It is rather striking that the drawings made by children from different parts of the country on “India of my dreams” had one thing in common. All of them tried to convey the idea of harmony.
Since 1957, the Indian Council for Child Welfare has been issuing special stamps on the occasion of Children's Day. And since 1971, the Government of India has been depicting paintings done by children, some of them as young as three-years-old. A rather interesting and informative exhibition on these stamps was displayed at the Head Post Office in Pandeshwar on the eve of Children's Day by Ratheesh Udupa, a member of the Dakshina Kannada District Philatelic and Numismatic Association, on Sunday.
The theme for 2008 was “India of my dreams”. The three prize-winning paintings which were chosen for the stamps used some symbolism regarding unity in India. Two children from South Andaman and Kochi included images of a church, a mosque, and temple as part of their drawing while the third picture was rather imaginative and striking.
A child from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh drew a white crescent-shaped moon, with white, saffron, and green faceless persons sitting together on the lower edge. Equally striking were the ideas and pre-occupations of the Centre as shown in the early stamps. In the very first year that Children's Day stamps were released, three themes were chosen by a government that was fairly young.
The first showed a stamp worth eight paise depicting a boy named Shekar Borker eating a banana.
The second stamp worth 15 paise showed a girl reading a book, signifying the importance of education, and the third, worth 90 paise, showed a toy horse for the importance of recreation.
