Businessman Vijay Mallya buys Gandhi artefacts for $1.8m

New york: Leather sandals, glasses, a pocket watch and a supper bowl once used by Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi sold on Thursday for $1.8 million in New York to an executive who said he was acting for Indian industrialist Vijay Mallya.

The objects were given by Gandhi to various acquaintances, according to the online catalog of New York auction house Antiquorum. The sandals were reportedly given to a British army officer in Aden in 1931, after he photographed Gandhi at a peace conference. The dinner bowl and pocket watch were given to Gandhi's niece Abha, who served as his longtime personal assistant.

“Basically this belongs to India,'' said Tony Bedi, president of the US branch of Bangalore-based United Breweries Holdings Ltd., the industrial group run by Mallya, as he left the auction. Bedi still carried the paddle, No. 360, that he used to bid on Mallya's behalf. “It should be going to India.''

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had directed that “whatever possible'' should be done to bring the Gandhi items back to the country, Culture Minister Ambika Soni said before the auction.

James Otis, the Gandhi scholar and collector who put the items up for auction, caused a diplomatic storm when he said on the eve of the auction that he would withdraw the items from the sale unless India increased its spending to fight poverty.

An attorney for Otis said hours after the bidding that his client would end his efforts to block the sale at Antiquorum, Agence France-Presse reported.

Thursday's bidding appeared to pass mainly between Bedi, who spoke by phone with Mallya, and an unnamed telephone bidder reportedly calling from London.