By Swapan Dasgupta
Like many kids of my generation who were encouraged
at home and school to cultivate hobbies, I began collecting stamps at the age
of seven. Unfortunately, like many childhood preoccupations, this interest
didn’t endure. By the time I reached my teens, the stamp album was relegated to
a bottom drawer and forgotten in favour of more exciting diversions. That is, until
one lazy afternoon in the summer of 1995 when, strolling aimlessly down the
Strand in London I stopped in front of the Stanley Gibbons shop and
rediscovered my childhood passion. These days, no visit to London is complete
without the mandatory visit to the Saturday Collector’s Fair in an obscure
basement adjoining Charing Cross station and a nondescript shop off Trafalgar
Square where an ex-policeman from Kenya with a fierce walrus moustache, a
collector of Bhutanese stamps, holds court
As a child, I collected every stamp I could lay my
hands on. These days, I try to specialise—but without losing sight of my
amateur status. At the centre of my philatelic hoarding are two themes. First,
there is the constant endeavour to fill the blank spaces of the four-volume
Stanley Gibbons album of British and Commonwealth stamps issued in the 16-year
reign of George VI—a time when the British Empire reached its apogee (and began
its slow march to dissolution). Second, there is the far less demanding project
of accumulating British First Day Covers—what I call my Elizabethan project.
Unlike the George VI collection which, alas, is
destined to remain incomplete even if I decide to sink my life’s earnings into
it, the Elizabethan venture isn’t marked by a quest for high-priced rarities—at
least not yet. What is striking about the stamps embossed with the Queen’s head
is their sheer range, spanning six decades. No other monarch in philatelic
history can come close to rivalling the chronological expanse of Elizabethan
Britain—in three years, it will have overtaken the Victorian age. My FDC collection
began modestly with just one volume but, over the years, has grown to cover
seven volumes. By the beginning of next year, I would have begun on the eighth.
And, if the life of the Queen Mother is any guide, there is at least a decade
of Elizabethan stamps yet to come. Or so I hope.
The institution of monarchy, rich with all its trappings
and embellishments, may well appear an anachronism in a world where
republicanism has taken hold. That it still survives and, indeed, is an object
of frenzied adulation, may well be taken as confirmation of everything that is
wrong with today’s Britain—a class-ridden country too firmly attached to its
inheritance. Yet, apart from the wonderful pageantry that was on display
earlier this week at the Diamond Jubilee celebrations in London and elsewhere,
the attachment to the old Queen did serve to underline the monarchy’s role as
the great unifier.
In the past 60 years, the British Isles have changed
profoundly. The war-ravaged, austerity Britain that witnessed the Coronation of
the young Queen still counted itself as a world power. The Indian subcontinent,
Ceylon and Burma may have eased themselves from the bonds of imperial rule but
in 1953, as my stamp collection testifies, the Union Jack still flew over parts
of the world carrying exotic names such as Basutoland, Bechuanaland, Northern
and Southern Rhodesia and Tanganyika. White settlers from Britain still tuned
in to crackling short wave BBC broadcasts in their expansive farms in the
outskirts of Nairobi, Bulawayo and Natal, and holders of Commonwealth passports
had the automatic right to live in the ‘mother country’. In 1953, Britain was
primarily an ethnically composite country. It was also a country, as the evocative,
new BBC drama Call the Midwife
reminded the new Elizabethans, also a country where a fierce sense of community
prevailed.
All that has changed forever. In the past 60 years,
Britain has experienced one of the most dramatic demographic shift known to
settled societies. The Commonwealth exists in the far-flung places whose flags
were on display at the Thames flotilla, but in reality it also exists in
London’s doorstep. The Empire is history but its physical presence is all
pervasive. The Union Flag still flutters defiantly over Port Stanley in the
Falkland Islands, over Gibraltar and on Stormont Castle. But, as is common
knowledge, Whitehall wouldn’t bat an eyelid if it was compelled to replicate
the dignified departure from Hong Kong, a decade or so ago.
Thanks to the City of London, Britain still remains
at the centre of the global financial world attracting smart young fund
managers, bankers and experts in abstruse financial instruments. However, as
the serpentine queues before immigration counters in Heathrow and the fears of a
breakdown triggered by the Olympics overload testify, its infrastructure is
woefully inadequate. And, as last year’s vicious riots in London served to
underline, the sense of community has given way to profound alienation and an
overall disrespect for the British way of life. Binge drinking and loutish
behaviour have elbowed out restraint. “Keep calm and carry on” is now strictly
for coffee mugs and tea towels.
Even the idea of the United Kingdom has come under
strain. Why, even a large section of Scotland now imagines an independent,
idyllic future where the Union flag will no longer fly over Edinburgh Castle. In
all probability, the Scottish Nationalists won’t win the proposed referendum
but the mere fact that it will be held at all is ominous.
Britain often conveys the image of an unchanging
society, as unchanging as the bus routes in London and the MCC member’s stand
at Lord’s. Had he been alive, Harold Macmillan, the last custodian of the ancien regime, may even have appreciated
the plethora of non-titled Etonians on the front bench of the Conservative
Party. But these facets of continuity are superficial. In reality, Britain has
transformed itself dramatically—much more than is apparent from the Letters
columns of the Daily Telegraph where eccentricity and quirkiness continue to be
celebrated.
Only one thing remains charmingly unchanged: the
head of the sovereign on the postage stamps. It would not be wrong to say that
with her quiet dignity and her frumpish ways, the Queen has emerged as the
symbol of reassurance. Prince Charles may have overstated the point last Monday
when, in the aftermath of the concert outside Buckingham Palace, he lauded the
Queen for “making us proud to be British”, but he came closest to underlining
the enormous sense of popular identification. Unlike Queen Victoria, the other
Queen whose reign crossed six decades, Elizabeth Windsor will not have put her
distinctive stamp on the national character. It is equally hard to
conceptualise something that may come to be known as Elizabethan attitudes. The
Queen has undoubtedly lived up to all expectations as a personification of
dignity and duty, but her family life has been troubled. The Royal family as a
whole never stood up to exacting scrutiny in the past, and this tradition has
been upheld.
The Telegraph, June 8, 2012
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