The market for Mahatma Memorabilia received a massive boost with the auction of his spectacles. Auctions are great fun. Done traditionally as in this instance, an auction is a platform for sober, well-dressed individuals to twitch, scratch and grimace.
Quite apart from Closeau imitations, the best thing about auctions is that they are price-discovery mechanisms. Given that Vijay Mallya was prepared to put up $1.8 million for a pair of glasses, a 1910 silver Zenith pocket watch, sandals, a bowl, a thali and letters of authenticity, others would be prepared to pay largish sums for bits and bobs that can be linked to Gandhiji.
Heartened by that, octogenarians who had any contact with him are now rifling through their old correspondence. Gandhiji churned out an enormous volume of correspondence and those letters can now be valued in cold cash as opposed to warm memories.
This would have pleased the old man. In his lifetime, he frequently demonstrated a firm grasp of dhando — a Gujarati word that encompasses an entire philosophy and can only be inadequately translated as commerce. Gandhiji had no reservations about selling his autograph (usually at Rs 5 per signature) to raise money for causes close to his heart.
Assuming reasonable levels of inflation since his demise, that Rs 5 is equivalent to about Rs 1,200 in current terms. The Antiquorum Auction suggests at least a couple of zeros can be added to the inflation-adjusted value.
A charkha that he had personally used, or his porta-enema kit, could fetch a lot more than a mere letter. So much so that one wonders if the sparse personal effects scattered across the Gandhi ashrams and in the hands of various descendants and associates are now worth more than the real estate itself.
Whenever collectibles become high value, attempts are made to try and fake them. Facsimile 1940s Superman comics and fake Hitler diaries are par for the course. The key is provenance. In the collectibles world, the twinned processes of authentication and provenance consist not only of proof that the artefact is genuine, but of legitimate ownership. Lack of provenance is why art thieves find it difficult to fence goods at anything approaching Sotheby values.
Faking the man's signature or getting an appropriately elderly-looking charkha constructed would hardly be a problem. Amar Colony Market can knock up the latter and a little magic with a scanner and photoshop could churn out the former.
Could one create a market in fake Gandhi artefacts? The problem lies in his ostentatiously simple lifestyle and the extensive day-by-day documentation of where he was, and who he met. He had few personal possessions and it is possible to make an admittedly long list of his acquaintances. Perhaps one could slip the odd anonymous jailer through the cracks?
It could help fakers that those who knew the Mahatma personally are now very old. Their memories are fading and nobody would be terribly surprised if a busted pair of specs was discovered somewhere in an old trunk.
Much has been made of the fact that the buyer is a liquor baron. That wouldn't have bothered Gandhiji at all. He was anti-alcohol. He was also anti-prohibition, believing that it was a personal decision to abjure liquor. There is no way he would have endorsed the web of corruption that passes for prohibition in 21st century Gujarat.
There are two things Gandhiji would have disapproved of during this entire imbroglio. He would have considered the hoo-hah in Parliament a waste of public money. The other was the attempt to dissuade the owner from selling. Otis wanted to sell, Mallya bought. Gandhiji may have been bemused by the prices but he would have approved of the embracing of dhando.
