Gandhi’s will wins, Christie’s pulls out essay from auction

LONDON/NEW DELHI: The Indian government has, just in the nick of time, managed to stop the auction of an article written by Mahatma Gandhi that was scheduled to go under the hammer at the world famous auction house, Christie’s, in London today.

The Indian High Commission in London will now acquire the seven-page handwritten manuscript of the article written for Urdu Harijan, a journal started by Gandhi, and take it back to India.

“We are pleased to have facilitated the negotiations which have resulted in an important historical record returning to India,” said Dr Amin Jaffer, international director of Asian Art at Christie’s.

Christie’s is acting as agent for the vendors – the executors of the estate of late Albin Schram who bought the Gandhi manuscript at one of their auctions in 2002. The document is part of a collection owned by Schram of more than 1,000 letters by famous personalities, all of which will go up for sale on Tuesday, except, of course, the Gandhi document.

The Indian High Commission is tight-lipped about how it stopped the auction of the article and is not willing to say if it paid any money to the Schram family to get the manuscript.

An official source in New Delhi said that it would go against the provisions of the will made by Gandhi to exchange money for any of his letters or articles. The will specifically prohibits commercialisation of his writings.

However, experts in London said it is very likely that the Indian government would have had to at least pay the floor price of £12,000, or Rs10 lakh, to withdraw the manuscript from the auction. Because of the heightened interest in the article, its price would have been considerably raised had it gone under the hammer.

The official source indicated that the High Commission had invoked a 1997 case to mount pressure on Christie’s to withdraw the manuscript. That year, the then Indian High Commissioner in the UK, LM Singhvi, had retrieved a bundle of Gandhi’s writings from another auction house, Philips, on the ground that they were “stolen property’’.

Singhvi had argued that Gandhi’s last will had decreed that all his writings belong to the Navjivan Trust set up by him in Ahmedabad.

The source said Christie’s had been shown all the papers relating to that case. It was also shown a copy of Gandhi’s will and the probate to drive home the point that his papers cannot be the property of any individual. The source said that the matter was amicably settled, with Christie’s accepting the logic of the argument.

The auction house blinked because of the enormous business prospects that India offers for the auction and sale of artwork and artefacts. “It certainly wouldn’t want to get into a battle with the Indian government,’’ the official said.

Until now Christie’s had been adamant that the manuscript could in no way be described as “stolen property” since it had come with a legal title and would have been auctioned as instructed in Schram’s will.