Ode to khadi

A khadi stamp depicting Mahatma Gandhi is to be unveiled soon. Gargi Gupta finds out what went into the making of it

The department of posts will mark Indipex 2011, the annual international philatelic exhibition being held in New Delhi after a gap of 13 years, with a rather novel memento — a khadi stamp depicting Mahatma Gandhi. It’s a first anywhere in the world and will be unveiled by the president on February 12, when the six-day event will open.

It’s a novelty, yes, but stamps made of cloth are not very new. Just last August, Bangkok 2010, a large exhibition of philatelists in the Asia-Pacific region, had showcased stamps made of Thai silk. Stamped with the peacock emblem, the queen’s guarantee for the quality of silk used, 20,000 of these stamps were released to mark the fair. In fact, says Sankha Samanta, the designer of the khadi stamp, “it was when they [representatives of our postal department] saw these that they had the idea to come up with a cloth stamp”.

Samanta, who has been designing stamps for more than 20 years now, even worked on a few designs — the most concrete one being that of the hand of the Buddha raised in benediction. “But it wasn’t working out, so we decided to opt for a visual of Gandhi,” says Samanta alluding to the long process of consultation and approval-seeking that goes on between the department, the Philatelic Advisory Committee and the artist before a design is finally agreed upon. Once the image of Gandhi had been fixed, khadi seemed the obvious choice of material since silk was not exactly the Mahatma’s style.

The 39X39 milimetre, diamond-shaped stamp is made of the usual unwatermarked gravure coated stamp paper, on which is stuck a square of khadi cloth specially manufactured in West Bengal. A charkha appears in the foreground of the cloth, with the thread spinning out to form a line drawing of the Mahatma spinning.

Simplicity itself, but a simplicity that wasn’t easily achieved. “Gandhi has been depicted so much, in so many different styles over the years, that it is difficult to think of a way to depict him differently,” says Samanta, who himself did the four-stamp set that came out in 1999 to mark the 50th death anniversary of the Mahatma. Of course, the material itself imposed certain limitations, in that you couldn’t print in four-colour offset on cloth.

In denominations of Rs 100, the department is printing a limited edition of 100,000 stamps which will be offered mainly to philatelists. And herein lies the irony — stamps, which the email and ubiquitous mobile phone have all but made redundant, now have a life as coveted, tradeable collectibles. Indeed, Madhukar Jhingan, who runs the website “Stamps of India”, estimates (there are no authentic figures) that the size of the secondary market in stamps is around Rs 50 crore.

Which is where fairs such as Indipex and special issues such as the khadi stamp come in; they serve to heighten the excitement of philatelists and create interest among people, especially children. India Posts has come out sporadically with innovative stamps, although it hasn’t been as prolific as Bhutan which came out with 3D stamps, a talking stamp, and even a CD-ROm stamp. In India, there was a sandalwood scented stamp in 2007, followed by a rose and jasmine scented series, and an embossed series to mark the golden jubilee of Parliament House in 2002. The sandalwood stamp has already become a collectors’ item with a Rs 15 stamp trading at Rs 25, reports Jhingan, although he says it takes about five years for a stamp to really appreciate in value.

At Indipex, the department will come out with two more special issues — one to mark 100 years of the world’s first official airmail flight from Allahabad to Naini, and the other, a series of customised stamps. “These are Rs 5 denomination stamps,” says Kaveri Banerjee, chairperson of Indipex, “where you can have your own photograph printed on the stamp. That will be one part of it, the other will be a regular stamp depicting, say, a train engine or scenes from the Panchatantra which children would find attractive, since it is them we’ll be targetting with these stamps.”