AUCTION OF GANDHI'S BELONGINGS -- AN IGNOMINY

Gandhi belongings for sale

Published Date: 13 February 2009
MAHATMA Gandhi's distinctive wire-framed spectacles, a pair of worn leather sandals and an inexpensive pocket watch are to go for auction in New York City.
Announcing the sale yesterday, Antiquorum Auctioneers said the auction of Gandhi's belongings was historic because the leader of India's independence movement, who died in 1948, had few possessions.All the items, including a simple brass bowl and plate, will be sold as a single lot during the sale on 4-5 March, with a reserve price of $20,000 to $30,000 (£14,000 to £21,000).The auction house said that in the past few days it had received inquiries from prospective buyers around the globe. The items belonged to a private American collector who obtained them from the Gandhi family's heirs.

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Gandhi heirs condemn auction of his belongings

Published Date:16 February 2009

>>The family of Mahatma Gandhi has denounced a planned auction of his belongings as immoral and called for them to be returned to India as national treasures.
Gandhi's sandals, pocket watch and spectacles, which the father of the Indian independence movement said gave him "the vision to free India," will be sold to the highest bidder at a New York auction house next month, but last night his great-grandson joined Indian MPs in demanding their return.
Tushar Gandhi, Gandhi's 49-year-old great grandson who runs the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation in Mumbai, said he has already had offers from people around the world to donate one month's salary – including one from a poor rickshaw driver in Mumbai who had offered to sell his vehicle to raise money for the cause.
He has questioned the manner in which Peter Ruhe, a German memorabilia collector and chairman of the GandhiServe Foundation in Berlin, had obtained the items.
The watch, he claimed, was a gift from Gandhi to his grand niece-in-law who served as his personal assistant and in whose arms he died after being shot in 1948. He said that Mr Ruhe persuaded her to sign an agreement with him and now that she has died he is selling them off. He has gone around the world collecting up Gandhi's personal possessions and running it like a business.
"It is all very sad," he said.
"It is immoral and must be stopped," said Mr Gandhi. "It would be a grave insult to the nation if these items were just sold off. While my great-grandfather attached little importance to his possessions and lived a simple life, they are hugely sentimental items for the people.
"They are priceless to India. the father of the Indian independence movement. I would absolutely hate it if they ended up enriching the life of some wealthy businessman in America or Britain.
"They belong here."
The reserve price for the lot is £30,000, but experts expect bids of several times that amount.
The brochure for the New York auction house Antiquorum states that Gandhi gave the pocket watch to his grandniece Abha Gandhi. She later left it her own will to her daughter Ghita Mehta who has provided a letter of authenticity for the sale.
Nilay Band, an associate of Peter Ruhe and a member of his research organisation GandhiServe which promotes Gandhian philosophy, denied that Mr Ruhe had behaved in an underhand manner.
"I have no doubt that Mr Ruhe is genuine and has acquired his large collection on Gandhi memorabilia legitimately. He's a good man and very genuine," he said.
According to Tushar Gandhi, Mr Ruhe had travelled through Gujarat in the 1990s gathering Gandhi memorabilia and had met Gandhi's grandniece and acquired the rights to Gandhi's pocket watch from her. "Collecting up these items has been a systematic lucrative operation going on from Germany," he said.<<

Telegraph.co.uk