Postage stamps and its politics

Remember the small square little things which you used to stick to the envelope before posting the letter? Today, neither do we write and post letters nor do we go and buy postage stamps. Yet, the politicking over stamps – whom to print on the stamps continues.

The BJP recently announced that it was phasing out stamps of Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Gandhi. They were very important political leaders of India so one cannot understand the need to stamp them out, apart from the fact that they are from the Opposition. That’s not all – the BJP is planning to bring out stamps with various other freedom fighters, mainly from the RSS like Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Deen Dayal Upadhyaya. It’s like debating on Arnab’s show – you can go on and on, shout till your throat goes hoarse but you will never ever reach any solution or consensus.

They have lined up a list of leaders to be commemorated on the stamps. These will be definitive stamps – which are the daily use stamps  and there will be the Commemorative stamps - special occasion stamps with limited edition. It plans to print leaders like Sardar Patel, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Ram Manohar Lohia, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Chhattrapati Shivaji, Bhagat Singh, Subhas Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Subramania Bharati, Bhimsen Joshi, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Bismillah Khan and MS Subbalakshmi. Maybe they can add Abdul Kalam Azad also to this list?

All this sounds great and very symbolic. But the question is – how many people use stamps nowadays? But then instead of building statues or renaming roads, this is probably the best way to remember the past heroes.