World history: Government of India acquired the archive of letters and photographs of Mahatma Gandhi

The Government of India has acquired a collection of several thousand letters, documents and photos, which relate to the leader of the Indian national and liberation movement, Mahatma Gandhi, for 60 million rupees (about 1.1 million dollars).

Archive has been put up for the auction "Sotheby's», appointed for July 10, but India has decided to buy all of the documents without waiting for auction day. They will now be stored at the National Archive of India.

The documents belong to the family of a German architect Hermann Kallenbach, who met Gandhi in 1904 in South Africa. Kallenbach was inspired by Gandhi's ideas and began to help him. In 1915 Gandhi returned to India from Africa, but they continued to correspond.

According to Indian authorities, the archive of Kallenbach will help to get a new information about the period of the residence of Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa.