WHO WERE THE DAURIYAS?

Runners were quite literally people “who ran for their living”, carrying public and private mail to distant places. Traditions of running as couriers existed among castes like the Kahars in north and east India, Pattamars in the south, and Mahars in the west. Runners who were drawn from such groups had precise knowledge of routes, and an ability to negotiate difficult terrain. The Pattamars in south India were known for preserving their monopoly over routes through closed-shop practices, denying interlopers access to the knowledge necessary to enter the field.Footnote ³

Dauriyas from certain regions, like Oudh and Mewat, had a reputation for speed and endurance.Footnote ⁴ The ability of dauriyas to run long distances acquired legendary status, even as officials charged them for neglect of duty, and attempts to short change the Postal Department. The body of the dauriya became an object of interest for medical researchers investigating questions of health and life. An important tract, the Code of Health and Longevity by John Sinclair Bart, for example, carried the results of an enquiry conducted among “a class of men who perform long journeys on foot”.Footnote ⁵ In popular magazines, the endurance and speed of the Indian runners and palanquin bearers were subjects of discussion. In one such essay, their constitution was celebrated as infinitely superior to that of educated young men, who were unused to exercise and labour.Footnote ⁶ Stereotypes drawn from ethnic categories, characterizing certain groups as “good” or “bad” runners were important to the self-representations of runners. Professional runners themselves, it seems, acquired a pride in their ability, saw running as an art, a skill that was learnt over generations.Footnote ⁷ The skill and training necessary for long-distance running was underlined to define a sense of self, and to negotiate possible competition when the market of the job expanded.

Figure 1

The almost legendary status of runners as a people with remarkable endurance and speed is graphically reaffirmed in representations like this. The strong, muscular bodies of the runners are foregrounded, conveying both a sense of power and dedication to their mission. Ilustrated London News, 20 February 1858; p. 196; Issue 904.

In the early nineteenth century, the increasing demand for courier services threatened the monopoly of specialized dauriyas over routes and services. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, reports of postmasters and magistrates “impressing” peasants to provide services as runners were common. They were usually mobilized from social groups at the bottom of the caste hierarchy in the village, those classified in official records as “village servants” and “menials”. Government officials advocating liberal ideas of rule in the 1820s and 1830s tried to distance themselves from such forms of coercion;Footnote ⁸ informally, however, forcible methods to mobilize runners and palanquin bearers for the expanding needs of the East India Company continued to be used.Footnote ⁹

The emphasis in official writings in the 1840s was on the need for “able-bodied” runners: postal authorities were advised “to retain in the service only strong and active runners”.Footnote ¹⁰ Plagued with competition from other daks, officials saw the efficiency of Awadh dak, in terms of its method of selecting runners. In Awadh, in contrast to Company territories, they pointed out: “Great care has been taken […] to select proper runners. The situation is sought after and it is always given to the best runner, who has to run a long race, in good time, and to beat all his competitors”.Footnote ¹¹ A system which had its origins in selecting skilled runners for the King's dak was seen, in this discourse, as characteristic of the region as a whole.

What did “working for the Company” mean for dauriyas? Carrying mail in the name of the Company was important to the sense of identity of dauriyas. To be seen and recognized as a “Company ka dauriya” was empowering, especially in regions outside Company control. Dauriyas demanded various privileges: they expected food, fuel and other provisions gratis, in their position as runners for the Company. In a petition addressed to the British Resident in Indore, Shahamut Ali, a village headman pointed out: “It is a notorious fact that the hurkarra speaking generally do receive fuels etc. […] without payment in almost every village within the limits of native states.”Footnote ¹² Using the name of the Company was also a way of clearing the passage, and forcing compliance from groups hostile to the entry of dauriyas. In April 1832, dauriyas travelling through Sumbulpur tried to ward off attacks by Kol tribal people, announcing their identity as “Company ka dauriya”.Footnote ¹³

