New stamps on London 2012 Olympics from Bahamas..

 

Date of Issue : 26 June, 2012

Bahamas Celebrates its Participation in the London 2012 Olympic Games.

The 2012 Olympic Games are the third to be held in London. In 1908 the games were scheduled to take place in Rome, but the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 1906 led to them being moved to London. The 1944 Olympics were also to have been held in London, but were deferred to 1948 due to the world war.

The Olympic Games is the greatest sporting event in the world and The Bahamas is planning to send its best team ever to London 2012, with the hope and determination to again have their athletes on the medal stand.

Designs, the concepts of which are based on the iconic posters produced for the 1948 Games are as follows;

15c - Boxing with a view of the Houses of Parliament in the background

50c – High Jump with a view of Nelsons Column in the background

65c – Swimming with a view of the Tower Bridge in the background

70c – Athletics with a view of the Main Olympic Stadium in the background

Indian themes on foreign stamps…

150th Anniversary of the Abolition of Slavery & the Arrival of Indian Immigrants

In 1834, during the British administration in Mauritius, slavery was abolished. This brought repercussions on the socio-economic and demographic of the farmers. They turned to India, bringing in a large number of indentured labourers to work in the sugar cane fields. Between 1834 and 1921, around half a million indentured labourers were present on the island. They worked on sugar estates, factories, in transport and construction sites. Additionally, the British brought 8740 Indian soldiers to the islands.

Indians mainly originated from Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. Most were Bengali or Tamil. Port-Louis was divided into three sectors, with the Indian community in the eastern suburb of ‘Camp de Malabar’. A great number of Hindus from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh were brought as indentured labourers.  The expanding marketing sector also attracted many traders from North India.

As the Indian population became numerically dominant and the voting franchise was extended, political power shifted from the Franco-Mauritian and their Creoleallies to the Indo-Mauritian. Some ancestral languages which are also spoken in Mauritius include Hindi or Bhojpuri, Marathi, Urdu, Telugu & Tamil.

The rupee is the currency of Mauritius. It was established by law in 1876 as the local currency of Mauritius. The rupee was chosen due to the massive inflow of Indian rupees following Indian immigration to Mauritius. The Mauritian rupee was introduced in 1877, replacing the Indian rupee.

Hindus make up 52% of the population. Public holidays involves the blending of several cultures from Mauritius’s history, like Holi, Raksha Bandhan, etc..

To mark the 150th Anniversary of the Abolition of Slavery & the Arrival of Indian Immigrants, Mauritius released stamps in 1984.

- Kenneth Sequeira  e-mail : kenneth.sequeira@hotmail.com

Dubai, United Arab Emirates