Gandhi memorabilia fetch over Rs. 23 lakh

New Delhi, February 16, 2011 (PTI):Mahatma Gandhi memorabilia, including signed notes, letters and a khadi cloth, fetched over Rs. 23 lakh at an auction in the United States.

The Bonhams sale of Fine Books and Manuscripts on Sunday in California also saw an autograph letter and a photograph of Rabindranath Tagore fetching $5,856.

Bonhams said the 10 lots of Gandhi items realised $50,752.

Sources in the London-based auction house told PTI that buyers were from India, the U.S., Canada, South America and Europe.

Auction houses do not reveal the identity of the buyers.

An autograph letter by Gandhi (dated October 3, 1933) to an unnamed correspondent, in which he discusses his thoughts on Catholic faith and world religions in general, went under the hammer for $15,860, more than double of its pre-sale estimate.

"I have some very good friends among Roman Catholics and I have read some literature about the Roman Catholic belief... On the whole, however, I have been confirmed in my belief that one can grow fully in one's own inherited faith. I have in mind only the principal religions of the world," he wrote.

Gandhi's blood report, signed by director B.L. Taneja of Irwin Hospital's pathology department, New Delhi, sold for $10,370, much more than the estimate of $5,000-7,000.

A white cotton khadi cloth, with a period note indicating it was hand woven in Gandhi's ashram went under the hammer for $4,270.

"It is the product advocated by him under his program of 'cottage industries', and has come to replace the material made by Manchester, England, and other manufacturers of the continent altogether under the nationalist movement," the note said.

A collection of nearly 60 photographs and gelatin silver prints sold for $4,880. The images depicted Gandhi with Congress leaders in London, on a bicycle and with other world leaders such as the Mountbattens and Lord Pethick-Lawrence.

Five autograph notes fetched $9,516 while a signed photograph of Gandhi seated outdoors with followers in Ahmedabad on September 13, 1931 sold for $5,856.

The auction house said the lots were acquired over several decades by a Los Angeles collector interested in the history of non-violent movements.