New stamps on Israeli Music…

 

Date of Issue : 13 September 2011

Israeli Music Select Album

It’s festive time in Israel with the celebration of Rosh Hashanah festival. In my last post I wrote about new stamps on “The Rosh Hashanah Feast ” . Today one more set of stamps featuring select Music Albums of Israeli Music will be released.

The Israeli Philatelic Service, in collaboration with Kol Yisrael Gimel Israel Radio, is commemorating select albums in Israeli music. Dozens of senior music editors and critics
ranked their 10 favorite Israeli albums and those they felt were the most important albums ever released, from the founding of the State in 1948 to the present.

12 select albums from various periods and in different genres, chosen from among the 100 top-ranked albums have been depicted on new Mysic stamps. The album covers appear on the stamps and each tab expresses the song selected from that album.

1. Arik Einstein and Shalom Hanoch in Concert (1979), “Why Should I Take it to Heart”

2. Shlomo Artzi – Ways (1979), “Changes in the Weather”

3. The Israeli Andalusian Orchestra Hosts Jo Amar (2000), “Barcelona”

4. Kaveret - Poogy Tales (1973), “Baruch’s Boots”

5. HaKeves HaShisha Asar (1978), “HaKeves HaShisha Asar”

6. Yehuda Poliker – Ashes and Dust (1988), “Window to the Mediterranean”

7. The Idan Raichel Project – Out of the Depths (2005), “A Leaf in the Wind”

8. The Doodaim – Album 2 (1959), “The Flute”

9. Yehoram Gaon – The Middle of the Road (1984), “In the Orchard Near  the   Water Trough”

10. Ehud Banai and the Refugees (1987), “Continuing to Ride”

11. Corinne Allal – Antarctica (1989), “A Little Country with a Mustache”

12. Lehakat Tsliley Ha’Ud – First Album (1975), “To the Candle and the Spices”

Indian Theme on  World Philately

- Kenneth Sequeira

 

Date of Issue : Dec.9, 1982

40th Anniversary of Death of Dr.D.S.Kotnis(1982)

Dwarkanath Shantaram Kotnis (October 10, 1910 in Solapur, Maharashtra, India – December 9, 1942, in China)  was one of five Indian physicians dispatched to China to provide medical assistance during the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1938. Besides being known for his dedication and perseverance, he has also been regarded as an example for Sino-Indian friendship and collaboration.Dwarkanath Kotnis studied medicine at the Seth G.S. Medical College of the University of Bombay.

In 1937, after the Japanese invasion of China, the communist General Zhu De requested Jawaharlal Nehru to send Indian physicians to China. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, the President of the Indian National Congress, made arrangements to send a team of volunteer doctors and an ambulance by collecting a fund of Rs 22,000 on the All-Indian China Day and China Fund days on July 7-9. He had made an appeal to the people through a press statement on June 30, 1938. In Modern Review, S.C. Bose wrote an article on Japan's role in the Far East and denounced the assault on China. The key element of this mission was it was from a nation itself struggling for freedom, to another nation also struggling for its freedom. The mission was reinforced with Nehru's visit to China in 1939.

Dr. Kotnis, who was 28 at arrival, stayed in China for almost 5 years working in mobile clinics to treat wounded soldiers. Dr. Kotnis first arrived in China at the port of Hankou, Wuhan. He was sent to Yan'an, and was eventually to be posted as director of the Dr. Bethune International Peace Hospital there.

In 1939, Kotnis finally joined the Eighth Route Army (led by Mao Zedong) at the Jin-Cha-Ji border near the Wutai Mountain Area, after his efforts all across the northern China region. The hardships of suppressed military life, stresses that were especially relevant to the front-line doctors who often had to work over 72 hours at a stretch, finally began to tell on him. He died of epilepsy on December 9, 1942 at age 32, and was buried in the Heroes Courtyard, Nanquan Village.

In November 1941, about a year before his death, Kotnis married a Chinese woman, Guo Qinglan,  who worked at the Bethune International Peace Hospital as a nurse. She has been an honoured guest at many high-level diplomatic functions between China and India, such as the banquet Dalian Mayor Bo Xilai hosted for then Indian President K.R. Narayanan in June 2000 and during the visit of then Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee to Beijing in June 2003. In November 2006, she accompanied Chinese President Hu Jintao on a state visit to India.

The story of his life was the subject of a Hindi film with the title Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani (1946, English: The Immortal Story of Dr. Kotnis), scripted by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, and directed by V. Shantaram, who also portrayed Kotnis in the film. His life was also the subject of a Chinese film Kē Dì Huá Dài Fū (1982, Dr. D.S. Kotnis), with a screenplay by Huang Zongjiang.

Both China (1982 and 1992) and India (1993) have honored him with stamps.

Dwarkanath Kotnis is commemorated together with Dr. Bethune, and Scottish missionary and athlete, Eric Liddell in the Martyrs' Memorial Park (Lieshi Lingyuan) in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, China.

 

A statue of Dwarkanath Kotnis in Shijiazhuang- Hebei, China.

The entire south side of the memorial is dedicated to Dr. Kotnis, where there is a great statue in his honour. A small museum there contains a handbook of vocabulary that Kotnis wrote on his passage from India to China, some of the instruments that the surgeons were forced to use in their medical fight for life, and various photos of the doctors, some with the Communist Party of China's most influential figures, including Mao.

Kenneth Sequeira - Dubai, United Arab Emirates