On important routes, like the Calcutta–Bombay route, especially in the forest tracks, it was difficult for new entrants to displace the virtual monopoly of established runners, even when they demanded almost double the prevailing rate of wages.Footnote ¹⁴ The expanding network of “Company dauriyas” was dependent on the services of runners who were familiar with routes that ran through the dense forest tracts bordering Bengal and the Central Provinces region. Strikes by “jungle runners” paralysed the movement of mail on the route.Footnote ¹⁵ Runners played on the fear of the jungle, terrorizing new dauriyas with stories of tigers and other predatory beasts. In jungle tracts in particular, the ability to negotiate dangers was important to the self-representation of dauriyas – a representation that became part of folklore, and proved useful in the market for jobs.

SPEED, TIME, AND THE MAIL CONTRACT

The consolidation of East India Company power in the early nineteenth century was marked by an assertion of control over networks of communication. This also involved attempts to subordinate local posts to its authority. These efforts were continuously challenged by rival agencies carrying dak for rulers in neighbouring territories. Merchants and bankers argued that mail delivered by private establishments could ensure greater speed and safety than services provided by the Company.Footnote ¹⁶ Seasoned runners were valued for their speed and knowledge of routes. Often, private agencies poached runners working for the Company to conduct their own business.Footnote ¹⁷ These transactions were done through the agency of dak moonshies (clerks) employed by the Company, who accumulated private profits through such deals. Efforts to control and regulate the speed of runners have to be understood against this background.

Within the new regime of governance, efficiency was seen as intimately linked to speed. Commercial information, revenue and police dispatches, all required speedy services. In the 1830s, demands for a speedy post were also related to the new overland route opened between India and Europe via Egypt.Footnote ¹⁸ Mail leaving by the “overland” route had to be on time for the steamers departing for the Suez from Bombay.Footnote ¹⁹ Company officials were anxious that there should be no delays in transporting the “overland” mail. Kittoe, superintendent of the Raipur post road, suggested that contractors should be warned to keep runners along the route ready for the overland mail: as people could not be expected to read or write, they might be made to understand when the mails were expected, by a small piece of red cloth fastened to a thin stick about a foot long, to be passed from stage to stage by the express runners.Footnote ²⁰

The claims to superior efficiency of Company post were asserted by incorporating many signs of modernity. Regulations were written up and elaborated. Terms under which contractors conveying mail were to function were specified and fixed.Footnote ²¹ A format was devised for formal contracts. Contracts for the East India Company mail were held by postmasters, doctors, army officers, private merchants, and others.Footnote ²² The period for which dak contracts were held could vary from twenty months to three years.Footnote ²³ One crucial term of the contract was the speed of mail: contractors had to guarantee that runners employed by them maintained the required speed through the period of the contract. Non-compliance with the terms of agreement, by the contractors meant the payment of fines and ultimately a cancellation,Footnote ²⁴ or non-renewal of the contract.

How was speed calculated? Speed was initially a nebulous concept. Officials, contractors and dauriyas had different notions of what could legitimately be defined as the expected speed of postal delivery. A variety of opinions were expressed, and conflicting views persisted even when certain terms became part of the official axiom, codified and specified through authorized regulations and instructions. The renewal of each contract involved negotiation over the basis on which calculations were made. The continuous discussions over the terms of contract reflect official efforts to evolve standardized rules according to the new demands for precision and uniformity.Footnote ²⁵ Through the debates and conflicts that ensued, we see the notion of an “average speed” being gradually defined.

Attempts to introduce new standards of measurement in the late 1830s were resented by contractors. Earlier, the custom in most regions was to calculate the speed of mail on the basis of a monthly average rate. Contractors complained against the imposition of new rules by which they were accountable for the speed of each individual mail transaction.Footnote ²⁶ There was also an effort to remove factors that could introduce uncertainty in the calculation. Earlier, contractors were allowed remissions for delays in mail for rain, flooding, and poor roads on the production of certificates from village headmen establishing the reasons for detention.Footnote ²⁷ Standardized rules of contract enforced in the 1830s gave no remission for rain or flood, or any other obstacle. Contractors pleaded for allowances to be made for crossing flooded rivers, and for poor roads.

