Auctioning Gandhi

Yesterday, March 5th, a New York auction house sold a private collection of Gandhi’s personal items for $1.8 million, despite vehement protests from the Indian government and Gandhi’s own great-grandson. The Indian government feels that the items belong in India as part of the country’s cultural heritage and are legitimately owned by India.

The Indian government had filed an injunction against the sale in New Delhi, but the auction house argued that the items had been acquired outside of India and that the government had no jurisdiction in the United States. The owner of the collection, a Mr. James Otis, is a peace scholar who had initially set up the auction to promote pacifist causes. When contacted with an offer from the government to buy the items, he said that it was not enough money, but he would donate the items to India if the government agreed to sharply increase spending on the poor or include the items in an exhibition that would travel the world. In response to this, a foreign minister said that those terms would violate India’s sovereignty and that Gandhi himself would have rejected them. The winning bid was made by Mr. Mallya, an Indian businessman who has pledged to bring the items back to India for public display. However, the legal and ethical issues that arose from this auction have yet to be settled.

What indeed would Gandhi’s response to this auction have been? Would he, like the foreign minister suggested, reject the terms proposed by Mr. Otis—terms that seem peaceful and humanitarian?

In a new title from Gandhi’s teachings called The Way to God, Gandhi instructs the individual on how to find spirituality, the one universal God, and the peace that comes with this journey and discovery. His teachings are about the quest for enlightenment and the personal struggle for morality, self-discipline, and selfless service for others. For Gandhi, the path to perfection in all of these areas is a personal one that must be completed by the individual at his or her own inner urgings. This philosophy is part of what made him such a successful and dedicated activist in the struggle for Indian independence from England in the early 1900’s. He believed it was the right for every nation and every people to have self-determination, to choose for themselves how to live.

For this reason I believe Gandhi would have rejected Mr. Otis’s requirement as one that denies India the self-determination that he fought for, even though he would probably have agreed with the principle that the nation needs to spend more on the poor. The request along with the auction house’s treatment of the government’s injunction seems like Western condescension and cultural appropriation, and a denial of India’s right to decide what happens to its cultural productions. This is the but the latest in a series of legal and ethical struggles involving formerly conquered or colonized countries to have wrongfully obtained cultural artifacts returned to them from the Western museums and private collections in which they currently reside. India’s sovereignty and self-determination have been called into question by the auction itself, the dismissal of the injunction, and the paternalistic price suggested by the seller.

What do you think about this auction? What do you think Gandhi’s response would have been? Do you think the seller and the auction house behaved ethically?

Click HERE to read the full article from The New York Times

Click HERE for more information on The Way to God

Thanks goes out to our intern, Angela Cabral, for this post.