Visitors at the GPO exhibition. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

The Indian postal department is depicting its rich history through stamps and postcards to mark National Postal Week.

A three-day exhibition tracing the journey of India Post from pigeon mail to ePost began at Calcutta GPO on Tuesday. “We got in touch with various philatelists who loaned us their collections,” said Shankar Prasad Das, the philately in-charge at the GPO.

“The theme is ‘Post Office’ and on display are rare stamps that tell the story of evolution of the postal system in India. We have stamps on pigeon, horse and camel mail and the runner, and also on later innovations like ePost.”

Special attractions were Half Anna Blue, the first stamp released in India on October 1, 1854, and the Penny Black, the first stamp of the world released in London on May 6, 1840. Both stamps bear the visage of Queen Victoria.

“The Indian Post Office Act of 1837 united the post office organisations in all presidencies... Many of the princely states already had a developed postal system, with post cards bearing a logo of the ruler, which are on display,” said Asit Kumar Ghosh, a contributor to the exhibition.

The exhibition displays stamps with pictures of Sher Shah and Alauddin Khilji. “Sher Shah had laid 2,000 miles of road connecting Bengal and Sindh. On the stretch were 1,700 rest houses, each with two horses on stand-by for fast dissemination of news and mail,” said a GPO official.

Sunanda Rudra, 58, who has been collecting stamps since her childhood, said: “The visit has added to my understanding of the socio-political history of India.”