In many regions dak contractors resented the attempt to impose a common standard of a daily average rate of travelling. Contractors in Central India for instance, argued for a continuation of the monthly system, which was the “usual custom” in the region.Footnote ²⁸ On the Calcutta–Rungpore road, an agreement for horse dak with Bashford, a mail contractor, was cancelled because he did not provide a daily average speed of 5–6 miles per hour. Bashford argued for a lenient view. The Hooghly–Rungpore stretch, he explained, was intersected by rivers at several points. It was impossible, he stated, for horses or even runners to ford the rivers on this route. The mail had to be ferried by boat. The terms of his contract however, did not take into account the time taken in traversing such difficult routes. Bashford pressed for a remission in fines, and more flexible rules that calculated the speed of dak on the basis of a monthly average rate of travelling and not on an average daily rate. Postal authorities considered such demands not only unreasonable but “an abrogation of one of the fundamental rules under which contracts are now allowed to be accepted”.Footnote ²⁹

Conflicts over determining the average rate reveal some of the problems of fixing universal standards of speed at which mail runners had to travel. The search for averages was a perpetual problem: the assumption of average conditions was difficult when runners had to traverse varied landscapes, and continuously faced unanticipated hurdles. Quite simply, conditions often did not exist for the anticipation of “average” conditions. It was commonly acknowledged that an average daily rate of 5 miles an hour over a long stretch was difficult for a runner to maintain. Postal officials themselves recognized this problem. Babington, a postmaster, who also held contracts for mail in the Midnapur and Sambulpur regions, pointed out that an average rate of 5 miles an hour over the whole distance between the two posts was a “fair” rate when the weather was fine. But he feared that even this speed was not possible to maintain with heavy loads over a continuous period.Footnote ³⁰

The speed of the mail was intimately connected with the volume of mail the runners had to carry. To maintain speed, contractors had to ensure that the runners were not weighed down by carrying too heavy a load. This was difficult to accomplish when there was a sudden increase in the volume of mail, or a squeeze on the contractors’ income. To maintain the margin of profit, contractors sought to cut costs, employing fewer runners and forcing them to carry an increasing volume of mail. Reports noted how the weight of the dispatches made it difficult for runners to maintain a good speed.Footnote ³¹

NEGOTIATING THE CONTRACT

What did the new terms of contract and regulation mean for the dauriyas? How did the demands for increased speed and the expansion of mail networks impact on them? From the late 1790s onwards, there were frequent instances of protests by dauriyas who demanded higher wages and timely payment. There were apprehensions that desertion by runners would lead “to the entire stoppage of the Dak”.Footnote ³² In districts where the rates of pay were lower than other neighbouring territories, runners made representations demanding similar terms. In the Chupra district of Bihar, for example, they submitted a petition that their wages of Rs 2.8 per month were much lower than in the neighbouring districts of Arrah, Patna, and Tirhoot, where they were around Rs 4 per month.Footnote ³³

Frightened of runners stopping work, many officials felt that district collectors and magistrates should be given greater control over the movement of post.Footnote ³⁴ In contrast to postmasters who lacked effective control over runners, magistrates, it was argued, could “inspire dread”: they could, with the help of the police, seize, dismiss and replace recalcitrant runners.Footnote ³⁵ Magistrates were seen as officials who could, in fact, help to “materially reduce the time […] taken to convey the mails from station to station”.Footnote ³⁶ Police officials demanded new rules giving additional penal powers to magistrates, sanctioning corporal punishment of runners who neglected their duties.Footnote ³⁷ These strategies of control, however, did not become the general practice.

