor of 1897 recess printed, and De La Rue taking over the contract in 1926. Those attributions belong to the receipt series, not to every earlier fiscal stamp, and the fiscal designs are not postage stamps.^[21]

Sources

• [21] Stanley Gibbons Baldwin’s, The George Rab Collection of Bahawalpur, sale S24011, 26 November 2024, lots 28–33, 102–134, 164–170 and 188–203.
• [34] Punjab Government, Punjab States Gazetteers, vol. XXXVI A: Bahawalpur State, with Maps, 1904, Lahore: Civil and Military Gazette Press, 1908, pp. 277–279 and 326.
• [35] C. U. Aitchison, A Collection of Treaties, Engagements and Sanads Relating to India and Neighbouring Countries, vol. I: Punjab, Punjab States and Delhi, revised to 1929, Calcutta, 1931, pp. 123, 125–126, 243 and 247–248.