The exhibiiton will open after the formal inauguration by Congress president Sonia Gandhi (File)
A photo exhibition commemorating the birth centenary of Indira Gandhi, with more than 200 pictures depicting various events from her life, commenced today at the historic Swaraj Bhavan here where the former Prime Minister was born.
The exhibition will be thrown open to public only from tomorrow, after its formal inauguration by Congress president Sonia Gandhi this evening.
"Altogether 220 photographs have been selected for this exhibition out of nearly 90,000 that we are in possession of," Secretary of the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust (IGMT), New Delhi, Suman Dubey, told reporters here.
This commemorative photo exhibition will, during the course of next year, be held in various cities like Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru and finally at New Delhi on November 19 when the centenary celebrations would come to a close.
"Allahabad was chosen for its launch because it is her birthplace, a city with which her family has had long and close ties," Dubey said.
He said the criteria adopted for choosing the pictures from the mammoth collection was the significance of the events portrayed and also the skill of the photographer concerned, many of whom remain unknown.
Placed for display in Swaraj Bhavan, Gandhi's ancestral house where she was born on November 19, 1936 and spent her early life, are several pictures of a young Indira Priyadarshini, the name given to her by her father Jawaharlal Nehru, some of them solo while in others she is flanked by her parents.
"80 per cent of the pictures in the exhibition are such that people of the young generation may never have seen," the IGMT secretary said.
In another photograph she shares the frame with Nehru and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
There are a quite a few pictures of her life at Santiniketan as well -- some capturing her in a jovial mood with her friends, while in another she stands solemnly, along with a number of fellow students, in the presence of Rabindra Nath Tagore.
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