Negotiating Empire
The Colonial Post Office and Indian Society
Keywords:
Letters, Negotiations, Post-Office, Adaptation, SocietyAbstract
The post office arrived in India as part of a colonial agenda, intended mainly as a tool for the British to manage their empire. Over time, it emerged as a space of interaction between British officials and Indian society, where both influenced each other. This paper looks at how, what started as a foreign system became an integral part of Indian daily life, and also explores how, in its early years, the colonial post office dealt with all sorts of difficulties and emerged not only as a space of compliance but also as one of subversion. The paper highlights this dual character of colonial institutions and shows how the post office was reworked into a hybrid institution through dense local participation. This paper draws on firsthand written accounts of colonial officials, postal reports, oral histories, private letters, and a wide range of literature to examine the colonial post office as a site of negotiation between imposition and adaptation. Thus, this paper calls for a rethinking of colonial infrastructures, viewing them not only as static instruments of domination but also as dynamic arenas of social history.
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