Tag: Pakistan stamp

How could an American PR stunt lead to two undeveloped countries obtaining nuclear weapons. It took a smiling Buddha nuclear test in India in 1974 to see the calamity of atoms for peace. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Pakistan was a new country in 1948. As such there are a lot of the countries first stamps. Among these issues for Pakistan is a new paper mill in 1955, a new agricultural university in 1968, and a new steel mill in 1969. Though serving the nation, many of the above were built with outside help. Nevertheless, interesting issues to me. One than stands out though is todays 1965 issue showing Pakistan’s first nuclear reactor, given to it by the USA as part of the atoms for peace program. India received a reactor themselves about the same time again with help from the USA and Canada. Normally I am annoyed when a gift is given and who gave it to them is not acknowledged on the stamp. Here however, where it just shows stupidity, so there should be as little acknowledgement as possible.

Todays stamp is issue A71, a 15 Piasa stamp issued by Pakistan on April 30th, 1966. It was a single stamp issue showing off Pakistan’s first atomic reactor, the PARR-1, in Islamabad. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents.

Both India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear programs relied on native born scientists given free advanced educations at Cambridge University in Britain during the last days of British India. See https://the-philatelist.com/2019/03/18/india-1984-rakesh-sharma-becomes-a-cosmonaut-and-goes-to-space/.   The theoretical knowledge of how things work does not mean there was any capability. Abdus Salam was still a science advisor to the Pakistani President Ayub Kahn and set up a Pakistani Atomic Commission back in 1956.

The American atoms for peace program began as a speech given by American President Eisenhower in 1953. The idea was that access to nuclear secrets would be provided with view to nuclear power generation in exchange for the countries agreement to not produce nuclear weapons and that nuclear facilities meet international standards. Early recipients of nuclear reactors under the program were Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and India. Only Iran is not yet a nuclear power, probably due to not being part of British India early and getting one of those scholarships to Cambridge. What a calamity.

The calamity of the program came to a head when India exploded a crude nuclear bomb in 1974. They called the operation Smiling Buddha and obfuscated about what the test meant. America and Canada withdrew support for both Indian and Pakistani reactors but by then the programs were far along with expertise built up and new reactors in the pipeline. Pakistan was not able to conduct its first nuclear test until 1998, after China had stepped in to assist Pakistan’s nuclear program. It was quite a test though with 5 bombs detonated. This made clear that Pakistan’s deterrent was in place. The initial bombs were to be tossed sideways from fighters, American supplied F16s.This may or may not have worked. Remember the original atom bombs were dropped from bomb bays of big bombers from high altitude with parachutes to give the plane time to get away. They have since developed medium range nuclear capable missiles. Abdus Salam having received a Nobel Prize, no not for peace, died in 1996 before the test. Therefore perhaps too much credit/blame is given to A. Q. Kahn. Interesting he had left Pakistan in protest to Pakistan declaring his religious sect non Muslim. Too bad they didn’t do that earlier before the damage was done.

Well my drink is empty and I may have a few more while I contemplate the idiocy of atoms for peace. Come again  for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.

A large empire rules over a quarter of the people on Earth deserves to be remembered, and this one is by some of it’s surviving architecture. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of tea and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Pakistan was newly independent when this stamp was issued. What better way to celebrate the independence than by showing off relics of a long ago empire that the people might feel more connection to than their recent colonial memory. In the early days anything can seem possible and reminding of past greatness can be a good tool for that.

The stamp today is issue O47, a one and a half Anna stamp issued by Pakistan in 1954. It features the tomb of Jahangir, a Mughal Emperor from the 1600s. It was part of a 7 stamp issue celebrating the seventh anniversary of independence from Great Britain. The service overprint signifies the stamp was for official use. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $2.50 used.

The Mughal Empire stretched through much of current day India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan in the 14th and 15th centuries. The government was Sunni Muslim and the leaders were of mixed Indian and Persian decent. Hindu was allowed to be practiced and Hindu civil law governed them. Muslim law was only applied to Muslims. The empire is remembered for it’s architecture that was heavily influenced by the Persians. The Taj Mahal is the most famous example of such architecture.

