Why these travel posters sparked a fiery debate between Indian and British legislators in the 1930s

Kashmiri houseboats drift against a multi-coloured mountain vista, carrying passengers in bathing suits. A Lama dance is in progress in Darjeeling. At Calcutta Zoo, an adult hippopotamus yawns next to a half-submerged youngling. A narrow, bustling market lane of Shimla winds up to a tightly packed block of buildings.

Nowadays, one frequently stumbles upon these striking vintage prints at online art stores aimed at enthusiasts of retro travel and visual culture. But a century before they became home decoration, these picturesque scenes of the subcontinent, presented as emblematic of their locales and peoples, constituted the most popular forms of 20th-century tourism advertisement – the sarkari travel poster.

Colonial predecessors of contemporary campaigns such as “Incredible India”, the “See India”, “Visit India” and related poster series were produced by state-owned railways and displayed at ports and stations within the country and around the world. The visual publicity drive, spanning the period from the mid-1920s to the early 1940s, yielded depictions of tourist destinations in styles embodying the zenith of interwar graphic design, by well-known and accomplished commercial artists from Britain and India. At the same time, these posters became a fleeting but intense locus of contention between British and native members of the Imperial Legislative...

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