Madame Tussaud’s, with a difference

The cows that will never die look lifelike, down to the last protruding rib. The tomatoes that will never be eaten look juicier than the ones in your neighbourhood supermarket. The farmers are happy at work, the fields are lush, the women are pretty, and there are no traffic jams as far as the eye can see. Ah, here’s the idyllic Indian village, the soothing photographic negative of the nerve-jangling urban chaos we are all used to.

About 10 km from Kolhapur, and 4 km from the Pune-Bangalore highway, the archetypal Indian village is being constructed, scene by scene. The Siddhagiri Village Museum is the brainchild of Adrushya Kadhsiddheshwar Swamiji, the 27th Mathadhipati of Shri Ksheyra Siddhagiri Math, Kaneri, located in Kolhapur district.

The figures will remind urban visitors of London’s famous Madame Tussaud’s wax museum. But the figures in this museum are not celebrities, and they are not of wax either. They are all made from cement. When it’s completed, Swamiji’s dream village will be spread over 27 acres. At the moment, it covers 7 acres and has about 900 statues.

“So far we’ve spent over Rs2 crore on the museum. The figures would have been much higher if people from neighbouring villages hadn’t come forward to help. They donated steel, tiles, bricks and other raw materials — mostly scrap left over from when villagers were pulling down their old houses to construct newer roofs and walls,” says Swamiji.

“About 80 artisans started making the statues — from steel, bricks, sand and cement. We had about 150 people working solely on the infrastructure of the Siddhagiri village.”
It is evident that a lot of research has gone into making the village look authentic. “I spoke to people who were over 90 years old to understand what the culture was,” says Swamiji. “I studied books on history, sociology, culture, folk literature and religious texts for inspiration. A lot of the conceptualisation was also done by artists and artisans, who had to do their own research.”

But what is the inspiration behind a ‘village museum’? “I had been working in villages in Maharashtra, trying to help them become self-sufficient. For instance, in one village called Shelkewadi, we had some success: every hut had its own gobar-gas unit and its own toilet, and by the time I left, the village needed no outside labour. But we couldn’t bring about many major changes in most of the villages. So I decided to build this ideal village as an inspiration for villagers and others. The museum is modelled on villages in the pre-British era, where every family was self-sufficient.” says Swamiji. 

Their website explains that the project represents Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of a self-sufficient village. “The museum projects the entire village as a single family; No adulteration, no mad rat race, no pollution, clean water, clean air, quality food, maximum use of natural resources.”

Does he think such an ideal, self-sufficient village is possible in today’s day and age when all the action is in the big cities? “We may not be able to recreate Siddhagiri in Indian villages today, but the philosophy and ideals can be: there should be dignity of labour, the village should be self-sufficient, and villagers should live in harmony with one another, helping their neighbours in times of need. The point is to go back to our roots.”

Entry charges to the museum are Rs40 per person (Rs20 on holidays). For children, the charge is Rs15.