Mughal Emperor Jahangir ruled in the 1600s and though he suffered a defeat at the Afghan city of Kandahar he succeeded in expanding the empire. His name means in old Persian, “conqueror of the world” He didn’t quite do that but a quarter of the world’s then population was in his realm. He had 18 wives the last of which was his and his subjects favorite. Upon the marriage, her second, she was given the name Nur Jahan. This means “light of the world.”

The Emperor Jahangir died in 1626 on his way back to his home in Lahore. Nur Jahan set out to build a Persian style tomb in the peaceful gardens of  the home. She was interested in architecture and the result was an elaborate tomb with four minarets that displayed a resurgence in Timurid architecture at the time. The tomb faced Mecca and was decorated with Frescoes. It took 10 years to build. Jahangir’s third son became Emperor having murdered the two older sons. It was not a good time for Nur Jahan as she was confined to palace. She had backed the wrong son in the power struggle.

When Nur Jahan later died she was placed in a tomb nearby. Later the tombs was damaged by the Sikh Empire under Maharajah Rangit Singh. His occupying general lived at the tomb and took relics back to Punjab when they ran the area.  Some believe the Sikhs even stole a dome off the tomb. British rule saw repairs made but a new railroad routed between the tombs of husband and wife dividing them. The site still exists and is a protected heritage site but some encroachment of the property was allowed.

Well my drink is empty so I will salute the architectural vision of Nur Jahan, the light of the world. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.

This not quite World’s Fair was dedicated to man’s achievement on a shrinking globe in an expanding universe. New York wanted to do it to show off progress since the 1939 Worlds Fair there. Conceived before the societal changes of the late sixties, by the time it was executed the fair was facing the realities of a changing world. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Though the stamp shows the well designed culturally appropriate Pakistan Pavilion over a background of the Fair’s signature stainless steel Unisphere, the largest globe in the world, the stamp is somewhat let down by pour printing. The fair did provide a way for Pakistan to introduce itself to the Fair’s over 50 million visitors who were mostly children. The fair made an impression on the youth of that generation, as it was perhaps one of the last gasps of 1950s America.

Todays stamp is issue A60, a 1.5 Rupee stamp issued by Pakistan on April 22, 1964. It was a two stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

The site of both the sanctioned 1939 New York World’s Fair and the unsanctioned 1964-1965 fair was Flushing Meadows Park in Queens. It had long been a marshy garbage and ash dump. New York builder Robert Moses had dreams of turning it into a massive 1100 acre park. The 1939 fair was just the opportunity to make his vision a reality. Unfortunately, the full scope of what he had in mind for the property could not be covered in the first fairs budget. A second worlds fair would provide the resources to finish the job.

Selling the rest of the world on the fair proved difficult, Seattle had hosted a worlds fair in 1962 and Montreal was scheduled for 1967. The Bureau of Exhibitions had several rules that were against the fair. No country was to have more than one fair in a 10 year period, no fair was supposed to last more than 6 months, and no fair was to charge rent to exhibitors. The organizers of the fair traveled to Paris to request that the rules be waived and the event be officially sanctioned by the BoE. This was refused and the organizers then went out with intemperate remarks about the BoE and the BoE responded by making an official statement suggesting that countries not participate in the fair. This is the only time this as happened. The fair went ahead but no shows were Canada, the Soviet Union, Australia and most of Europe. Indonesia initially agreed but relations deteriorated and the completed Indonesian Pavilion  was occupied and barricaded during the Fair.

40 nations did participate, mostly ones trying to ingratiate themselves to the USA. The most popular of the foreign pavilions was Vatican City, that brought over and displayed the Pieta. There were still over 100 pavilions mostly sponsored by American corporations. They mostly displayed consumer goods with a space or computer theme. The fair had a goal of 70 million visitors which would have had it break even with it’s initially high ticket prices. That goal was why it went two years but it only managed 51 million visitors, even after a second year ticket price cut.

The Unisphere globe was maintained in the park after the fair closed as United States Steel donated 1 million dollars to insure continued maintenance. Nevertheless the fountains were turned off in 1970. In the middle 1990s there was a refurbishment that turned back on the fountains. As of today, June 24, the Unisphere has not been removed as part of the BLM erasure of history. In 2019 it however was scaled by an environmental group  to hoist a banner protesting the Amazon River fires that year.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast Robert Moses and his realized dream of turning a dump into a park. I would propose a statue, but you know….. Come again tomorrow when there will be another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.