Divine Indian stamp on American letters

For many years, Indian Americans have been waging a relentless yet unsuccessful battle with the US postal authorities for the issue of a Diwali stamp in recognition of the premier Hindu festival with a multi-faith appeal.

Now an Atlanta-based company has launched a series of custom made ‘postages’ - not on Diwali but featuring a number of Hindu gods and goddesses.

They are not called stamps, though.

The postages, in the denomination of 44 cents, bear the images of Vinayaka, Murugan, Venkateshwara, Lakshmi, Shiva-Parvathi, Krishna and Sai Baba.

There may be nothing official about these postages since the US Postal Service (USPS) has not issued them, but they are all legally valid, thanks to a law enacted a few years ago that permits customised postage. “We are proud to serve the Indian community in the USA with postage that reflects its culture, heritage and religious beliefs,” says the company, called USA-postage.

com, which makes and sells these postages online. The company clearly anticipates a big demand from the Indian American community that is 2.5 million- strong and growing. News of the rather quiet launch of the postages has travelled fast on the blogosphere, with some expressing doubts about their validity. But the company has sought to quell such doubts by pointing out that the US law now “allows customers to put their favorite digital images on valid US postage”.

“Do you want to put your own image on postage? USA-postage.com can do that as well,” it says, stressing the postages that come in sets of 20 are “valid US postage produced by a technology called PC Postage”.