One petition, submitted by mail runners against Madobchunder Sircar and Russiklal Bose in July 1838, provides important insights into the ways in which relationships between dak contractors and their employees worked. Mail runners employed by Madobechunder Sircar and his partner Russiklal Bose complained to the postmaster of Rungpore that they had not been paid for their services. Around the same time, a similar complaint was filed against Goopeemohun Burnall to the postmaster of Bhagulpore.Footnote ³⁸ Sircar and Burnall denied these allegations. The runners, they claimed, had been encouraged to make false complaints. Justifying their claims, Sircar and Burnall stated that they had receipts from surbardars, showing that payments had been made.

Senior postal officials admitted their helplessness, arguing that it was not possible for the government to intervene in such situations. One of them declared: “as the servants of contractors are not the servants of government it is totally out of my power to assist them”Footnote ³⁹ (emphasis added). Others asserted that the contractors had claimed that deductions were made only when runners failed to perform their duty. Having denied the government's right to intervene in the operation of a private contract, postal officials reaffirmed the rights of the contractor and the obligations of the dauriya.

A familiar method deployed by contractors to exercise control over runners was to withhold wages and make deductions from them. The monthly earnings of runners in the 1820s and 1830s remained around Rs 2.8, rising to Rs 4 in some regions.Footnote ⁴¹ But this was not always what runners actually received. The amount paid to them was linked to the question of speed. Accusations of delay – whether they had any basis or not – became an argument for deduction in fees, and a basis of control. Fines, in fact, became a common strategy for controlling the runners’ speed.

Underlining the discussion around the petitions against Sircar and Burnall is also the importance of the written “receipt” in the system of dak contracts. The negotiations show how the language of law was acquiring significance, and writing was becoming important in defining relations not formally regulated by a contract. Receipts, I will suggest, became an issue around which the unequal negotiations between the contractor and the dauriya were played out. Senior postal officials expressed their helplessness when contractors produced receipts as proof of payments disbursed.

Who signed the receipts? The record of correspondence about cases like this points quite clearly to the role of subordinates employed by contractors/postmasters. Postmasters like Sircar, Bose, and Burnall did not superintend their contracts personally. The task of overseeing the runners was sub-contracted to subordinates, at very low rates of remuneration. As the levels of sub-contracting became increasingly complex, and hierarchies of controllers emerged, the politics of payment became trickier. Both Sircar and Rasiklal Bose argued that the “full amount (due to the runners) to the last pice” had been handed over to surbardars [sic] who were in charge of disbursing payments. They claimed that they had receipts for the payment to the runners from the surbardars. Footnote ⁴² Quite clearly the receipts were not documents by which the amounts disbursed to individual runners could be verified. These were records of the total amount distributed by postmasters to contractors, and by contractors to sub-contractors. So, the petition of the runners about non-payment of dues could be as true as the claims of Burnall and Sircar that they had in fact made the contracted payment to the last pice.

New forms of control required written evidence, receipts, and proof. At every level, written evidence of payment and proof of work had to be collected. Detailed schedules charting the speed of mail on different routes also detailed the performance of runners. Mootsuddies (accountants) were given instructions to inscribe the time at which runners arrived on their backs.Footnote ⁴³ In Bengal Presidency, the Postmaster General, Elliot proposed the introduction of watches to keep time: “It is my intention in the course of a few days to dispatch a watch with the mail from hence towards the westward as an experiment in order to see whether some more correct check cannot be obtained over the traveling of the mails than now exists.”Footnote ⁴⁴ Measures like these served as ways to control and penalize “defaulting” runners, standardizing time, marking pace, and producing an idea of the “average”. Using watches, recording time with a new precision, also had a symbolic significance. It gave the imperial dak a stamp of modernity, differentiating it from other regional and zamindari daks.

DANGERS ON THE ROAD

The description of “rain and torrent”, of “ravines and tigers”, in the poem by Kipling cited at the beginning of this essay, are part of a story of the dangers and obstacles that had to be confronted to make modern communications possible. The story was also about the runner's commitment to public service. Kipling's “Overland Mail” is about the heroic runner who is integrated into the imperial civilizational project. However, we need to go beyond an understanding of this familiar imperial trope, to see what such representations tell us about the runners’ journeys and their negotiations with dangers on the roads.

