Box is in the Britains or 'British' toy soldier style, red-paper, laminate/covering
but with only small labels on the ends rather than the expansive full-lid labels
of Britains and Britain's own!
The funny thing is the printers decorative
blocks, which on the Sanskrit label are all neat with all the trefoils facing
out; three at each end, but on the English language label, there are four at
one end, pushing the long-line down the label and leaving a right
buggers-muddle at the other end - an apprentice typesetters' Friday effort?!
The leaders, I suspect at least one is
missing but I don't know which one; it's just that a nine-count is an odd number
(obviously Hugh!) and more so with the
space still available in the box - you know what I mean. The set is a mix of pre-Independence leaders
'of the people' (Indian National Congress, Muslim League and minority
representatives) and post-Independence Prime Ministers.
The following list is not necessarily
correct, nor accurate in name-spelling (or thumbnail-biog's!) and stands to be
corrected, but it's the best I can come up with at short-notice, with help both
from my mother - who was there (grandfather had a role to play) - and the few
illustrations in Alex Von Tunzelmann's Indian
Summer and Leonard Mosley's The Last
Days of the British Raj.
1 - Indira Gandhi - 3rd Prime Minister of India, Nehru's daughter
2 - Liaquat Ali Khan - Muslim League
3 - Vallabhbhai Patel - Parsee Leader/Representative
4 - Jawaharlal Pandit Nehru (née
Gandhi) - 1st Prime Minister [Rashtrapati] of India
5 - Mohandas Karamchand 'Mahatma' Gandhi
6 - Surup 'Nan' Nehru [née Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit], wife of
Pandit Nehru, carrying a young Indira Gandhi
7 - Lala Lajpat Rai - Punjabi Author
8 - Abdur Rab Nishtar - Dallit Spokesman (Bengali?)
9 - [Mohammed] Ali 'Jin' Jinnah - Muslim League and First Prime
Minister of Pakistan, the Quaid-e-Azam or 'great leader'
Missing but possibly/likely candidates for
one of the figurines [missing or] above are;
* - Lal Bahadur
Shastri - 2nd Prime Minister of India
* - Chakravarty
Rajagopalachari, Mountbatten's replacement as Governor General (Britain's
representative) and a possible/likely for 3
* - Madeleine Slade (the Mahatma's English follower) could be a possibility for 6,
but it seems her role was enhanced in the movie, over her importance to the
historical narrative, especially in the context of an Indian made set of
'leader' figures, produced decades after the events depicted in the movie
* - K R
Kripalani was involved in the talks with British Government at which most of
the above were also present?
* - Baldev Singh
- spokesman for the Sikh community, pencilled-in as an alternative for 7,
he would have had a beard though
* - Sheikh Abdulla - Chief negotiator for the Kashmir and other possible for 7
Also I'm not happy about 2, the glasses are right, but I can't find a picture of him in that kind of costume?
2-7 in close-up,
construction is similar to my charity-shop musicians (seen here a couple of
years back) with a basic wire-armature holding the low-temperature fired, hand-made,
clay model together, painting is mostly matt, either poster-paint or emulsion
of some kind and the green bases are given a 'posh' glazed-plinth look with a
dip in ink - which has also provided for the footwear!
I assume - due to the
hand-made/hand-finished nature of these figures, that there would be a team
working on them with each worker producing many like-examples of the figure
they have practised-on or perfected? And . . . while they are crude and
- it's fair to say - very stylised, they are nonetheless recognisable and
that's a clever trick, that's actually art.
From left to right; 1, 8 and 9
similarly closed-up on, with a study of the base underside; there are no
obvious markings on any base. Jinnah's height and mean-look has been captured
very well, as has Indira's appearance and the angry flick of white through the
black hair over her brow which I remember from childhood news footage.
4 comments:
Nice find Hugh, an unusual addition for anyone who collects personality figures. Incidentally, my mother was also working in India at this time, she had a lot of interesting tales to tell.
I love them Brian, I can remember when they were quite common still at the London shows, but I missed the guy stalling-out himself when he was importing them (before my 'public' time!), can you remember his name?
H
No, sorry I don't remember his name.
I'll ask JB, he's a mine of info. on such things!
Post a Comment