Despite reservations that have been expressed about ethics and poor taste, a firm of UK auctioneers is going ahead with the sale of soil samples and blades of grass from the place in Delhi where Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated.

The sale is being organised by Mullock’s, specialist auctioneers and valuers, who say the sale will go ahead in the city of Ludlow on April 17. Included in the collection is a pair of Gandhiji’s spectacles, his Gujarati prayer book and some letters, including one which outlines his philosophy of life.

When the sale was first mooted earlier this year, Chairman of the Gandhi Museum in Delhi, Professor Bimal Prasad, commented: “It is in very bad taste and how any Indian can do such a thing is unthinkable.”

He added: “It may be a false thing. I would like to find out if there was anything in the soil and who found it. It has to be exposed as false from someone trying to make money. If indeed there is such a thing, the government should investigate how it came into the hands of the seller.”

Mullock’s Historical Specialist Richard Westwood-Brookes says the Gandhi collection is being offered by an Indian collector who was a friend of one of Gandhiji’s most devoted disciples.

The disciple is named as the late PP Nambiar, a retired subedar and author of ‘True, but never heard before. My 70 years’. In the book is a chapter where he describes what he saw on January 30, 1948, shortly after Gandhiji was shot dead.

Nambiar handed his collection over to Antony Chittattukara from Trichur who has in turn contacted the auctioneers to sell the items. A letter of authenticity from Nambiar states: “I take this opportunity to add that Antony has today received the most sacred of all relics, a fraction of the pinch of soil I collected on January 30, 1948, from the spot where the Father of our nation MK Gandhiji fell to the bullets of his assassin”.

“It is certainly an outstanding collection and it is most unlikely that a collection of such importance will be offered for sale again”, comments Westwood-Brooks.

“The soil and grass are considered by many in India to be among the most sacred of relics and we are offering them with the greatest respect for their significance in the hope that they will be acquired by a suitable purchaser who will equally realise their significance.”

In his book Nambiar describes rushing over to the precise place where Gandhiji was shot where some members of the public had already created a pothole from scooping the ground where Gandhiji had fallen minutes earlier. Nambiar writes: “I thought it meaningless to take some earth from the spot and searched for a drop or even a stain of blood on the grass blades around. In my search I found a drop of blood on the grass almost dried. I cut the grass and also took two pinches of soil from the pothole which I wrapped in a Hindi newspaper found nearby.”

Also included in the collection is a pair of Gandhi’s spectacles which he obtained in the UK in 1947 while visiting friends who were fellow members of the London Vegetarian Society — to which Gandhi had belonged since 1891 when he was studying in London to be a lawyer.

After the war, the society inaugurated a World Congress in Gloucestershire, which still has considerable associations with the Vegetarian Body today. The spectacles were obtained from H Cannam optician, 23 Aldate Street, Glioucester.

Among the letters for sale — some typed and some hand written - are some signed ‘Bapu’, which the auctioneers say was a rare form of his personal signature.

In one of his letters to close disciple Raghava Poduval in Burma, Gandhi wrote: ‘...I went through the whole of your manuscript during the pilgrimage but could not get the time to write to you. Your confession is good for you, but you must not brood over the past. You must use the past only as a stepping stone to a better present and a still better future...’

The collection is being offered in individual lots with estimates ranging from £1000 to £20,000.