Gandhiji is the most loved leader of India and is renowned for his ideals of non violence and simple living. However the incidents in the past few days have added a political tint to a few so-called Gandhian pluggers all over the world. The political melodrama was staged by knavish political parties to gain public attention and support by showcasing themselves as fanatic Gandhians. With the election season coming up, the political parties entered a wild goose chase to win over Gandhis memorabilia being auctioned by American collector James Otis at Newyork. The point in bidding for Gandhis memorabilia was to one-up each other in the election campaign and thereby gain overwhelming public support.In staging the bidding drama, the top three political parties started choosing capable bidders who could bid over the memorabilia on the parties behalf. The politicians initially shorlisted potential bidders and then chose the best proxies for themselves. Eventually the war of the proxies was all set in Newyork. Amidst all these chaos, the government of India tried its hand at staying the auction of Gandhi's memorabilia stating that such an auction would hurt the sentiments of the Indian citizens. Thisopposition was aimed at winning over a good public opinion on the government. Despite the governments efforts to stay the auction, the auction proceeded as planned.
The things being auctioned had a market value of $30,000, but the wild competition among the bidders raised the bid value to several millions. Eventually Vijay Mallya won the auction by bidding for a whooping $1.8 million. Rumours say that Vijay Mallya was Congress' proxy bidder. It is also in the air that BJP and the Samajwadi party saw their proxy bidders being closely dropped out in the auction.
The picture is now all smoke and mirrors. Yet the Gandhian principles have been violated in public. The whole rush to bring home Gandhis memorabilia ended up hurting Gandhian principles. So the entire episode of this auction has been a disgrace to the vying politicians.
