One man army

January 24, 2011 05:26 pm | Updated 05:26 pm IST

ARMS AND THE MAN: Mohan Sundar Pandian with his collection of antique firearms. Photo: R. Shivaji Rao

ARMS AND THE MAN: Mohan Sundar Pandian with his collection of antique firearms. Photo: R. Shivaji Rao

A fan of crouching tigers, hidden dragons and good old war flicks, my visit to the Pandian Armoury in Velachery is etched in my memory as the day I held a Samurai sword. Mohan Sundar Pandian, a property advocate who is also a member of Pandian (HUF), a family that not only deals in but also collects antique firearms, shows me their fascinating collection of guns, revolvers, rifles, swords, bayonets, lances and other artefacts.

I pick up a short lance with an eagle-shaped hold when Pandian points to it and says, “That's from the Roman period. The kind you see in movies such as ‘Ben-Hur'.” Thrilled, I begin to look around the tiny room wide-eyed. “We have a Samurai sword and two Burmese swords. In those days, Burma was a favourite overseas destination. And they invariably brought back a sword,” he says, pulling them out of their caskets, adding, “they haven't rusted even after all these years. The shine and the colour are still as good as new.”

We move on to the guns stacked up in metal holders, 40 of them, including three rifles. “They're all registered antiques,” Pandian explains, “Our family has always been dealing with guns. We're from Ramanathapuram District, where my father used to be a hunter. He had a muzzle-loading gun but sold it after he shot a crow one day. When he saw that the crow had food in its mouth, which it was taking to its fledglings, it affected him and he vowed never to hunt again.”

A family tradition

Carrying on the family tradition, Pandian got his first gun when he was 18. It was an air rifle. “We were all interested in collecting guns and the only way you could do that here was to become a dealer. An individual can only own three guns with a licence. Only a dealer can collect and keep many,” he explains.

The family was also the first in Tamil Nadu to register guns as antiques. “They'll fetch a lot of money abroad, but our purpose behind collecting these guns is to make sure they remain in India. We register them at the Archaeology Department. After that, you don't need a licence to keep them. The Government will send a certificate stating that you possess the antiquity. You can't export the guns and can only transfer them to a museum or a collector,” he says.

The armoury's collection includes double barrels, muzzle-loading, fully developed guns and Pandian claims that the long-barrelled rifle he effortlessly shows me how to handle was the one that began the 1857 uprising. “This Enfield Rifle was the one where the sepoys had to bite the cartridge layered with pig fat and pour the gun powder into the barrel. This began the 1857 uprising,” he smiles. He also has fencing swords and a collection of kukri and Gurkha knives from the Middle East.

“I collect a lot of things myself,” he says, showing me his trove of antiques. “You get these items at auctions, antique shops and places you would never expect to find them. I have an urn that must be at least a 1,000 years old. I got it at an auction here,” he explains. A reclining Buddha and an antique Natraj are also part of his growing collection, apart from a box of rare coins and a collection of books on guns.

And between those stacks of guns are his personal revolver and double-barrel, the only two he owns for “self-protection”.

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