TRACING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE POSTAL SYSTEM IN MODERN KASHMIR (19TH AND 20TH CENTURY): A HISTORICAL APPRAISAL

History

The history of modern Postal System in India may be traced back to 1837 when postal services were thrown open to the public. The postal department was set up in 1854 when about 700 Post Offices were already functioning in the country. The Money Order system was introduced in 1880. Similarly, semaphore signaling was started in 1813 between Calcutta and Sagar Island. Even as Samuel Morse was laying the telegraph lines in the United States, the first experimental electric telegraph line in India was set up in 1839, over a distance of 33 km from Calcutta towards Diamond Harbour. In 1851, the circuit was established between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour for the East India Company. Kashmir is having distinct geographical features because of its mountaneous terrain and a different topography from the rest of the India. The relief and physical features of the state are quite contrary to that of the greater Indians plains. So it remained isolated for a long time, however this isolation broke because of the modern infrastructure building and the measures that were taken from time to time during the colonial and post colonial periods to link it with the rest of India. It is in this backdrop, that this paper is an attempt to trace the evolution and development of the modern means of communication in Kashmir. The paper has been confined to the postal system in Kashmir Valley. The commencement of the Dogra regime that is 1846 A.D. has been fixed as the starting point of the study. And it is till the close of the twentieth century that the growth of this very important sector has been traced and studied which is very important for any socio-economic and the political system to sustain and thrive progressively.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.