Hyderabad War Purposes Fund - Faithful Ally

Every time, I think of writing blog and the most important question that props up to me is which of the item from my collection, I should publish today. Yesterday, even though I had selected the topic for the blog but the laziness prevented me from publishing it :(

Here is set of war fund labels from Hyderabad that I wanted to show. Well! talking about Hyderabad, it was the largest of the princely states in pre-independence India. With an area of 86,000 square miles (223,000 km²), it was roughly the size of present-day United Kingdom.


Its ruler, was the highest-ranking prince in India, was one of only five princes entitled to a 21-gun salute, held the unique title of "Nizam" and was created "His Exalted Highness" and "Faithful Ally of the British Crown" after World War One, due to his financial contribution to the British Empire's war effort.

'Nizam Mir Usman Alikhan Bahadur' succeeded to the throne on 29th August 1911. After 1918, Nizam was granted the title of “Faithful Ally of the British Government”, by the King Emperor which remained until the end of second world war.

Hyderabad was the premier performer in collection of war funds. Hyderabad state paid money to raise 3 squadrons of war-planes during WWII. By 1945, it had spent more than 5o million rupees on war related projects.

Below is set of 3 different labels of 1 anna each issued by Hyderabad state to raise war funds.


All three carry same design though 2 of the upper labels were printed in Hindi and Marathi language while below (green) one was printed in Urdu. Since, Hyderabad state had a good population of both Hindu and Muslims, the need of printing different language based labels was indeed a good idea to encourage more participation from both the community.

The label carried words in Hindi and Urdu which when translated is:
"Faithful Ally" [Yare Wafadar]

The labels carried words in English:

"Faithful Ally" the title given to Hyderabad state with "Hyderabad War Purposes Fund 1939 - till Victory"

I see the text in Marathi as well at end which when translated is:
"Hyderabad War Purposes Fund 1939 - till Victory" [Yudh Sahayasanthee Fund, 1939 Pasun Jaypraptiparyant]

Hyderabad issued other war label [war relief] and a victory commemoration stamp as well after end of second world war. We will discuss those some time later when I show other victory commemoration stamps issued by British India....