The organised postal system of Jammu and Kashmir was introduced 152 years ago in 1866 when the then Dogra ruler, Maharaja Ranbir Singh, introduced the first adhesive postage stamp.

The system was gradually improved by successive rulers and delivery of mail was prompter than it is now when postal documents are carried in airplanes, trains and surface transport.

According to official documents, a mail line was established between Jammu and Srinagar through the Banihal Pass (9290 ft) near Verinag covering a distance of nearly 200 km. As many as 75 Harkaras (mail runners) were engaged to run the mail through 38 stations en route so that the men could take shifts. The mail runners at that time were paid a monthly salary of  two-and-a-half rupees.

This is corroborated in the book “The stamps of Jammu and Kashmir” published by The Collectors Club, New York, with inputs from a Dogri researcher, BP Sharma.

A chapter on the postal system says the mailbags contained mainly official correspondence, but a few private letters were carried free of charge. Special care was taken that the mail bag be as light as possible as the mail runners had to traverse through inhospitable mountain terrain.

Transportation of mailbags between the two main cities would generally take anything between 100 to 140 hours depending on the weather.

The system was further improved when the Maharaja increased the number of stations from 38 to 129 so that any letter could reach its destination within 25 to 30 hours.

The British rulers appreciated the postal system that was better than elsewhere in the country. Mail links with outlying areas of Kashmir and with Punjab in British India were also developed but the pace of progress was much slower.

Kashmir’s link with the outside world was the mail line from Srinagar to Lahore that would take 92 hours to reach its destination. The mail line between Srinagar and Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan) was improved with construction of a suspension bridge at Kohala that was completed in 1870.

It was in 1879 that the post offices in the state introduced duplex obliterators consisting of postmark, indicating in Dogri the place and date of origin of the letter. In 1878 Jammu introduced another Dogri postmark that was used in Jammu city till 1891.

According to Frits Staal, a US-based expert on philately, the stamps of Jammu and Kashmir introduced by Maharaja Ranbir Singh are products of the Dogra renaissance which flourished under his reign and inspiration. The state’s postal system would have continued to flourish on par with those other Asian nations, if its closing (or rather its amalgamation with the Imperial Mail) had not happened in 1894.