In official accounts, forest roads appear as spaces of danger. Forests had to be cut to make roads safe for runners.Footnote ⁴⁵ Thick forests were seen as “interrupting” and “blocking” the field of vision from the roads; they were “infested” with wild beasts.Footnote ⁴⁶ But clearing the jungles was an almost impossible task in many areas. Officials repeatedly complained about how it was difficult to persuade locals inhabiting the region to cut down the jungles. In the Nagpur Raepore region, there were reports that “the dislike of the country people to engage in the work” made the task of clearing particularly difficult.Footnote ⁴⁷ Besides, in the forested regions of central India, the job of clearing was never over: new growth came rapidly, and covered the tracks that had been cleared. Thick forests and treacherous terrain created spaces that were difficult for the state to access. In many such regions, dauriya tracks provided the links, creating territories of control and empire, penetrating spaces that were seemingly beyond the reach of the state.

But there were real dangers runners had to face. Reports came in from many areas, in the 1830s and 1840s, of runners being attacked by tigers. From the Bagh Nudee region (a spot that became famous for such incidents), eyewitness accounts recorded:

On 26 September, as one of the runners was conveying Calcutta dak from the Bauge Nuddee towards the Moondepore Tuppa, accompanied by a Burkundauze, a tiger sprung on the Burkundaz and carried him off; the hurkurrah shouted, and ran after the tiger a few yards, but he disappeared in the long grass.Footnote ⁴⁹

From the Kunjipur and Haldia route, there were reports that runners had threatened to stop travelling at night, because of a fear of tigers.Footnote ⁵⁰ In many of the border districts of Orissa and Bengal – Sumbulpur, Lorapalli (in Ganjam), Haldia – runners refused to carry mail. In the Haldia region, runners insisted that they would not travel at night unless shikaries were sent out to protect them.Footnote ⁵¹ In Lorapalli, it was reported: “seven out of twelve […] deserted immediately after receiving their pay which has caused a delay in the receipt of the Bombay mail […] of 24 hours”.Footnote ⁵²

Postal officials responded to such reports with a sense of alarm and disbelief. In official discourse, the dauriya's refusal to run because of a fear of tigers appeared almost incredible. In these official writings, dauriyas are seen as people who inhabit the jungles: their bodies are inscribed with the marks of the wilderness they traverse. A history of the Post Office (1921) by Geoffrey Clarke, a civil servant, described them thus: “Postal runners are largely drawn from the less civilized races of India, many of whom are animists by religion. They will face wild beasts and wandering criminals, but will go miles to avoid an evil spirit in a tree.”Footnote ⁵³ Little credence was attached to stories of encounters between runners and tigers. When Mohan Singh was killed by the tiger on the Bagh Nuddee, the postmaster insisted that the Resident at Nagpur establish clearly that Singh was taken away by tigers:

In this case, for example, officials attributed no credibility to the statements of witnesses. They insisted that there was no verifiable proof that Mohan Singh had been killed by a tiger.

In an official discourse that placed increasing emphasis on the need for “proofs” and “evidence”, even fatal encounters with tigers had to be proven. And, as mentioned, the idea that dauriyas should stop running for fear of predatory beasts seemed incredible to postal officials. To develop modern communication, all hurdles had to be confronted and overcome. Mail networks could not be disrupted by the forces of nature. Officials typically suggested that reports on tigers and other dangers were attempts to extort compensation or ways of avoiding running at night. Officials mistrusted the claims of runners, demanded “proof” of tiger attacks, and feared that the dauriyas were using tiger stories to bargain for better wages, and negotiate the pace of running. Highlighting the dangers of the road, it appeared, was a strategy to negotiate the terms of labour.

