Click to play videoLondon: Four months ago, industrialist and liquor baron Vijay Mallya bought some personal belongings of Mahatma Gandhi for $1.8 million dollars after a national outcry over their auction in New York.
Now, a series of letters and postcards written by Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru will go under the hammer at Sothebys in London on Tuesday. These include two postcards dated 1942 and 1946, signed by Gandhi, to Urdu poet Hamid Ullah Afsar.
There are also three letters written by Gandhi to Islamic scholar Maulana Abdul Bari between 1920 and 1924. They are estimated to be priced at Rs 1.99 lakh to Rs 2.50 lakh.
The sale also features a khadi cloth said to have been woven by Gandhi and signed by him and Sarojini Naidu. This was a gift from Gandhi to South African actress Moira Lister and is likely to fetch a minimum of Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 2 lakh.
Specialist at Sothebys, Gabriel Heaton says, "They (Gandhi's belongings) all come from different sources. These have been out of India for a long time."
Twenty-nine letters and notes by Nehru to friend Mridula Sarabhai, will also be auctioned. Most of these are marked 'personal' and 'confidential' and are estimated to fetch between Rs 3-4 lakh.
Heaton says, "You get a very strong sense both of Nehru's thinking at the time and especially the relationship between these two people from the letters."
The letters have generated significant interest among NRIs in the UK. The sale also includes various first editions of books by Winston Churchill and Charles Darwin.
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