About this stamp
Gandhi’s Guide
India Post issued this ₹5 stamp on 29 June 2017 for Shrimad Rajchandraji (1867–1901), the Jain poet, philosopher and mystic, in his 150th birth anniversary year. He was born to Devba and Ravjibhai at Vavania, Gujarat, on Kartik Purnima, 9 November 1867. At seven, watching the funeral pyre of an acquaintance, he is said to have recalled his past lives; at school he finished seven years’ study in two, and as a teenager he mastered the great works of philosophy. Married at twenty and in business, he reached self-realisation at twenty-three, and from twenty-eight spent months each year in seclusion in the forests and hills of Gujarat. He died at Rajkot on 9 April 1901, aged 33.
Gandhi and the Atmasiddhi
Mahatma Gandhi met him as a young man and kept writing to him from South Africa. In his autobiography Gandhi credits him with shaping his ideas of truth, non-violence and compassion, and wrote that besides Ruskin and Tolstoy, “Kavi”, as he called Rajchandra, had the more profound effect on him. Of his writings the finest is the Shri Atmasiddhi Shastra, 142 verses composed at a single sitting; many of his letters to seekers also survive.
The stamp was designed by Brahm Prakash; Security Printing Press, Hyderabad printed 477,640.
For More Information
Read more here:
