India to participate in auction of Gandhi letter

New Delhi, June 28: Determined to prevent a priceless letter of Mahatma Gandhi from falling into private hands, India has decided to join the July 3 auction at the Christie's through the capital-based Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML). A Culture Ministry official said NMML has been instructed to seek advice of the External Affairs Ministry and the Indian High Commission in London to chalk out the strategy for entering the bidding process of the letter.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has already discussed the issue with Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon.

The letter, which appeared in the January 11 issue of ''The Harijan', is likely to go under the hammer in the region of 2 million pounds with individual estimates ranging from 500 to 1,20,000 pounds. The issue was brought to the notice of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by two staunch Gandhians B K Birla and Satya Paul, who urged him to intervene and prevent the letter from being auctioned.

They also appealed to the prime minister to initiate efforts to bring the letter back to India.

The official said the Culture Ministry then dashed off a missive to the External Affairs Ministry, seeking its intervention to prevent a priceless legacy from slipping into private hands.

The letter will be a part of the most comprehensive collection of handwritten letters to be seen on the market for a generation.

The collection is titled 'The Albin Schram Collection of Autograph Letters', a personal and private collection assembled over a period of 30 years by the Late Albin Schram.

The collection includes 570 lots of handwritten manuscripts by many of the most notable figures of the European history from the 13th to 20th centuries, including Lord Byron, Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth I, Sigmund Freud, Gandhi, Napoleon, Sir Isaac Newton, Oliver Cromwell, Claude Monet, Oscar Wilde and Charlotte Bronte.

The scheduled bidding has triggered a wave of revulsion and protest from the people in the country in general and Gandhians in particular.

In the historic letter, Gandhiji expressed regret for having to discontinue the Urdu edition of his paper 'Harijan' owing to dwindling readership.

''The dwindle was to me a sign of resentment against its publication. My view remains unalterable especially at this critical juncture in our history. It is wrong to ruffle Muslim or any other person's feeling when there is no question of ethics,'' he wrote.

The letter ends with a ringing call to ''Muslim friends'' not only to support the Urdu edition but to learn the Nagari script and thus ''enrich their intellectual capital.''

UNI