India to get Gandhi items via tycoon
India's government said on Friday it assisted an Indian businessman in his successful $1.8 million bid for Mohandas Gandhi's eyeglasses and other items, despite initially protesting the auction as a "crass commercialization" of the pacifist leader's legacy.
An Indian court even filed an injunction in an attempt to prevent the auction in New York. But the auction went ahead on Thursday and Toni Bedi, an executive of the Indian company UB Group, made the winning bid after a furious 4 minutes in which the offers raced from $10,000 to $1.8 million. Bids came from the floor and by phone and Internet from overseas; none of the other bidders was identified.
"I'm very happy to inform you ... that the Indian government has successfully procured the personal items gifted by the father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi. We have been able to procure them through the services of an Indian who was in touch with us," Minister for Culture Ambika Soni told reporters on Friday.
The independence leader is often respectfully called "Mahatma" or 'great soul'.
Soni refused to say if the government provided any money in the bid, saying only that it had worked with Dr Vijay Mallya, the CEO of the UB Group. Bedi said he was working on Mallya's instructions.
New Delhi had initially protested the auction, saying Gandhi's belongings - wire-rim eyeglasses, worn leather sandals, a pocket watch, a plate and a brass bowl - should be returned to India, not sold to the highest bidder.
Before the sale, she decried the auction as "crass commercialization" and said India would "offer whatever it takes to make sure these things come back to Gandhi's motherland."
Bedi said his company would donate the items to the Indian government to be displayed.
Adding to the drama, the owner of the items told reporters outside the Antiquorum Auctioneers on Thursday that he no longer wanted to sell them, and US Justice Department officials served an Indian court injunction on the auction house, blocking it from releasing Gandhi's belongings.
New Delhi High Court last week issued the injunction against the auction or sale of Gandhi's effects, following a petition by Navjivan, a public trust started by Gandhi in 1929, staking its claim over all his personal items.
The auction went ahead but auctioneer Julien Schaerer announced as the sale began that the Gandhi items would be held for two weeks "pending resolution of third party claims."
Soni said the injunction had prevented the government from bidding directly.
The seller, self-identified California art collector James Otis, who calls himself a pacifist and advocate of non-violence in the Gandhi tradition, had said he planned to donate the auction proceeds to that cause.
Gandhi, who advocated non-violent civil disobedience to resist British rule in India, was assasinated in 1948.
Agencies
(China Daily 03/07/2009 page11)
