CHAPTER IX THE PEOPLE AND THE POST OFFICE

There is no branch of the Public Service that comes into such close contact with the people as the Post Office. Its officials are consulted in all kinds of family troubles, they have to deal with curious superstitions and beliefs and to overcome the prejudices ingrained by an hereditary system of caste. The official measure of the successful working of the Department is gauged by the annual statistics, but the real measure of its success may be learned from the attitude of the people themselves. The Indian villager dreads the presence of the Government officer in his neighbourhood, but he makes an exception in the case of Post Office employés. The postman is always a welcome visitor and, if he fails to attend regularly, a complaint is invariably made.

It is in the delivery of correspondence throughout the smaller towns and rural tracts in India that the Post Office has to face some of its most difficult problems. Towns in India, with the exception of the Presidency and more important towns, are mere collections of houses, divided into "mohullas" or quarters. Few streets have names, and consequently addresses tend to be vague descriptions which tax all the ingenuity of the delivery agents. Among the poorer classes definite local habitations with names are almost unknown, and the best that a correspondent can do is to give the name of the addressee, his trade and the bazaar that he frequents. Such cases are comparatively simple, as the postman is usually a man with an intimate knowledge of the quarter, and the recipients of letters have no objection to be described by their physical defects, such as "he with the lame leg" or "the squint eye" or "the crooked back"! Real difficulties, however, arise when articles are addressed to members of the peripatetic population consisting of pilgrims, boatmen and other wanderers. There is an enormous boat traffic on the large rivers of Bengal and Burma. The boat is the home of a family, it wanders over thousands of miles of channels carrying commodities, and letters to the owner rarely give anything except a general direction to deliver the article on board a boat carrying wood or rice from some river port to another. The pilgrims who travel from shrine to shrine in the country are also a puzzle to the Post Office, and in sacred places, like Benares, special postmen have to be trained to deliver their letters.

The forms of address are seldom very helpful for a speedy distribution and delivery of the mail. The following are characteristic of what a sorter has to deal with any day:—

"With good blessings to the fortunate Babu Kailas Chandra Dey, may the dear boy live long. The letter to go to the Baidiabati post office. The above-named person will get it on reaching Baidiabati, Khoragachi, Goynapara. (Bearing.)"

"To the one inseparable from my heart, the fortunate Babu Sibnath Ghose, having the same heart as mine. From post office Hasnabad to the village of Ramnathpur, to reach the house of the fortunate Babu Prayanath Ghose, District Twenty-four Parganas. Don't deliver this letter to any person other than the addressee, Mr. Postman. This my request to you."

"If the Almighty pleases, let this envelope, having arrived at the city of Calcutta in the neighbourhood of Kulutola, at the counting house of Sirajudin and Alladad Khan, merchants, be offered to and read by the happy light of my eyes of virtuous manners and beloved of the heart, Mian Sheikh Inayat Ali, may his life be long! Written on the tenth of the blessed Ramzan in the year 1266 of the Hejira of our Prophet, and despatched as bearing. Having without loss of time paid the postage and received the letter, you will read it. Having abstained from food and drink, considering it forbidden to you, you will convey yourself to Jaunpur and you will know this to be a strict injunction."

The three addresses given below have been taken from letters posted by Hindus to Hindus, and it will be noticed that they merely bear the names of persons with no indication of the place of delivery.

"To the sacred feet of the most worshipful, the most respected brother, Guru Pershad Singh!"

"To his Highness the respected brother, beneficent lord of us the poor, my benefactor, Munshi Manik Chand."

"To the blessed feet of the most worshipful younger uncle, Kashi Nath Banerji."

It is not uncommon for Europeans to receive letters with honorific titles added to their names, in fact it would be considered impolite to address an English gentleman in the vernacular by his mere name. Such a thing is never done. Whatever address is given by the writer, the Indian postman has his special methods of noting it. He seldom knows English, and when names are read out to him by the delivery clerk he scrawls his own description on the back in a script that can only be read by himself. A well-known judge of the Calcutta High Court, Sir John Stevens, was much amused to find that the words "Old Stevens Sahib" were constantly written in the vernacular on the back of his letters, this being done to distinguish him from his younger colleague, Mr. Justice Stephens.

A story recently received from the Persian Gulf explains how it is that letters sometimes fail to reach their destinations despite the greatest care on the part of the Post Office. The incident is worthy of the Arabian Nights, and I will quote the account given by the sub-postmaster of Linga.

"On the 8th of December in the year 1912 a well-known merchant of Linga, Aga Abbasalli by name, informed me that his agents at Bombay, Karachi and other places in India had informed him by telegraph that for the last two weeks they had received no mails from him. He asked for an explanation from me for this, indirectly holding me responsible and even threatening to report me to you, for he maintained that the letters he sent to the Post for many years past had, at least, always reached their destination, if late, and that he could not now for his life imagine as to how it was that the several letters which he himself sent to the Post, by bearer, for the last two weeks, were lost during transmission. As Abbasalli was known to me, I sent word to him through somebody to the effect that, in the first place, he would do well to examine the bearer with whom he sent his letters to the Post. The bearer was thereupon called by him and confronted with the question of his mails; but before quoting the silly dolt's interesting reply it would be better to note the following few points:—

There are two identical terms in Persian, the "Poos" and the "Poost," which have three distinct meanings, the word "Poos" meaning a dock, or, in such a place as the port of Linga, only a shelter for ships' anchorage, whilst the word "Poost" meaning (1) hides and skins, or leather and (2) the Post Office. As far as pronunciations are concerned it has been a very indiscriminate colloquialism at Linga to pronounce both the above said words alike as "Poos," without any regard to the final "t" of the word "Poost"; and practically, therefore, the word "Poos" has three separate meanings as quoted above. The "Poost-e-Buzurg" or the "Poos-e-Buzurg," literally equal to the big Post Office, is used by the mass of people for the British Post Office at Linga, as distinct from the Persian Post Office, which is known as the "Poost-e-Ajam." But to many again the "Poos-e-Buzurg" is known as the big dock, also styled the "Poos-e-Aga Bedar" (Aga Bedar's dock), in contradistinction from another which is smaller, and is only known as the "Poos-e-Bazar," that is, the Bazar dock. Moreover, both the big dock and the British Post Office are situated somewhere near Aga Bedar's Coffee shop, the latter being, however, a little farther than the dock.

