28/10/2025
Our vice chair of the Board, Prithvi H. C. Pant , was profiled by a consortium of heritage trusts on the role IPA takes in steering International phaleristic business in light of Charles III’s historic audience with Pope Leo XIV.
The vice president further took occasion to curate and present part of his collection for study and viewing pleasure. He underscored what has been an unsurpassed childhood hobby, the intensely personal nature of phaleristic study: his legacy with the Kumaon Kingdom, the Gurkhas, (British) Empire and Burma, and finally, the deep personal relationships nurtured along the way.
Prithvi paid tribute to his friend and longtime mentor, the late Munroe Swirsky, fellow founding director of the IPA and its first treasurer. Munroe was a stalwart in the hobby and a treasure trove of knowledge on South Africa’s honours system and its military history.
« He gave me the best gift he could give a young, scrappy, and impressionable collector. And that was to treat me as an adult, part serious. He later admitted it was all that he yearned for himself when he was 13.
Munroe and I shared this very special bond. The kind you form in your life only on one hand. While placing the other over your eye, he’d probably chuckle.”
Prithvi gleamed, “He looked out for me not only in the glitz of our hobby worlds, but in the far trenches, in the blitz of my early professional life. From firefighting in boardrooms the world over to off-kilter watch auctions, we forged a mantled companionship. » Prithvi continued, « I will probably never forgive fate’s folly in denying Munroe’s special promise to get me the engagement diamond for my future fiancé. Or at least for one of them, as he’d qualify.
To the Man who taught me the value of Mazal and letting a handshake be enough again: until I see you again, my friend. I will be counting! »
This year will mark the one-year anniversary of Munroe Swirsky’s passing. The IPA has multiple projects planned and earmarked to honour Munroe’s legacy and archive the Swirsky collection.
