Guj: Gandhians show little care for letter auction

Ahmedabad, July 1: Eminent Gandhians in Gujarat are least concerned about the fate of the handwritten letter by Mahatma Gandhi, slated to be auctioned on July 3 at the Christie's in London.

''The letter was already published in the then issue of Harijan dated 19th January, 1948. It was also printed in the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Volume No 90. So there is no secret about the content of the letter. There is only one exclusive factor about the letter that is handwriting of Mahatma Gandhi. It hardly matters to us wheather the letter gets auctioned or not,'' Jitendra Desai, Managing Trustee of Navjeevan Trust told sources.

''The collector Albin Schram was fond of handwritten manuscripts of great people. That how did a foreinger manage to procure the letter remains still a mystery,'' said Mr Desai.

Agreed veteran Gandhian Chinubhai Vaidya, ''What would be the highest price in the auction is not an important question, the million dollar question is how did the letter get into a foreign hand?'' he asked.

Like Mr Desai, Mr Vaidya also did not attach much importance to the letter. ''The eagerness with which the Indian government has taken up the issue sounds like idol worshipping (of Mahatma Gandhi).

There is nothing sacrosanct about the letter. It is just a piece of paper,'' he said.

Giving an example of Gandhi's associate Vinoba Bhave, Mr Vaidya said, ''Once Gandhi wrote a letter to Vinoba which the latter tore and threw into the garbage bin. When his fellow associates asked Vinoba wheather he had no respect for the letter of Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba had said it was just a simple letter which he read and discarded and there was no big deal about it.'' In a similar manner, I don't attach much importance to the letter,'' Mr Vaidya said.

Meanwhile, Indian government is gearing up for the July three auction at the Christie's through the capital-based Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML). A Culture Ministry official said NMML had been instructed to seek the advice of the External Affairs Ministry and the Indian High Commission in London to chalk out a 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 two 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.

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 consists of 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, Mahatma Gandhi, Napoleon, Sir Isaac Newton, Oliver Cromwell, Claude Monet, Oscar Wilde and Charlotte Bronte.

UNI

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