The National Physical Laboratory in Delhi's postcards

 

I was asked by a friend about how differently Delhi is represented in postcards after independence from the colonial period. I thought I’d write about this in today’s post and therefore the feature on top, a postcard publicising the National Physical Laboratory in Delhi on Dr K.S. Krishnan Marg.

 

This postcard was made by the Government of India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting branch to advertise the laboratory for tourists/visitors in the 1950s. It speaks to one of the changes we see during the Nehruvian era in terms of publicity postcards lionising the achievements of the new Indian state. Scientific development was seen as the path to nation building under India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, a great believer in the potential of science to help India carve place for itself in the world. In some ways then it’s no surprise that the National Physical laboratory, an institute that standardises weights and measurements across the country, would feature in ‘official’ postcards from the time. 

 

While these were some of the newer features in postcards on Delhi there were also familiar tropes. For example, postcard booklets were printed under the titles of ‘Old and New Delhi’ which was actually a colonial construct to showcase a ‘New’ (Imperial) Delhi against the backdrop of Delhi’s ‘Older’ habitations. In the post-independence era, this continued. As ‘New Delhi’ was now reinscribed by the new Indian state to become a symbol of its modernity and progress (places like the National Physical Laboratory would often feature in the ‘New’ Delhi section) it made sense to continue with the ‘Old and New Delhi’ dynamic in printed postcards. A postcard booklet below (from the1960s-70s) which reflects what I have written, would have carried postcards such as the one above. 

 

I’ll see you again next Friday for more on similar topics.