Parts of a jigsaw…F.S. Aijazuddin
TO reassemble the origins of Pakistan, one needs time, money and luck. Collectors of deltiology (the study and collection of postcards) need all three to make sense of Pakistan’s jigsaw chronology.
Our country’s visual history is a scattered puzzle, with pieces that are 5,000 years old with an undeciphered alphabet, a millennium-plus old invasion with Arabic consonants, and more recent ones that speak through Mughal, Sikh, and British monuments.
The Mughals, like the Ancient Egyptians, built for effect, “to shock and awe”. They intended their architectural legacy to have a lasting impact. The Pharaonic pyramids, the temples, and major tombs still exist in Theban sand. Similarly, the forts and palaces and mosques of the Mughals, their Delhi, Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, are still extant — overtaken, but not overshadowed, by Sikh and British period structures.
It is this latter residue of our history that features in antique postcards, a niche interest among collectors and amateur historians across the world. Publications by them have begun to appear devoted to postcards.
Omar Khan led the field with his Paper Jewels (2018), followed by Sangeeta and Ratnesh Mathur’s Picturesque India (2019), Safdar Nensey’s From Kurrachee to Karachi (2019) and The Lore of Lahore (2020), and, most recently, his Pakistan: Splendours of the Yore (2024). All were published in India.
Nensey’s book is a social panorama of Pakistan, using such ephemera as advertisements from the 1920s to 1970s, religious and film posters, matchbox labels, and Eid greeting cards.
In the 1920s, KESC advertised power supply, Burmah Oil motor lubricants, and Murree Brewery its Lion Brand Pilsener (“highly recommended”). In the 1930s, customers were encouraged to buy shoes made by the Harijan Institute, Karachi. In the 1940s, Bert’s Hall & School of Dancing offered classes for adults and children, Carlton Hotel assured “Comfort and Courtesy”, and Glaxo guaranteed “bonnie babies”.
In the 1950s, KLM’s Royal route competed with Orient Airways, and BOAC’s Comet Jetliner Service to London took 15 hours, via Cairo and Rome. Café Mexicano on Victoria Road saluted the martyrs of the 1857 struggle for independence. And the Palace cinema advertised Elvis Presley’s latest film, Loving You, in air-conditioned luxury.
The 1960s reflected the trend towards consumerism, with ads for beauty products, detergents, building materials, generators, Sui Gas, and encouragement by the GOP’s commerce ministry to look east: “Exotic East Pakistan is waiting for you.”
By the 1970s, banks exhorted Pakistanis to “Work Harder”, to “Earn More”, and to “Export More”.
Religious posters were popular. Some depicted shrines in Najaf and Baghdad, others local dargahs of aulia and saints in Pakistan and India. Even an unknown Nori Bori Wali Sarkar buried near Lahore merited one print run.
Perhaps the most intriguing items in the Nensey collection are the matchbox labels. Singers like Gauhar Jan, who cut the first record in India, Laila Begum and Oomrao Jan gained free publicity, their allure heightened by the gratuitous assertion that their portraits were printed in Czechoslovakia, Japan, and Sweden respectively.
The advantages of volume made match covers a cheap vehicle for conveying political ideas and propaganda, especially during the mid-1940s. Pro-British manufacturers used images of a British queen riding her horse at full gallop, holding the Union Jack aloft. Patriotic Indians countered with portraits of Rani Lak-shmibai Newalkar of Jhansi, riding her horse Baadal.
No set of such matchbox covers would have been complete without an image of Mahatma Gandhi. The manufacturer — A.E. Matcheswala — depicts Gandhi waving an early version of the tricolour flag, but with his spinning wheel where the Ashoka’s chakra is today.
One suspects that more of our history lies undisturbed in attics than in museums or public archives. A celebrated recent discovery of a cache of paintings occurred in 1979 when Dr Mildred Archer discovered an album commissioned between 1815 and 1819 by a British civil servant, William Fraser.
It contained portraits done by Indian artists (among them a Mughal-trained painter Ghulam Ali Khan and his brother Faiz) of “villagers, soldiers, holy men, dancing women, Afghan horse-dealers, ascetics, and Indian nobles”.
There were originally over 90 paintings and drawings in the album and it constituted a precious ethnographic record. The Fraser family chose to cannibalise and auction the album. One page from this album — of Fraser’s Kathiawari horse Puch Kuleean — sold this year for £241,700.
Postcards and ephemera may never fetch such prices. They do not need to. Their value lies in their place in our jigsaw history. The gaps that remain are being filled by our imaginative politicians.
COURTESY DAWN