All the PM's presents

While the ambitious online auction along with the touristy display of the PM's gifts is new, giving away the mementos is an age-old practice

The National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) at Jaipur House, New Delhi, may not be a popular destination for primary school children on any weekday, but the past month has been different. Two to three schools on an average have been sending their students daily to the NGMA to look up some of the mementos that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had received over the years. Since September 14, the mementos, ranging from shawls to angavastra, paintings to ceramic to graphic prints of government schemes such as Start Up India, Beti Bachao, Jan Dhan, Make In India and more have been on display at the museum, which usually houses works of marquee painters and sculptors. 

It made sense to check out the gifts that the PM had received and were now up for online auction, before they were all bought and taken away from the museum. The proceeds of the auction will go to the Namami Gange or the Clean Ganga fund, and Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary looked like an apt day for a visit. Unfortunately, October 2 was among the closed days for the NGMA, under the umbrella of the culture ministry, and one had to settle for a day ahead of Gandhi Jayanti, as the auction was scheduled to end at 5 pm on October 3. It emerged later that the managers of the show might have decided to extend the bidding period to October 17, realising that there’s energy left in the process and the funds for Namami Gange could go up further. 

The scene at NGMA’s administrative building, tucked in a corner of the vast complex that was once a residence of the Maharaja of Jaipur, did not quite reveal the action that the mementos under hammer had generated online. A group of uniformed school children sat on the floor in neat rows, listening to a guide about the display spread across the high walls. Some 400 odd gifts were on display, though 2,772 were being auctioned online. A helpful museum insider offered to give a guided tour on the condition that it was all off the record. Artistes, businessmen, politicians, bureaucrats, students and foreign tourists had been dropping in regularly to look at the PM’s gifts, with the total number of visitors way above 1,000 — the guide said in a manner of giving away a well-kept secret. 

Interestingly, while the new wing has an admission fee, it’s free of cost to check out the PM’s mementos in the other building, where the closely monitored visitors’ register remained an important item to assess the success of the display. It was the second time recently that the NGMA was getting associated with the PM’s mementos and a corresponding online auction. In January too, they had a similar show, though smaller in scale. This time, the expectations were much higher, but without any target.

At the current auction of the PM’s mementos, shawls from various states have attracted attention more than any other items. But, bidders online, anonymous as of now, think differently. A painting of Mahatma Gandhi has already fetched Rs 25 lakh, while its base price was Rs 2.5 lakh. Rather strangely, it seems not much information has been made available on the painter or the source of the memento till now, even after writing to the authorities a number of times. But Gandhi has always been a hit in the auction circuit and this should not come as a surprise, especially, as it coincides with his 150th birth anniversary. 

At a Sotheby’s auction in 2017, a rare 1931 pencil portrait of Gandhi by artist John Henry Amshewitz had fetched £32,500. In 2018, a signed vintage photo of Gandhi, walking alongside Madan Mohan Malaviya, was auctioned for $41,806 in the United States. Again in 2018, an undated letter written by Gandhi was reportedly sold for $6,358. The list, of course, is much longer.

While this ambitious online auction along with the touristy display of the PM’s gifts is new, giving away the mementos is an age-old practice. The gifts of ministers (including those of the PM), bureaucrats and diplomats while they are on official tours have always been deposited in the toshakhana, a Persian word that translates into a treasure-house. Governed by various gift acceptance policies, officials and ministers must deposit their mementos in toshakhana within 30 days of the end of their trips. Toshakhana officials assess the market worth of the gifts and then those could be purchased back. The gifts that are not purchased could be donated to public museums or embassies. Often, they are kept in Rashtrapati Bhawan or the PM’s residence as well.