stamps issued in 2001

april

Bhagwan Mahavira, 24th Tirthankara of the great Jain tradition was born in a royal family in the district of Vaishali in Bihar. His father was King Siddhartha and mother Trishula was the daughter of King Cetaka. Mahavira's childhood name was Vardhamana. After leading a life of a householder till thirty, he abandoned the world in search of the Truth. He obtained omniscience at the age of forty two after intense meditation. He preached the five principles of non-violence, absolute honesty, non-possession, truth and celibacy.  He gave the message of love and compassion towards all living beings. The stamp was issued to mark the 2600th birth anniversary of Mahavira and depicts a composite symbol summarising much of Jain teaching.

On April 12, 2001, the world celebrates the 40th anniversary of man's first space flight. The Department of Posts, India commemorated this event with the issues of a stamp in the of Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin (1934-1968), who became the first man to escape gravity and orbit the earth, travelling in the space ship Vostok 1. Gagarin hailed from Klushino, a small village 100 miles west of Moscow, and his parents were workers in a Kolkhoz (collective farm). As a teenager, his ambition was to become a pilot. He studied maths and physics in the secondary school and went on to join a trade school where he became a foundry- man. He joined the technical school in Saratov, where he learned to fly. He joined the Soviet Air-Force. It was at the Aviation School that he met Valentina Ivanovna Goryacheva whom he married later. Following his return to earth from space, Yuri Gagarin received a hero's welcome, not just in his country, but all over the world. Gagarin, the quintessential cosmonaut wanted to reach the stars again, and began training for the first Soyuz flight in 1967. However, he died in an unfortunate accident on March 27 1968, when the jet he was test piloting crashed. In honour of his great contribution to space exploration, a crater on the moon was named after him.