Guthrie Collection - Military Ceremony - C. 1936

Amateur footage of a ceremonial occasion in British India, which may have been filmed in Quetta, now in Pakistan

This was one of many amateur films shot by James Guthrie, and shows a British official presenting honours to local men in what was then northern India. The original film can was marked “Claude Bremmer's Durbar in Zuetta”. This may refer to the town of Shawl aka Zuetta, now part of Balochistan province, Pakistan, but may also refer to the larger city of Quetta, which had been devastated by a major earthquake in 1935. Major (later Lieutenant-Colonel) James Guthrie held the post of Medical Officer in Gyantse, Tibet, from 1934 to 1936 and was later Civil Surgeon of Bhutan and Tibet from 1945 to 1948.