Strange Men Strange Places by Ruskin Bond

Author:Ruskin Bond [Bond, Ruskin]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9788171671076
Publisher: Rupa & Co
Published: 1992-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

THE ROMANCE OF THE MAIL RUNNER

E FIND LITTLE that is romantic in the post office today; but there was a time, over a hundred years ago, when the carrying of the mails was a hazardous venture, and the mail runner, or hirkara as he was called, had to be armed with a sword or spear. That was before the railways and the air services made the delivery of the mail a routine affair.

Though the first public postal service was introduced in India by Warren Hastings in 1774, the Kings and Emperors of India had always maintained their own personal postal system. Their rule was effective partly due to their excellent means of communication, by which despatches were passed on from hand to hand either by runner or horseman. When Ibn Batuta was travelling in India in the middle of the fourteenth century he found an organised system of couriers established throughout the country by Mohammed Bin Tughlak.

"There is a foot-courier at a distance of every mile," wrote lbn Batuta, "and at every three miles there is an inhabited village, and outside it three sentry boxes where the couriers sit prepared for motion with their loins girded. In the hands of each is a whip about two cubits long, and upon the head of this are small bells. Whenever one of the couriers leaves any city, he takes his despatches in one hand and the whip, which he keeps constantly shaking, in the other. In this manner he proceeds to the nearest foot-courier and, as he approaches, shakes his whip. Upon this out comes another who takes the despatches and so proceeds to the next. It is for this reason that the Sultan receives his despatches in so short a time."

This system was of course established for the convenience of the Emperor, and was continued with various innovations by successive Moghul Emperors. In the eighteenth century the East India Company established a postal system of its own to facilitate the conveyance of letters between different factories; but it was only during Warren Hastings' administration that a Postmaster-General was appointed, and the general public could avail of the service, paying a fee on their letters.

Letters were then carried in leather wallets on the backs of runners, who were changed at stages of eight miles. At night the runners were accompanied by torch-bearers — in wilder parts, by drummers called dug-dugi-wallas — to frighten away wild animals.

In places where tigers were known to be active, mail runners were armed with bows and arrows; but these were seldom effective, and the mail carrier often fell victim to a man-eating tiger. In the Hazaribagh district (through which the mail had to be carried on its way from Calcutta to Allahabad) there appears to have been a concentration of man-eating tigers.

There were four passes through this district, and the tigers had them well covered. We are told that "day after day, for nearly a fortnight, some of the mail runners were carried off."

Postal runners were largely drawn from the tribal races, many of whom were animist by religion.

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