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Buyer of Gandhi Effects Is No Ascetic Father of India

What would Mohandas K. Gandhi have thought of Vijay Mallya?

Mr. Mallya, an airline and liquor tycoon, bought Gandhi’s personal effects in a controversial New York auction on Thursday. He said Friday that he planned to give the items to the government of India.

“Mahatma Gandhi is the father of the nation, and there could not be anything more important historically or culturally than his belongings,” and their return home, Mr. Mallya said in a telephone interview from France.

Mr. Mallya, the chairman of the conglomerate UB Group, seems an unlikely go-between for property belonging to the teetotaling, chastity-preaching spiritual father of independent India.
Read entire article at NYT