Forest areas like Midnapur and Sambulpur, to give some specific examples, were areas with a history of resistance to outside intrusion and to the opening of a dak route through the region. Officials in charge of postal communications in this stretch were convinced that the dangers of tigers were greatly exaggerated. Stories about predatory animals, officials believed, were circulated because of local opposition to the opening up of dak routes.Footnote ⁵⁵ In other areas, the Singhbhum region, for instance, the jungles were seen as hideouts for dacoits. Reports about tigers, officials warned, were used by locals as a ploy and given the “specious appearance of being forwarded in truth”.Footnote ⁵⁶ Yet delays in mail and the refusal of dauriyas to run created anxieties in official circles. Thus, the postmaster at Sambulpur wrote: “I have no power to punish the men and if I dismiss them it will be utterly impossible to replace them; of the latter circumstance they are well aware.”Footnote ⁵⁷ On the Bombay and Calcutta route, where the runners had to be in time for the arrival and departure of ships carrying the overland mail, reports of attacks by tigers caused serious concern. In March 1828, when the Calcutta mail was over fifteen hours late, Babington, the official in charge, sent out a party of armed peons, offering “a reward of twenty five rupees, on event of their bringing the head of the tiger”.Footnote ⁵⁸

It is clear that postal officials both suspected and reaffirmed stories of runners and tigers on the road. They could not get away from the evidence of death in the jungles. Yet the networks of Imperial mail could not be sustained through a politics of suspicion. Officials had to ensure that runners did not desert. Running had to continue, and the fears of runners had to be allayed. A sense of security had to be created, and compensation and rewards had to be granted in case of death and injury. In agreeing to give lump sums to the families of runners who were killed, the state informally validated the principle of giving compensation to workers killed during work.Footnote ⁵⁹ Stockwell recommends “a boon” of rupees Rs100 for the widow of the deceased who fell victim to the tiger while on duty as a “public servant”.Footnote ⁶⁰

The fear of tigers played a part in the calculations of contractors mobilizing runners. They demanded concessions from the state: extra allowances for employing burkandauzes (guards), for the supply of pistols and firearms, and for carrying mussals (torches) to accompany runners. Postal officials conceded many of these demands, arguing that this would allow runners to travel fearlessly at night.Footnote ⁶¹ The state thus had to make concessions, especially if the terrain was particularly inaccessible, and if dauriyas and their contractors could bargain from a position of strength.

But were dangers of the jungles only a bargaining ploy? Runners also had real fears of predatory beasts which official representations tended to misrecognize. They feared running alone, especially at night. Lieutenant Kittoe, in charge of constructing a dak road, described:

Travelling through regions like Nagpur-Seonie, Sambulpur, Ramgurh or the Bagh Nuddee area was always precarious. Dauriyas, like others who inhabited the region, had practices and rituals to propitiate deities who, it was believed, could protect them from wild beasts. In the Sundarbans area, there were many stories of Dakhin Rai, the vengeful tiger god and the nurturing figure of Bonbibi who protected village folk and others against attacks by predatory beasts.Footnote ⁶³ Those entering jungle areas sought the help of fakirs and others known to possess special charms which could keep away predators, and protect travellers in the forests. Humans themselves, it seemed, could not acquire the power to confront the dangers; divine mediation was necessary.

With regard to central India, Sleeman recounted fabulous stories about tigers with magical properties or “men turned into tigers” who targeted human prey with a vengeance – stories that seem to reaffirm the idea of human vulnerability and helplessness.Footnote ⁶⁴ Dauriya demands for an allowance to make offerings to “an old woman” (believed to have special powers against wild jungle beasts) should be understood against this background. Widows, as we know, occupy a liminal space, in between the normative and the non-normative, the human and the extra-human. Undisturbed by the mythic world that such stories open up, postal officials sanctioned the sum demanded, but recorded it as an amount given to an “old woman”. The postmaster regarded this practice as an important concession to runners: “operating as such belief does, as advantageously in preventing delays in the transit of the mails, by inducing the runners to travel in confidence at times when they might otherwise be afraid to proceed”.Footnote ⁶⁵

WHAT HAPPENED TO HORSE DAKS?

