Over six months after the Indian government got hold of letters between Mahatma Gandhi and his close friend Hermann Kallenbach (1871-1945), a German-born South African architect and a Jew, the letters will be put up for public display at the National Archives from Wednesday.
The letters will not only show Gandhiji’s close links with Hermann Kallenbach but also his equally close relationship with his brother Simon Kallenbach and niece Hana Lazar.
While negotiations between the government and the Sotheby’s auction house had started over five years ago, the culture ministry finally obtained the correspondence in July 2012.
The letters shot into the limelight after Kallen-bach’s descendants — son Eli Sarid and niece Isa Sarid — decided to give them to Sotheby’s for auction.
The government eventually clinched a deal with the Sarids through Sotheby’s for `7 crores, a quarter of what the Sarids had initially demanded for the letters.
An expert panel that visited London in June last year to verify the letters’ authenticity helped push the deal through after it convinced the Indian government that they were of immense value.
The papers on display will throw more light on Gandhi’s early life in South Africa, and include letters by eminent Indians like Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Miraben, and Manilal, Harilal, Devdas and Ramdas Gandhi.