How People Send Eid Card In British India.Image Priya Pall Collections

Early Eid greetings and Urdu poetry

It would be natural to assume that the mass produced Eid cards and their movement via post originated in the colonial period with the introduction of colour printing and postal system in India. While picture postcards started appearing in Europe and America in the later part of 19th century, the earliest cards with Indian views or produced in India have been dated to around 1900.² Most early postcards with India-specific images depict what can be called the “native views” of India for a primarily European consumer, with very few postcards being found usable by Indians themselves. The Priya Paul collectionhas some unused early postcards with illustrations of Hindu deities but probably not usable for greetings on a specific occasion such a Hindu festival; her collection, for instance, has no Diwali cards.³ Eid cards from 1930s onwards are probably the only such examples, although not necessarily all with Islamic images. It seems as if the business of Christmas greeting cards and ephemera might have inspired the emergence of Eid cards in early 20th century, as we shall see in this essay.

 As in Europe and America, the production and use of picture postcards spread like fire as soon as it was introduced in India at the end of 19th century. Besides many European publishers such as Raphael Tuck & Sons (Lahore, Calcutta), A.W. Plate & Co. (Cyclone), Clifton & Co. (Bombay), and K.C. Marriott (Karachi, Quetta), several Indian companies like H.A. Mirza (Delhi), Gobindram Oodeyram (Jaipur), Rewachand Motumal & Sons (Karachi), Melaram (Peshawar), and Jony Stores (Karachi) began printing picture postcards. But as has been shown by earlier studies,¹⁰ most early postcards depicted Indian subjects for the European consumer and were hardly used by Indians themselves. They also nurtured and projected Indian sites such as the hill stations on European models as has been shown by Shashwati Talukdar.¹¹Even the most prolific Indian producer of postcards, Mirza and Sons, published hundreds of views of famous Indian cities and monuments on the lines of Raphael Tuck, that were used by British officers posted in different Indian towns or military cantonments.