Birth centenary of Mahatma Gandhi
Stamps worldwide depict thousands of individuals, yet the majority are not biographical. Literary circles loosely define biography as a hybridized, inter-disciplinary writing tradition bringing elements like history and moral philosophy together to shed important light upon a person’s life, achievements and character. Given their small size, one can be forgiven for querying the existence of a biographical design genre for stamps. However, reviewing the development of the Mauritius 1 July 1969 ‘Birth Centenary of Mahatma Gandhi’ issue should conclusively convince sceptics that stamps can indeed be read as biographies.
Generally recognised by and addressed using his honorific epithet ‘,’ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1969-1948) is the towering icon of 20th-century Indian history. Trained as a lawyer, he became a civil rights activist, leading anti-colonial nationalist, politician and social reformer working tirelessly to end Britain’s imperial rule and (somewhat less successfully) create a modern nation state in India based on religious pluralism. Assassinated on 30 January 1948, Gandhi’s legacy lives on worldwide via the emulation of his ideals and methods of non-violent protest. It should therefore