A question often raised is why horse daks were not used in the first half of the nineteenth century. In principle, contractors were free to use any mode of transport, provided they delivered mail at the required speed.Footnote ⁶⁶ There were sporadic attempts to introduce horse daks in the 1830s and 1840s. Yet these experiments remained localized, and never completely displaced the existing system of runners. What happened to the horse daks?Footnote ⁶⁷

In official discussions, there was a constant attempt to rationalize the continued use of foot runners for carrying mail, as against horse-drawn vehicles. In negotiations between mail contractors and postal authorities, the relative speed of dak and the costs of a horse establishment were crucial. In taking tenders for horse daks, contractors had to guarantee a minimum average speed of 5–6 miles per hour – i.e. a speed higher than the average of 4–5 miles per hour for runners – and they had to agree to pay fines for any delays.Footnote ⁶⁸ In official calculations, however, this increase in speed had to be weighed against the additional costs of a horse establishment. Did the gain in average speed justify the additional costs involved? This question was repeatedly raised.

Moorleedhur, a jeweller, was given a contract for horse dak on the Benares–Delhi route.Footnote ⁶⁹ On the Cawnpore–Allahabad stretch of the route (a distance of 129 miles) the average speed of his horse dak was between 8–9 miles per hour; giving a total gain in speed of 10 hours over the 129-mile stretch.Footnote ⁷⁰ The gain in speed, in official calculations, was undermined by the increased cost of the establishment. The total expense on horse daks over the 477 miles between Benares and Delhi, at Rs 12,000, was estimated to be three times more than the expense on the existing establishment of runners. The Governor General's office was unwilling to sanction the increased expense. The postal receipts on the route, they argued, did not compensate for the expense.Footnote ⁷¹

Contracts for horse dak were often discontinued, because of a failure to maintain the terms of speed specified in their contract. Why did horse daks fail to keep up speed? To maintain good speed, especially at night, horses required tracks that were clear of trees, stumps, and other obstacles. The post horse system in Tokugawa Japan, or in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, functioned efficiently in regions where an elaborate network of roads and bridges had been built.Footnote ⁷² In India, by contrast, dauriyas were preferred in most regions, because they could move fast through forests and difficult terrain even in the absence of proper tracks. Horses, particularly when they had to pull carts and ekkas (one-horse carriages), averaged a slower rate than foot runners.Footnote ⁷³

For contractors, investing in horse daks was a risky proposition. Unlike a runner establishment, investment in horse daks involved a larger outlay of capital and greater possibility of loss. When contracts were cancelled it meant a double loss: a loss of capital invested in horses, carts, and other equipment, and on their future earnings. Moodalliar, who introduced a horse dak on the Nagpore to Raepore route, purchased fifty-eight saddle horses, thirty-four pairs of bullocks, and eight carts to transport the “overland mail”. Mudaliar's contract was terminated shortly before his twenty-month term, from May 1839 to December 1840, was over. In addition to losing the contract, he had to pay a fine of Rs 9,000 (a third of the total amount due to him for twenty months). Investment in horses was also risky, since horses were frequently seriously hurt in negotiating difficult terrains. Babington, who had a contract for horse dak in Orissa, complained that seven of his horses became lame whilst negotiating the difficult tracks in the Phooljur area.

