Mont Blanc apologises for Gandhi pen

By Dean Nelson in New Delhi Published: 2:13PM GMT twenty-five February 2010

Mahtma Gandhi"s good grandson Tushar Gandhi binds a "Mont Blanc Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Edition 3000" soda soda fountain coop Photo: AFP

It has right away dangling sales of the coop after the launch in the nation annoyed protests over the make make use of of of India"s famously ascetic "father of the nation" for blurb branding.

Gandhi"s millions of supporters laid open the make make use of of of his picture as inapt since he believed in debasement and opposite luxury.

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Billboards advertisements for the pen, that costs some-more than majority Indians consequence in a decade, loomed over a little of the countries lowest slums.

The coop comes in a "gold" and "silver" book and has an eight metre bullion thread that can be wound around it as a reverence to Gandhi"s use of weaving his own elementary fine cloth from cotton. Only 241 pens have been made, one to paint each of the miles he walked on his important 1930 criticism impetus opposite a British colonial salt tax.

Mont Blanc launched the special book coop after reaching an agreement with Gandhi"s great-grandson. Tushar Gandhi"s gift was paid some-more than �90,000 for the capitulation and was to embrace a serve commission on each coop sold.

Gandhi"s descendants have been concerned in a array of controversies over attempts to money in on his legacy, together with the sale of family heirlooms.

The association has right away motionless to hindrance sales in India after a justice plea from an tutorial gift that claims it is bootleg underneath an action to strengthen Indian emblems and names.

In the petition, the gift said:"Mahatma Gandhi is ... deliberate the summary of simplicity. Making him a pitch of a �16,000 coop is zero but an try to reduce all that he symbolised."