Signed and Posted: The Flag’s First Stamp

Three and a half annas of freedom

Paper birds in flag colours drift past a mast that could stand in any schoolyard — a gentle, letterhead sort of Independence Day design. Letterhead is apt: the young nation’s first official self-portrait travelled by post.

Free India’s first postage stamp, issued on 21 November 1947, carried the national flag with the legend Jai Hind. For three and a half annas, the tricolour went wherever an envelope could — the new country announcing itself, flag-first, in every mailbox from Bombay to Birmingham.