Gandhi’s glasses to be auctioned in UK

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Mahatma Gandhi’s distinctive round steel rimmed spectacles, soil from the spot of his assassination, a prayer book written in Gujarati, his charkha and a bunch of letters are being sold on April 17 by specialist auctioneer Mullock’s in Ludlow, Shropshire.
The auction of Mahatma Gandhi’s letters and artefacts had become very controversial in 2007 when the government of India persuaded Christie’s withdraw from an auction.
Mahatma Gandhi’s plea for religious tolerance, written just 19 days before his assassination on January 30, 1948, was part of an extensive collection, estimated to sell for £2 million, that had been painstakingly built up over 30 years by the late Albin Schram at his home in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The manuscript was acquired in a transaction after the Indian government representatives negotiated with the executors of the Albin Schram estate with help of officials at Christie’s. However, letters written by Mahatma Gandhi, however, routinely come up for auction in the UK. Indian-born tyco-ons and friends Sir Gulam K. Noon and Nat Puri have bought a series of letters written by Mahatma Gandhi in various auctions and gifted them to the government of India. The glasses, kept in original metal case that is corroded with age and with the original felt bearing the name of H. Cannam Optician 23, St. Aldate Street Gloucester, were bought by Bapu when he was a student in England in 1890s. The glasses are expected to sell for between £10,000 and £15,000 at the auction. The auction will also sell a bit of the soil from the place that Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948 by a bystander, P.P. Nambiar, on the day of his death.
The soil, including blades of grass, is kept in small wooden casket containing a small glass topped box. It is expected to sell for between £10,000 and £15,000. His wooden charkha, which he used during his visit to London for the second Round Table Conference in 1931, is also included in the auction.