“The Postmaster” is a short story that can be categorized as postcolonial literature. This is because it tells the story of people from a colonized nation navigating the effects of colonialism. “The Postmaster” is not merely a slice-of-life tale about the relationship between an educated, middle-class man from Calcutta (the Postmaster) and an uneducated, impoverished Bengali girl (Ratan)—it's also about the effects of the British Empire’s rule in India during the Raj.
The effects of the Raj come across in several ways in this short story. First, the Postmaster only ends up in Ulapur because the British government hires him and sends him there for his postal job. The reason that they send him there is because they are operating an indigo factory in the village. At the time in which Tagore was writing, the British government was coercing rural people in Bengal into growing indigo and turning it into dye that they could send back to Britain and sell at higher rates. When Tagore writes in the story about how “the indigo agents and employees had hardly any spare time,” he is intentionally critiquing the ways that colonial forces were exploiting the Indian people they were employing in these factories. Ratan’s complete impoverishment can also be seen as a critique of the ways British imperialism left people without financial stability or food security.
Due to the ways that “The Postmaster” attempts to realistically capture the living and working conditions of people in Bengal during the British Raj, it can also be categorized as Realism. While Tagore uses romantic language at points, he also does not shy away from accurately capturing the living and working conditions of people in Bengal at the time.
