India has bought an entire collection of letters and other documents relating to the country' s independence icon Mahatma Gandhi by paying a whopping sum of 1.1 million U.S. dollars, ahead of a planned auction in London by Sotheby's, a senior government official said Tuesday.

"The government paid 1.1 million U.S. dollars (for the collection)," Sanjiv Mittal at the Indian Ministry of Culture was quoted as saying by the media in the national capital.

In fact, the archive of letters and other documents belonged to Hermann Kallenbach, the Jewish bodybuilder, who became a close friend of Gandhi, popularly known as the "Father of the Nation" for his immense contribution in India's struggle for freedom movement, when he lived in South Africa.

The auction house Sotheby's said in a statement, "The Gandhi- Kallenbach archive has been sold in a private transaction to the Indian government."

The collection will now be housed at the National Archive in the Indian capital, sources said.