Another reason why contractors were reluctant to continue with horse daks was the system of payments in arrears. The practice of “payment in arrears”, they complained, forced them “to borrow to provide for their support”. Beauchamp, the deputy postmaster of Gaya, who managed the contract for the ekka dak in Bancoorah saw this as an important reason for the collapse of the ekka dak in Bancoorah.Footnote ⁷⁴ The practice of withholding wages and deducting fines – commonly used as disciplinary methods – made investment in horse daks unattractive for dak contractors.Footnote ⁷⁵

Finally, in looking for the missing horse daks, we need to recognize also the resistance of local communities to new modes of transport. Dauriyas with long experience in a region were familiar with the routes and with people in neighbouring villages. Networks connected with dauriyas were entrenched in local communities, and these were usually opposed to the entry of horse daks.Footnote ⁷⁶ Postal establishments often acted in collusion with these interests. Dak contractors in Bengal pointed to the enormous problems they faced in running horse daks, against which, “the natives particularly the whole body of the Post office subordinates are greatly prejudiced”.Footnote ⁷⁷ In Bancoorah, reports described how a contractor who introduced an ekka dak soon had to abandon the project because of intense local opposition.Footnote ⁷⁸ The ekka drivers who were brought in from Patna were terrified of travelling through the jungles of Ramgarh. Local runners displaced by the new ekka service worked on these fears, terrorizing the ekka drivers with exaggerated stories of tigers and wild beasts. Many ekka drivers, we are told, fled in alarm.Footnote ⁷⁹

Such opposition to new technology and resistance by local interests, is known to have been common in many parts of India. However, among postal officials such stories were woven into a narrative that vindicated the postal establishment. Failed horse daks were attributed to local opposition, and not to non-payment of contract dues.

IN CONCLUSION

Clocking the runner's speed was, as I have pointed out, part of the process of creating a public post marked by its difference from existing postal systems. Calculating speed, ensuring regularity, and projecting estimated time of travel was part of building a “modern” postal system, even when it was sustained by traditional dauriyas. Within the new system, the dauriya operated with the signs of colonial modernity; they were subjected to new rules and regulations, new systems of written contracts, new documents, and receipts. Speed was clocked and recorded. The number of stages, and the rate of travelling were noted down, and the runner's body was marked with the time taken to reach a particular destination. The point is not to see whether these efforts produced the intended results but to understand the concerns that underlined the framing of such regulations.

Tracking the runner's speed, marking the stages where runners and palanquin bearers were changed (dak chowkis), were also part of a new politics of spatialization. The term dak, in fact, is derived from the term “post” – that is, the stages at which relays of couriers or other modes of communication were stationed.Footnote ⁸⁰ Establishing stages and dak chowkis became a way of charting territory, and marking the boundaries of colonial rule. Runners could travel through all kinds of terrain, through deep impenetrable forest where the state could not easily enter. Dauriya tracks were important in connecting and creating the territories of control and empire, penetrating spaces that were seemingly beyond the reach of the state.

And finally the question: where were the dak roads? New road networks moved away from the more familiar routes, and cut through forest, often taking steep ascents to cut down distance. However, these roads could not reach all places, or penetrate all forests. Large stretches of roads were literally created by the footfalls of the dauriya. Continuous running created a path, and charted a route.Footnote ⁸¹ In many places, however, even these mud tracks were not present. In jungle terrain in particular, the official concern was more with removing the stumps of trees, to make smooth running possible.Footnote ⁸²Dak roads, in a sense, were present in their absence. In many places, the runner was the road. The modern networks of postal service were built on their backs.

I began my story with Kipling's image of the runner. Let me end with another, popularized by the Bengali poet Sukanto Bhattacharya, in a poem called “The Runner”.Footnote ⁸³ Written with a deep empathy for the runner, it seeks to capture the heroic and tragic, the moments of joy and pain, the proximity and distance from the burden the runner carries on his back. Beyond these usual tropes of radical poetry, we see other images. What is particularly striking about the runner in this poem is the continuous motion of the runner: villages slip by rapidly, as he speeds towards his destination. Tired and hungry, worn out with fatigue, the runner cannot rest at night; he has a long distance to go before the break of dawn. The story of the runner is linked to the oppression of a new time regime, and the constitution of a set of new ideals: principles of speed and regularity, of the idea of public commitment and public good. What I am doing in this paper is to explore the small stories behind such popular images, to understand the system within which the runners worked and lived.