Vaibhav Singh
Independent typographer, type designer, and researcher
Visiting Research Fellow in Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading
Editor and publisher of Contextual Alternate: Journal of Communication, Technology, Design, and History
Letters for the nation: languages, scripts, and postage stamps in colonial India
Connections between the state, postage stamps, and projects of nation-building are often understood and formulated through visual imagery. For instance, key cultural or political locations or personalities and their iconic depictions frequently act as instruments through which ideas and ideals of a nation are expressed. But isn’t it interesting that the literally legible matter on stamps – often just a few words and numbers, though in a specific language and script – is mostly thought of as neutral information or simply as default background material?
Textual matter on stamps may seem like something entirely self-evident, as if it conveys no meaning beyond the purely informational, but this is hardly ever the case. Overlooking the many qualities – not to mention quandaries – of text and its appearance on stamps is certainly surprising when we think how often languages and scripts tend to be defining concerns in projects of nation-building and identity formation. Indeed, the language and script, as well as the form or style that it appears in on a postage stamp, can tell us a great deal about the political and social histories of a period and a place. This is especially significant in a region as complex and richly imbued with cultural and linguistic diversity as South Asia.
This study examines how postage stamps addressed the possibility of representing information in more than one language and script in a region where identities remain deeply tied to specific, sometimes multiple, languages and scripts.
