Dr.Rajendra Prasad's watch

Descendents of Dr Rajendra Prasad - the country’s first President - have now pinned their hopes on a 1970 charter of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) to save his wrist watch from being auctioned at Sotheby's in Geneva next month. The wrist watch, a pink gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual, had gone missing from Sadaakat Ashram museum in Patna where the personal belongings of the first president are preserved. In a letter to Indian ambassador in Switzerland Chitra Narayanan, Dr Rajendra Prasad's Gorakhpur-based great grandson Ashoka Jahnavi Prasad has appealed that the embassy should pursue the case under the Unesco charter on Prohibition and Prevention of Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. The sub-section (II) of section B in Article 7 of the charter makes it obligatory for a member country to take “appropriate steps to recover and return any such cultural property on the request of the State of origin and the payment of just compensation”. The provision also states that “requests for such recovery or return shall be made through diplomatic offices and that the parties shall impose no customs duties upon cultural property returned pursuant to this Article”. The Implementation of Standard-Setting Instruments for Application of the 1970 convention was reviewed on September 9, 2011, at the Unesco meet in Paris. “These provisions have certainly come as a ray of hope to see the wrist watch back in India. We just hope that the Indian embassy in Switzerland pursues the case in the right earnest and we are confident that it will,” Ashoka said. The communication concerned was sent on Monday morning. Though Ashoka had sent a letter a week ago seeking the embassy's intervention, he was yet to receive any intimation of its receipt till Monday night. The wrist watch issue surfaced following reports that the item was scheduled to come up for next month's auction at Sotheby's in Geneva. Reports said that the wrist watch has a map of India and date 26 January, 1950, imprinted on it and was probably gifted to the first President of India on the country's first Republic Day celebrations. The auction house is expected to price the watch between US $2,22,000 to $4,44,000. A similar catch-22 situation had emerged in February 2009 after Antiquorum Auctioneers in New York had announced the auction of Mahatma Gandhi's steel rimmed spectacles, leather sandals, a pocket watch, a bowl and a plate. The Indian government had made attempts to stop the auction after a furore over the auction house going ahead to sell the belongings of Mahatma Gandhi - the Father of the Nation. But the auction house went ahead as per its schedule and the entire set was sold to liquor baron Vijay Mallya for 1.27 million pounds who handed them over to the Indian government. The sandals were said to have been made by Gandhiji himself which he had gifted to a British army officer who had taken photographs during his halt in Aden when he was on his way to London to attend the round table conference on India's independence, reports said. The Zenith watch was gifted to him by former prime minister Indira Gandhi.