Just two days ahead of the proposed auction of armour believed to be of Guru Gobind Singh, world-renowned auction house Sothebys on Monday declared that it would not go ahead with its earlier plans.
London, Apr 7 : Just two days ahead of the proposed auction of armour believed to be of Guru Gobind Singh, world-renowned auction house Sotheby's on Monday declared that it would not go ahead with its earlier plans.
Sotheby's, however, made it clear that the armour wasn't belonged to the 10th Sikh Guru.
"It is important that you know that Sotheby's does not consider the Sikh armour plate to be a relic of Guru Gobind Singh, as our cataloguing and estimate clearly indicate," Sotheby's spokesman Simon Warren said in a statement.
"I can also tell you we believe that complaints about the proposed offering are based on a misreading of Sotheby's cataloguing, which points to a stylistic similarity to a full set of armour in the possession of the Patiala royal family which the family attributes to Guru Gobind Singh," Warren added
For the last few days, Sikhs are up in arms against the planned public sale of the armour and have staged protests demanding that the authorities to intervene to stop the auction.
The apex religious representative body of the Sikhs, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhandhak Committee (SGPC) had also appealed to Manmohan Singh to look into the matter.
The SGPC has also petitioned Queen Elizabeth II and asked her to stop the auction, as it would hurt religious sentiments of the Sikh community.
ANI