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Several works of art by Indian sculptor and artist Amar Nath Sehgal now grace the portals of the Robben Island Museum, a national heritage site in South Africa.
Omar Abdullah, minister of state for external affairs, on Tuesday officially handed over a portfolio of 14 graphics by the artist during a visit to the island, which served as a detention centre for political prisoners during the apartheid era in South Africa.
The most notable prisoner on Robben Island was the first democratically elected president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, who was detained there for 27 years.
Mandela's courage and spirit that prompted him to sacrifice his personal life and family and fight against oppression was the inspiration for Sehgal's work.
In 1986, a sculpture by Sehgal was unveiled for the first time at the United Nations Conference against Racism in Paris.
In early August, Sehgal visited Robben Island himself to present the masterpiece in bronze to the museum on the island through the assistance of the Aditya Birla Foundation.
It now occupies pride of place in the museum, which is visited by hundreds of people from all over the world daily as a major tourist attraction in Cape Town.
As the World Conference against Racism continued in Durban this week, the 14 graphics by Sehgal, all with the common theme of human rights, also assumed a prominent position in the museum.
"The graphics were first exhibited at the museum when the sculpture was unveiled," said India's High Commissioner for South Africa Shiv Mukherjee.
"After Sehgal's departure the India Cultural Centre negotiated with him and he agreed that we could purchase the graphics from him and gift it to Robben Island. That is what the minister did today," he said.
Abdullah said this was just another step towards strengthening the good relations between South Africa and India.
On Sunday, he also pledged Indian government funding for the restoration of the Kasturba Gandhi School at the Phoenix Settlement Trust, north of Durban, where Mahatma Gandhi first started his satyagraha movement of peaceful protest at the turn of the last century.
The school, named after Gandhi's wife, was burnt down during apartheid-inspired riots in 1986.
Abdullah is in South Africa as leader of the Indian delegation to the racism conference.
Indo-Asian News Service
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