Although the women do look somewhat similar in this set of a dozen Mughal Empresses, they can be identified individually thanks to the Urdu captions beneath each: [From Top Left to Top Right, First Row] Jamila Khatoon W/o [Wife of] Muhammad Mirza,
Some of the most interesting postcards are bazaar and storefront scenes, which can be staged or candid, but always seem to contain a wealth of information about life a century or more ago.
An early Greetings from Delhi postcard that seems to have been constructed from a number of other postcards given the way the titles appear on the images.
The Princely State of Chamba appeared on few postcards during the Raj even though its rulers seemed to have good relationships with a number of Punjab-based photographers, including Fred Bremner and John Burke.
[Original caption] The Museum. As befitting an important town like Bombay, the Museum is, indeed, a very fine one, and contains many valuable collections. [end]
This postcard was likely printed soon after the construction of the Prince of Wales
An unusual card which shows a woman, presumably a dancer, looking at the the photograph of a man, a self-reflexive trope that may or may not be recognized by us, who hold the postcard in our hands.
There are not that many postcards showing the charpai [charpoy], a ubiquitous feature of Indian life, defined in Hobson-Jobson (1903, p.
An example of how the earliest postcards of a place were often design masterpieces. Note how the palm tree merges with the ship masts, and nautical rope and elements carefully surround the whole frame.
Benjamin B. Cohen, in his highly informative study of Raj clubs, In the club Associational Life in colonial South Asia writes: "Locating the center of the [colonial] club's sphere at Government House de-centered the club and reflects the strong link
Occasionally, nomads — those most fleeting of human subjects and least sedentary inhabitants of our planet—were caught on a postcard.
