London, july 15: A series of letters and a piece of cloth signed and autographed by Mahatma Gandhi were bought for around 10,000 pounds in an auction here on Tuesday jointly by two leading Britain-based NRIs, who will gift the precious items to the government of India.
A series of 29 letters and four autograph notes signed by Jawaharlal Nehru for friend Mridula Sarabhai, together with a signed document, a signed greeting card and 29 envelopes (estimated price 4,000-5,000 pounds or Rs 3.17-3.97 lakh) was also sold for 8,750 pounds to British firm UK Trade.
NRI entrepreneurs Sir Gulam Kaderbhoy Noon and Prof Nat Puri bid for priceless Gandhi letters and postcards almost for double the pre-sale estimates at London auctioner Sotheby’s.
Curry King Sir Noon told agency he telephonically bid for the Gandhi articles and bought them for around 10,000 pounds.
The first lot comprised Gandhi’s three autographed letters to Maulana Abdul Bari, an Islamic scholar and leading figure in the Khilafat movement, in Urdu. The letters referred to Hindu-Muslim relations, including communal tension in Lucknow, their personal friendship and in one letter writing from prison with thanks for the gift of cotton for spinning.
Maulana Abdul Bari (1878-1926) worked closely with Gandhi from 1918 onwards.
The second lot comprised a piece of Khadi cloth signed by Gandhi and said to have been woven by him. The hand-woven white cotton piece (420x390mm) with a simple purple border was signed by Gandhi in Gujarati.
The cloth, which was a gift from Gandhi to South African-born actress Moira Lister, had an estimated price of 2,000-2,500 pounds (Rs 1.59-1.99 lakh). Lister was a friend of Maharani of Jaipur Gayatri Devi.
The third lot consisted of two autographed postcards addressed to Hamid Ullah Afsar in Urdu, thanking him for his letters and advising him that previous letters had answered his questions. Asfar (1895-1974) was a prominent Urdu poet.
Sir Noon said he was extremely happy that he could get the treasured letters and postcards. “Mahatma Gandhi is an icon not only for India but for the world. His treasure should go back to India,” he said.
On two previous occasions, Sir Noon in partnership with Puri and Lord Raj Bagri had bought Gandhi’s letters that had gone under the hammer and handed them over to New Delhi.
On July 15, 1998, letters by the Mahatma to Islamic scholar Bari, were bought at a Sotheby’s auction by Sir Noon and carpet czar Nat Puri for 21,000 pounds. The letters were later presented to the then President K R Narayanan.
On another occasion, Sir Noon had bought another set of Gandhi documents along with Lord Bagri, former chairman of the London Metal Exchange, for 14,000 pounds at an auction.
Both the Indian government and Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, had opposed the New York auction of Gandhi artefacts in March this year. The items were bought by liquor baron Vijay Mallya for 1.8 million dollars.
A spokeswoman of Sotheby’s said that the lot of series of 29 letters signed by Nehru, the first prime minister of India, was brought by UK Trade for 8,750 pounds.
The lot comprised 29 letters signed and four autographed letters and notes signed (‘Jawaharlal’, ‘J Nehru’, ‘J.N’) to Sarabhai — mostly headed ‘personal’, ‘confidential’ or ‘secret’ — together with a signed document (note on the proposal to have a training centre for children), a signed greeting card as also five letters and notes signed by Nehru’s assistant M O Mathai, 29 envelopes and a printed document.
Mridula Sarabhai (1911-1974) was born into a wealthy industrialist family from Ahmedabad. Her brother Vikram Sarabhai was a physicist who is considered as the father of the Indian space programme.
She was involved in the struggle for independence from a young age and was a lifelong friend of Nehru, although they disagreed over many important political issues.
She was a vocal critic of Nehru’s policies on Kashmir and much of this correspondence is taken up with criticism of her public statements and rejections of various proposals.
The letters also discuss subjects including events in Kashmir, Sarabhai’s political campaigns and rehabilitation of Muslims evicted from their homes at Partition.
Sarabhai often with travelled with Nehru and in one of the letters, she was told off for her habit of sitting in the front seat of the Prime Minister’s car. These letters also show that she worked closely with Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi on a children’s charity.
–Agencies