The decision to turn a man who shunned foreign-made products and pushed simple living to new extremes into a "brand ambassador" - as one local website put it - for a global luxury goods maker has left some Indians puzzled and others angry.

One group filed a lawsuit Thursday to try and halt distribution of the pen.

"Mahatma Gandhi advocated a simple lifestyle," Dijo Kappen, who filed the suit and is managing trustee of the Center for Consumer Education in the southern state of Kerala, told the Associated Press. "He was, of course, a nationalist and, in the nature of the independence struggle, the only thing he promoted was Indian-made goods. It is a mockery of the great man and an insult to the nation ... to use him as a poster-boy."