Actor-activist Rahul Bose will be putting on sale iconic memorabilia from 16 famous Indians in an auction titled as 'The Idea of India' through his NGO.

The memorabilia belongs to legends like Zakir Hussain, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, R K Laxman, Vikram Seth, Amartya Sen, Javed Akhtar, Shabana Azmi, Amitav Ghosh, Aamir Khan and many other celebrities. The auction is slated to take place this Saturday.

"We decided to have an auction from 16 greatest Indians, who with their talent and world-view uphold the value of 'The idea of India'. The idea behind the auction is that India should be a secular inclusive democratic state without discrimination of any kind," Bose, 45, said.

"These people are compassionate, generous and they don't discriminate on the basis of gender, caste, colour, age and religion. Auctions also help us in raising money for my NGO The Foundation. Our funding model is based purely on auctions," he added.

The actor, who was last seen in Kamal Haasan's thriller 'Vishwaroopam', said he came up with The Foundation as an effort to fight all kinds of discrimination prevailing in the country. "Any kind of discrimination has always bothered me.

To bring an end to this, I had to start from somewhere. To start with I wanted to link those parts of India which are discriminated from rest through equality and advancement of children.

"The Idea was we would go back to Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Manipur, Kashmir and so on, select six children from these places, educate them and make them self-reliant. We select those children, who are deeply attached to their homeland, so that they go back to their place and start businesses, schools, colleges etc."


Tabla maestro Zakir Hussain has donated a set of tabla which belonged to his father Ustad Allah Rakha Khan, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan has donated an autographed Sarod while Aamir Khan has pitched in with the jacket that he wore in 'Lagaan'.

The auction also features author Vikram Seth handwritten sonnets from the autographed edition of his novel 'The Golden Gate' while Javed Akhtar has given away hand written poems by him, his parents and children. The other author in the contributors list is Ghosh, who has given away Dayanita Singh's photographs and handwritten passages from 'The Hungry Tide'.

1 Azmi has contributed her 'best student in acting' trophy from FTII, 1973 batch while Bindra has gifted his Olympic gold medal winning rifle for the cause. R K Laxman's hand-drawn originals of 'Six decades of the common man' also feature in the list so does musician Zubin Mehta's autographed baton.