'Ye chitthi tum kise likh rahe ho?' BSNL scraps telegram services from July 15

In years gone by, the arrival of a telegram could make the heart skip a beat and the stomach tighten.

Was there terrible news of a son at war on foreign shores or a declaration of love from a suitor? In India, it was the technological breakthrough that revolutionised communications across what was then the British Raj - expediting the East India Company's total commercial dominance of the country, helping to suppress the 1857 uprising and providing newspaper readers in Britain with updates from the Empire.

Now, after 163 years, the days of the telegram - or taar in Hindi - are coming to an end, hastened by the rapid rise of text messages and emails, even among the country's rural poor.

India is the last country in the world to use the telegram on such a large scale, but officials said the service, operated by the government-owned telecom firm BSNL, had run up losses of more than £2billion and the government stated it was no longer willing to bear the cost for what had become "nostalgia".

"Currently, we send only about 5,000 telegrams per day," said a BSNL official. "That's down from several hundred thousand a day before the advent of the fax machine."

Over the past decade, several countries have phased out the services. In Britain, telegrams are operated by a private company, but are marketed as retro greeting cards or invitations.

Centenarians still receive a telegram from Queen Elizabeth on their birthday. In the US, the main service provided by Western Union was closed in 2006. Services of varying scales are still provided in Russia, Germany and Canada among other countries.

The last telegram to be sent in India on July 15 will use similar technology to the first, which was successfully transmitted over the 13 and a half miles between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour - on the banks of the Hooghly river - in 1850.

Its use in India was pioneered by William O'Shaughnessy, a surgeon and inventor. While the world's first ever telegram was sent by Samuel Morse in Washington in 1844, O'Shaughnessy was apparently unaware of his work and used a different code to send a message by transmitting electric signals over long distances.

Lord Dalhousie, the governor of India, recognised the potential of telegrams and authorised O'Shaughnessy to build a 27-mile line near Calcutta.

By 1856, the network stretched 4,000 miles across the British Raj, connecting the strategically vital cities of Calcutta, Agra, Bombay, Peshawar, and Madras.

The next year, the telegram helped the British violently subdue the Indian Rebellion of 1857, with one captured Indian soldier, on his way to the gallows, reportedly pointing at the telegram device and stating: "There is the accursed string that strangles us."

John Lienhard, from the University of Houston, wrote: "Question 19th-century British colonialism if you will. There is much to question. But you can only admire O'Shaughnessy. He showed what one person can do by trusting the creative ability. He stands as a reminder that one person can make a difference."