THIMPHU, 8 October 2003 — Tiny Bhutan’s only source of foreign exchange once was the exotic stamps it sold in international markets, featuring icons such as Elvis Presley and Donald Duck.
Today, the Buddhist kingdom still issues stamps that delight the international world of philately — only they are meant to educate people about social issues such as the status of women, the disabled and refugees.
“In the 1960s, stamps helped introduce us to the world. Anybody who knew anything about Bhutan knew it through its stamps. They were like goodwill ambassadors,” Meghraj Gurung, managing director of Bhutan Post, told Reuters. “Now, we want to use our stamps to send social messages and reflect our political commitment to issues like the year of the disabled. The idea is to use stamps as an educational tool.”
For instance, Bhutan issued a stamp when its health minister did a 15-day cross-country health walk last year to raise awareness about a host of health issues, including the dangers of smoking.
Similarly, the country’s postal service, Bhutan Post, has worked with UNICEF to bring out a series of stamps to build awareness about the rights of the girl child.
Stamp collecting may not be the world’s most popular hobby in the age of video games and football, but Bhutan’s stamps still draw a huge following among stamp collectors across the world.
In Bhutan, stamps aren’t just a payment for a mail service, they are a work of art.
There’s a stamp to mark every event in history from the Bhutanese king’s coronation to man’s landing on the moon. And there’s a stamp on virtually every theme under the sun from European Impressionists to traditional Buddhist paintings.
The remote Himalayan country didn’t have television until barely four years ago, but was issuing stamps with three-dimensional effects as far back as 1969.
The 3D Apollo 11 stamp was just the start of a series of what Bhutan called novelty stamps: It also came out with a set of phonograph record stamps that played the Bhutanese national anthem, gold coin stamps and scented rose stamps.
Besides stamps on exotic themes like the yeti, Bhutan also issued many commemorative stamps on modern icons such as India’s Mahatma Gandhi, former US President John F. Kennedy and Britain’s Princess Diana.
“Stamps gave Bhutan an international personality,” Labor Minister Ugyen Tshering said. “But at one point we realized that the threshold had been crossed. When you move from art to novelty, it’s okay, but when you go from novelty to gimmickry, it’s too much.”
Today, Bhutan’s focus on more socially relevant themes is a far cry from its stamps featuring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.
Bhutan’s stamps are still sold on the Internet, both by private agencies and the country’s Philatelic Bureau, for prices ranging from 65 cents to as much as $110.
In the 1960s, stamps were Bhutan’s biggest source of foreign exchange, pulling in $500,000 a year from foreign philatelists. Today, its stamps earn it about $175,000 a year in revenue.
Novelty stamps were much ahead of their time in a country that got its first post office in 1962 and still uses mail runners to deliver letters to some remote corners.
Sometimes mail runners take weeks to deliver a letter because they have to trudge through snow and rain in the mountains.
Stamp collectors say they fear old-fashioned stamps may soon be extinct as e-mail replaces snail mail in many parts of the world. Then, one of the few public reminders of the world of stamps may be a special stamp exhibit in Bhutan’s national museum, a charming old watchtower in the picturesque town of Paro, 65 km from Thimphu.