In July 1940, the Film Advisory Board (FAB) was constituted to oversee the production of propaganda films in India. Organised by the Government of India, the FAB was comprised primarily of leading figures of the Indian film industry. The production of films was partly funded by the British government’s Ministry of Information (MoI), who therefore had a say in the appointment of staff (Woods, 2001, 297). Disappointed with the quality of early FAB films, the MoI suggested that a British documentary film expert should supervise production (Garga, 2007, 66-67). Alex Shaw, a filmmaker of some standing, was duly selected and arrived in India in late 1940.

Although Shaw succeeded in improving the quality of the FAB’s films, he resigned after only 10 months at his post, claiming that this was ‘partly on personal grounds, partly because he was not accepted by the Indian industry’ (Garga, 2007, 80). The appointment of a British expert had been widely criticised in the Indian movie press, and Shaw further believed that the Indian members of the FAB had wanted his efforts to fail (Garga, 2007, 69-70; Woods, 2001, 301). During his period in charge, Shaw included more Indian personnel in the making of films, as reflected by The Handymen, which uses an Indian editor and cameramen, and employs an Indian narrator for its English-language version (Woods, 2001, 294). His term in India coincided with a period of widespread civil disobedience, during which Indian nationalists were refusing to co-operate with the government. Shaw wanted to make films that addressed the political situation, but was refused permission by the Government of India (Woods, 2001, 301). He later was of the opinion that, because the FAB was ‘set up by the British to help create a favourable climate of opinion at a time when the Indian mind was entirely set on independence’, it was ‘not only frivolous but also irrelevant’ (Garga, 2007, 68).

Of the 13 original documentary films that Shaw produced for the FAB a high proportion concern military matters. The Handymen focuses on the work of the Bombay Sappers and Miners, a regiment of the Corps of Engineers in the Indian Army. Tracing their origins back to the late eighteenth century, the Bombay Sappers and Miners served the British in numerous military operations both in India and abroad. In World War II they saw action in Malaya, Singapore, Burma, Abyssinia, Eritrea, North Africa, Syria, Italy and Greece.

The Handymen serves varied propaganda purposes. On the one hand, it encourages further military recruitment. On the other hand, it argues for the benefits of British rule in India. Here the propaganda is not only aimed at Indian audiences. Whereas the Government of India was chiefly concerned with the reception of the FAB’s films in India itself, the MoI was interested in the audience beyond the sub-continent (Woods, 2001, 298-99). Britain was anxious to ensure US support for the War, and consequently the FAB’s films are sensitive to American opinion about Imperial rule. R.R. Ford, of the British Library of Information in New York, had warned that ‘The fundamental problem is the unfortunate fact that very little, if anything, that a British person says about Indian affairs is believed here’ (Garga, 2007, 77). He therefore encouraged the production of films in which ‘Indians should be shown as often as possible in self-responsible duties, with British officers kept out of the picture’ (Ford, 15 October 1941).

Ford regarded The Handymen and another Shaw film, Defenders of India, as representing a ‘great advance’ upon early FAB films. Although neither film was deemed suitable for cinematic release in America, he endorsed their nationwide non-theatrical distribution (Ford, 15 October 1941). Similarly, the MoI thought that the Shaw-era films were of an improved standard, and in Britain, as well as the ‘Empire territories and neutral countries’, The Handymen received non-theatrical release (Leach, 22 March 1943). The MoI estimated that 1700,000 people had witnessed the film via its cinema units by March 1943 (Leach, 22 March 1943). Like other FAB films, The Handymen was dubbed into several languages and was circulated as widely in India as possible. It was distributed to the 200 English-language cinemas; the 1,000 Indian-language cinemas; and, via mobile cinema vans, to the vast rural population who provided the main source of military recruits (Woods, 2001, 299).