PM Museum to get copies of Morarji’s Nishan-e-Pakistan, Bharat Ratna from Gujarat Vidyapith

The awards are displayed at the entrance of the gallery comprising three rooms inside the Vidyapith’s Pranjivan Mehta Vidyarthi Bhavan, the building where the Vidyapith first ran out of, which also has a gallery dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi and has recently added a gallery dedicated to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Gandhi, who founded the Vidyapith in 1920 was its first chancellor followed by Sardar Patel, the third being Morarji Desai.

Desai is the only Indian prime minister to have been awarded the Nishan-e-Pakistan, given to him on May 18, 1991 — a few months after he was awarded the Bharat Ratna in March that year.
The decision is said to have been taken after Director of the PMML Ashwani Lohani visited the Morarji Desai gallery at the Vidyapith on February 2 and a meeting was held between him and the vice chancellor.

The Gujarat Vidyapith is the sole custodian of all the original personal effects, awards, state gifts, letters of honour, books and papers belonging to Desai after the late prime minister willed it to the institution that he headed for over three decades. The exhibits include his clothes, over a dozen walking sticks including one carved in ivory, scrolls, his phone book, acupressure equipment, a box charkha, a miniature copy of the Quran, a pair of gold scissors when he inaugurated the Delhi branch of Tokyo bank and several gifts from countries he visited.

Vice-Chancellor Patel says: “In his will dated May 4, 1991, he has willed all his personal belongings, his books and all that he had, to the Gujarat Vidyapith”. Bound by this will, the Gujarat Vidyapith has agreed to only give replicas of the medals and the award.

“It is not my decision to part with anything that is a property of the Vidyapith. The proposal for such sharing will have to be cleared by the Vidyapith mandal (governing council)”, Dr Patel told The Indian Express.

The PMML is learnt to have requested replicas of the two awards — the Nishan e Pakistan and the Bharat Ratna which have a medal each and a citation, besides some “papers”, top sources said.
Lohani told The Indian Express: “We have looked at the possibility of showcasing certain items at the Prime Ministers’ museum”.

The process is likely to take 2-3 months, said sources.

“We have a cupboard full of his letters and will soon be classifying them and then sharing with them (PMML), those of national importance”, said Dr Patel.

The Bharat Ratna was awarded to Desai by President R Venkatraman while the Nishan-e-Pakistan, which was announced in 1988, was given in Mumbai, then Bombay, by Pakistan’s then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan, for “good neighbourliness and cooperative relations with South Asian Countries” , as per the citation.

“He made a single contribution to the establishment of tension free and mutually beneficial ties between India and Pakistan”, it said.

Desai took over as the prime minister in 1977, in the elections held after the Emergency, defeating the Congress led by Indira Gandhi. He headed a government of the Janata Party, which had the Jana Sangh, now BJP as an ally.

During his 1977-79 Prime Ministerial tenure, India had just emerged stronger after the 1971 war that led to the creation of Bangladesh, followed by the signing of the Simla Accord for peace.
Both countries had seen new governments taking over; In Pakistan Zia-ul-Haq had taken charge as President replacing Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto and in India Janata Party had defeated the Congress to bring in Desai as PM. With Atal Bihari Vajpayee as his External Affairs Minister, efforts were largely towards normalisation of relations between the countries at the time.

As per the MoU signed on July 15, 2024 between V-C Patel and the then director of the PMML Sanjiv N Sahai, which is valid for five years, enables a “collaborative relationship” between the two institutions allowing each other “access” to their respective research facilities, including digital resources, “subject to their respective institutional policies and regulations”.

The plan for this exchange took root after the V-C visited the PMML and saw that the section on Desai “had scanty material”.

The Vidyapith library boasts of a collection of 60,000 reading materials which include rare manuscripts, books, periodicals and so on.

The Vidyapith runs in all five different museums and galleries, the oldest being the Tribal Museum that opened in 1962, the Sanskruti Sangrahalaya (1977) the Morarji Desai gallery (2003), the Gandhi Manpatra Khand (2024) which has the original letters of honour presented to Gandhi and the Sardar Patel gallery which has photographs and a few books that was opened in 2025.