Having noted these points I now beg to revert to the question put to his bearer by Abbasalli and the former's reply thereto. "What did you do with my mails, that I gave you, for the last two weeks, to be conveyed to the 'Poost'?" asks Abbasalli in his vernacular, and the bearer replies, "The first week when you told me to carry your letters to the 'Poost' I went to the shoemaker's and was putting them exactly amongst the 'Poost' (meaning leather and leather-ware), as ordered by you, but, he won't let me do so, and said I should carry the letters to the 'Poos-e-Buzurg' near Aga Bedar's Coffee shop." "Ah! you blockhead, you," explained the exasperated merchant, "but, what did you do with my letters after all when he told you to carry them to the 'Poos-e-Buzurg'?" "Why, rest easy on the point," says the bearer, "I carried them exactly to the 'Poos-e-Buzurg' (meaning the big dock) and threw the letters in. The first time when there was plenty of water in the dock (on account of tide) I had simply to throw your letters in, and I am sure they must have reached their destination quite all right; but the next week, when there was but little water in the dock, I had to dig a pit in the sand to put the mails in, and perhaps they may not have reached their destination."

Poor Abbasalli was quite perplexed and awfully sorry to know that all the valuable letters written by him for the two weeks, some containing cheques even, as I am given to understand, were thus entirely washed away by the merciless waves; but, no less embarrassed am I, on hearing of the tomfoolery, to think of what blame it may sometimes accidentally and unnecessarily entail on a Postmaster, and I therefore venture to put this real story before you, with the fullest hope that, in future, complaints of a like nature may kindly be considered only on their due merits.

I may be allowed to add that the story was related by me before H.B.M.'s Vice-Consul and the small European Community at the Linga Club, and they all, while sympathizing with me in my perplexity, enjoyed a hearty laugh over the recital.

On the 31st March, 1918, there were over 19,410 post offices and 49,749 letter boxes in India to serve a population of 319 million people in an area of 1,622,000 square miles. This gives a post office to about every 16,000 persons, or to each 83 square miles of country, which seems a very poor service by comparison with Western countries, but, when one considers that the literate population of India is only 18,500,000, the service is good and the prospect of future development with the increase of education is enormous.

It must not be supposed, however, that the Post Office confines its energies to the literate population. It is largely used by people who can neither read nor write, and this is made possible by the existence of professional letter-writers, who are to be found in every town and village in the country. For a pice (farthing) they will write an address, and for two pice they will write a short letter or a postcard or fill up a money order, though slightly higher fees are charged if the letter is very long.

In rural tracts where it is not worth while to maintain a post office, the people are served by a letter-box or by a village postman who makes periodical visits and acts as a travelling post office. It is a wonderful achievement of the Department that there is scarcely a village in India which does not lie within the beat of a village postman. The competition between villages to obtain post offices is often very keen, and a Postmaster-General has many a troublesome decision to make, as to which of two or three neighbouring villages is to have the honour conferred upon it. While the matter is yet undecided the competitors vie with each other in pouring correspondence into the nearest post office in order to show the postal importance of their respective villages, an importance which is apt to decline sadly when once the post office has been opened. On one occasion, when Postmaster-General, I received application from two villages A and B for the opening of post offices. There happened to be an office in a village C close by, but the applications stated that this village was separated from them by a river, difficult to cross at most seasons and quite impossible during the rains. The inspector who visited the locality reported that the river could be crossed dry-shod at most seasons and with little difficulty during the monsoon, but that A was a much more important place than C and that the post office ought to be transferred there. A fresh complication was then started, and the indignation of the villagers in C knew no bounds. They threatened to carry the matter up to the Viceroy, and for the time they began to post enough letters to justify the existence of an office in the village. The dispute was finally settled by establishing an office at A in addition to the one at C, on condition that one or the other would be closed if the postal work done did not justify its continuance.

One of the most important duties of a Superintendent is to watch carefully the work of village postmen. Statistics are kept regularly of the articles delivered and collected by them, and these statistics give a very true indication of the places where new post offices are required in rural tracts. In this way the Department keeps in touch with the whole country, and a special grant has been allowed by Government for opening experimental offices in places which show signs of needing permanent ones. An experimental office is opened for a period of six months and, if it leads to a development of correspondence and pays its way, it is made permanent at the end of that time, but unless it is a complete failure the experiment is extended up to two years in order to give the people of the neighbourhood every chance of retaining the office. This policy has been most successful and has taught the village people that they are largely responsible for the maintenance of their own post offices. The postmaster is invariably a local man, either the village schoolmaster or a shopkeeper, who gets a small salary, which, combined with the dignity of His Majesty's mails, gives him a direct interest in making the office a profitable concern.

The annual statistics of the Post Office serve as a barometer of the prosperity of India. The Department has entered into the lives of the people with its lines of communication, its savings bank, money orders, payment of pensions and sale of quinine. It has only one aim and that aim is recognized by all, namely, to do the greatest good for the greatest number.