Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak Marble Bust Statue 21in

The portrait: Tilak in the Puneri pagdi

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) is recognised before he is read — the tall Puneri pagdi, the heavy white moustache, the small round spectacles, the plain high-collared coat. This bust carries all four. It is cut at the chest in the classical portrait convention, so the weight of the piece falls entirely in the face: the level gaze and set jaw of the editor who ran Kesari and Mahratta out of Pune, revived the public Ganeshotsav in 1893, and gave the freedom movement the line "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it". The sculptor works from the well-known later photographs, by which time the moustache had gone white and the pagdi had become inseparable from the man.

Makrana white marble, and why a memorial asks for it

The stone is Makrana white marble, quarried in Nagaur district in Rajasthan — the same belt that supplied the Taj Mahal, and the reason Indian commemorative sculpture has leaned on it for four centuries. Its grain is fine and crystalline rather than open, which is what lets a portrait hold its small edges: the wire rim of a spectacle arm, the crisp lip of a fold in the pagdi, the four buttons down the coat front. It is finished to a soft satin polish rather than a mirror, so the marble still reads as stone and the modelling across cheek and brow stays legible under hall lighting instead of dissolving into glare.

The 21-inch scale, the plinth, and where it stands

At 21 inches from the base of the plinth to the crown of the pagdi, the bust sits just under life size — enough presence to close the end of a school corridor or hold a mandal's stage, contained enough for a reading-room console. It measures roughly 13 inches across the shoulders with a 10-inch depth and weighs about 38 kg finished, so it belongs on a masonry plinth or a pedestal rated for that load rather than a light display table. Set that pedestal at 40 to 45 inches and Tilak's eyes meet a standing adult's, which is how a commemorative bust is meant to be met. Leave a clear foot of plain wall behind it — the silhouette of the pagdi is the signature of the whole piece.

Make this Tilak bust yours

We design the piece with you before the block is cut. The master sculptors we work with can take the bust to 24 or 30 inches for a hall of that scale, cut it in Vietnam white marble or black stone instead of Makrana, or leave a recessed panel on the plinth face for an engraved name, dates or a dedication line in Devanagari. Send us the reference photograph your committee has settled on, and we will brief it in and follow the work through to the day it is installed.