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Mahatma’s letters auctioned

London: Within 10 days of India acquiring a rare manuscript of Mahatma Gandhi before it was to be auctioned, handwritten drafts of a series of articles and autographed letters of the father of the nation went under the hammer here.

Gandhiji’s manuscripts and letters, written between the 1920s and the 1940s, were auctioned by Sotheby’s on Thursday as part of its English Literature and History sale. The lot, which included 33 pages of handwritten drafts of a series of articles for Young India from 1921 and 11 autographed letters by Mahatma Gandhi, sold for £45,600. The lot had been expected to sell for between £25,000 and £35,000.

The papers, which were mounted in a 79-page album, included 12 autographed letters of Muhamad Iqbal, Sri Aurobindo and Sarojini Naidu. The manuscripts of the Young India articles, written by Gandhiji in 1921, discussed a range of po litical and cultural subjects such as the caste system, the khadi campaign, the colonial education system, non-violent protests and a temperance campaign. The series of articles were written during the Satyagraha campaign of non-cooperation (1920-22) as Mahatma Gandhi visited Gujarat. — PTI

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