London, Nov 6 – Mahatma Gandhi’s eight-decade old ‘charkha’ or spinning wheel was auctioned for a whopping 110,000 pounds (about US$176,983) in the United Kingdom on Tuesday, nearly double the expected price.
Gandhi’s last will also sold for 20,000 pounds at the specialist sale of historical documents and artefacts by the Mullock’s Auction house in Shropshire, , Press Trust of India (PTI) reported.
“The charkha is one of Gandhi’s most prized possessions as he devised the workings of it himself. He used the charkha when imprisoned in Yerwada Jail in Pune while fighting for the rights and independence of India,” Mullock’s specialist Richard Westwood Brookes said.
“The charkha was the physical embodiment and symbol of Mahatma Gandhi as he once said: ‘In my dream, in my sleep, while eating, I think of the spinning wheel. The spinning wheel is my sword. To me it is the symbol of India’s liberty.'”
Gandhi gave the spinning wheel made of Indian teak wood to American Free Methodist missionary Revd Floyd A Puffer as a gift in 1935, who displayed the wheel at a number of talks and events in India.
Puffer later gave the charkha to fellow missionary Reverend Dr Frank J Kline in 1965 which had since passed through Kline’s family to the present owner.
Gandhi’s will was written in Gujarati at the Sabarmati Ashram and supersedes a will dated 1921 that was sold at an earlier auction by Mullock’s. (US$1 = GBP0.621)
– Bernama
