Jasdan: a Kathi State, One Postage Stamp and Its Darbari Tapal

The state behind the stamp

Jasdan was a small state in Kathiawar, or Saurashtra, in present-day Gujarat, ruled by a Kathi family from its capital, Jasdan. Medhora names Jasdan and Vinchhia as its principal postal offices. No historical map is reproduced here; the state’s old boundaries should not be read from a modern map.^[1]

Sir Roper Lethbridge’s Golden Book of India of 1893 names Khachar Ala Chela as Jasdan’s chief, born in 1833 and succeeding in 1852, and describes the ruling family as Kathi. It places Jasdan in Kathiawar under the Bombay administration and records tributary relations with Baroda and Junagadh. That is the state half a century before its stamp, not the ruler of 1942.^[2]

Near the end of the stamp period, the London Gazette of 1 January 1948 names Darbar Shri Khachar Ala Vajsur as Chief of Jasdan, among the new Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire. The page gives neither his accession date nor his reign. The stamp shows a sun emblem, not the ruler’s portrait.^[5]

Date	Chief	Note
Succeeded 1852; chief in 1893	Khachar Ala Chela	Kathi family; before the stamps, not the ruler when the stamp was issued
Chief on 1 January 1948	Darbar Shri Khachar Ala Vajsur	Named in the London Gazette honours list; no accession date given

Two posts

Jasdan had an older State Tapal for official papers and petitions, carried by village staff, watchmen and bullock carts, before it opened a Darbari Tapal for the public in 1942. The new service let residents send letters and petitions to the ruler and his officials without travelling to Jasdan. Its stamp was a one anna, and a sender who wanted a reply enclosed a second. Only letters were carried.^[15][16][10]

The Philatelic Journal of India reported in April 1944, from information supplied by the Diwan, that the system began on 15 March 1942 with offices at Jasdan, Vinchhia and ten villages, that L. V. Indap & Co. of Bombay printed the stamps, that they were issued in booklets of 200, and that 13,000 had been printed by then.^[10]

Chronology

Date	Event
30 September 1940	Gangaram, Fozdar of Jasdan, arranges the older State Tapal in eight circles
20 and 22 January 1942	Draft for the Darbari Tapal submitted and approved
27 January 1942	Footer date of the detailed group order, No. 122
6 March 1942	Order No. 152 directs that stamps and cancelling devices be used from 15 March
15 March 1942	Darbari Tapal opens (confirmed by the report of April 1944)
July 1942	The Jasapur schoolmaster reports no sales for the month and stamps worth Rs. 3 as. 12 in stock
June 1943	Stoney’s first report of the stamp in The Philatelic Journal of India
April 1944	Report from the Diwan’s information: Indap printers, twelve offices, letters only, booklets of 200, 13,000 printed
24–26 June 1944	A cover from Vinchhiya to Jasdan with English circular marks, arriving two days later (Medhora, 1990)
8 April 1946 and 6 January 1947	Orders for 20,000 and 25,000 stamps reported by Medhora
15 February 1948	Closure of the Darbari Tapal according to Medhora (1985); a dealer’s order of 17 February refused. Later use is reported, so this is not a certain last day.

The stamps

There is one postage design and one value: the one anna green Sun God, in many printings, shades and pane formats, with a separate carmine arms fiscal that is not a postage stamp. The checklist from the research is below.

Period	Issue	Values
Introduced 15 March 1942; later printings separately qualified	Sun God, bilingual postal design	1 anna green
Separate revenue design	State arms, Gujarati inscriptions (fiscal, not a postage issue)	1 anna carmine fiscal

Sources

• [1] P. M. Medhora, “The Stamps and Postmarks of Jasdan State”, undated revised three-page extract, pp. 1–3 (a later, different version of the 1972 article).
• [2] Sir Roper Lethbridge, The Golden Book of India, London: Macmillan, 1893, p. 209, “Jasdan, Khachar Ala Chela”.
• [4] Christoph Gärtner, 17th auction, India and Indian States, 7 March 2011, Jasdan lots 1120–1128, descriptions p. 131, plate p. 51.
• [5] The London Gazette, supplement to issue 38161, 1 January 1948, p. 8: Darbar Shri Khachar Ala Vajsur, Chief of Jasdan, among the Companions of the Order of the Indian Empire.
• [10] “Jasdan State”, The Philatelic Journal of India, April 1944, p. 30 (unsigned report based on information supplied by the Diwan Sahib of Jasdan; the masthead prints vol. XLIX, no. 4).
• [15] P. M. Medhora, “State Tapal and Darbari Tapal of Jasdan State”, part 1, India Post, vol. 19, no. 1 (no. 83), January–March 1985, pp. 6–10.
• [16] P. M. Medhora, “State Tapal and Darbari Tapal of Jasdan State”, part 2, India Post, vol. 19, no. 2 (no. 84), April–June 1985, pp. 48–51.