Gandhi portraits: India, Hungary seek Unesco tag
New Delhi
It was January 8, 1934, and Mahatma Gandhi had granted young Hungarian artist Elizabeth Brunner exactly 15 minutes. Brunner, undeterred by the Mahatma's scepticism about portrait painting, began sketching his downward gaze—capturing not just his weathered features but what she saw as his inner spirit.
That brief encounter, which Gandhi would later sign and treasure, now anchors an ambitious cultural preservation effort. India and Hungary are jointly seeking UNESCO's prestigious Memory of the World status for Brunner's remarkable collection of over 2,000 portraits documenting India's independence era, officials at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts announced.
The bid runs parallel to a separate joint application with Nepal to inscribe Emperor Ashoka's ancient stone edicts
Brunner's path to that fateful veranda began with dreams—literally. Driven by recurring visions of Rabindranath Tagore, she arrived in India from Hungary in 1929 with her artist mother, Elizabeth Sass Brunner. Financial hardship and bureaucratic hostility nearly forced their deportation, but refuge came at Tagore's Santiniketan under master artist Nandalal Bose.
There, Brunner developed what would become her signature gift: an ability to perceive and capture her subjects' inner essence. Tagore himself, moved by her early work, became her first major Indian subject, granting her unprecedented access. It was encouragement from one of Gandhi's close aides, impressed by her Bombay exhibition, that eventually led her to the Mahatma's veranda.
What began as reluctant cooperation evolved into profound collaboration. Brunner's portfolio became a visual chronicle of modern India's founding generation: Tagore in contemplation, a gesticulating Jawaharlal Nehru, a young and intense Indira Gandhi, the regal Maharani Gayatri Devi, and the serene Dalai Lama.
'She didn't just paint faces; she painted presence,' the IGNCA official explained. 'There's a depth to her work—she sought the spirit within the person.'
Her portraits were encounters rendered in charcoal and paint, informed by her unique position as an outsider who had embraced India as her 'homeland-to-be.' Her 1962 return to Gandhi's image, now housed in the Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya's reserve collection, bears her handwritten inscription echoing his philosophy: 'Let us have the courage and determination to stand together and do our very best in this time of need.'
The IGNCA, guardian of Brunner's legacy, holds over 800 meticulously preserved and digitised works from the collection, which officials describe as having 'outstanding universal significance' for embodying a unique cultural dialogue between Europe and Asia during a transformative historical period.
The UNESCO campaign
The path to UNESCO recognition, targeting 2026, demands extensive documentation. Applications must demonstrate global impact, rarity, integrity, and lasting relevance through precise historical records, rigorous preservation plans addressing threats like decay, concrete strategies for public access (bolstered by existing digitization efforts), solid legal custody documentation, and thorough stakeholder consultation.
India has had recent success: the April 2025 inscription of Bhagavad Gita and Natyashastra manuscripts brought the country's total Memory of the World inscriptions to fourteen. IGNCA recently convened scholars and UNESCO experts to refine dossiers for both the Brunner Collection and Ashokan edicts applications.
The parallel nominations represent different but complementary aspects of India's cultural legacy. Ashoka's stone edicts, carved millennia ago, preach peace and moral governance. Brunner's charcoal portraits, drawn during the struggle for independence, capture the human faces behind the ideals of modern India's founding.
'The edicts speak of statecraft; the portraits breathe the human struggle,' the IGNCA official observed. Both legacies, deeply woven into India's identity and its message to humanity, now seek acknowledgment in the world's shared memory.
The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme, established in 1992, preserves documentary heritage of outstanding value to humanity. If successful, the Brunner Collection would join an elite list of cultural treasures, ensuring global recognition and protection for an extraordinary artistic testament to one of history's most significant independence movements.
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