My Nehru vs Your Nehru: To counter archive run by Centre, trust headed by Sonia to launch one of its own

To be modelled on the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in Johannesburg and the Churchill Archive in the United Kingdom, the multimedia archive will be available on nehruarchive.in within a year. The idea is that it would be the “final authoritative and authenticated resource” on Nehru. Those behind the initiative say the data freely available from the archive will come in handy to dispel any false narratives about Nehru, even as Ramesh insisted that this is not a political exercise but an intellectual and historical one.

JNMF secretary Professor Madhavan K Palat said they intend to make the archive the most important source for information on Nehru. “We aim to make the archive as comprehensive as possible, open-ended and dynamic, constantly updated with newer archival sources as and when they become available. It should be the single-most important source for research and study on Jawaharlal Nehru.”

Interestingly, the archive will also include private collections donated to the PMML by Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi as Nehru’s heirs. The Nehru papers were the first set of private papers obtained by the PMML and its transfer was facilitated by the JNMF on behalf of his legal heir, Indira Gandhi, who remained the “owner” of these documents until her demise in 1984.

Later on, a substantial collection of Nehru papers post-1946 was also handed to PMML by Sonia Gandhi. Even as the PMML has already embarked on the digitisation project to make these collections available online in the next two years, JNMF office-bearers say “the digitisation of Nehru papers is not a priority for PMML”.

As reported by The Indian Express, during the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the PMML, chaired by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in February this year, a large part of the discussion centred on Nehru’s private papers in the PMML’s collection, of which 51 boxes were taken back by Congress leader Sonia Gandhi in May 2008. According to NMML records, the papers reclaimed include letters exchanged between Nehru and Jayaprakash Narayan, Edwina Mountbatten, Albert Einstein, Aruna Asaf Ali, Vijaya Laxmi Pandit and Jagjivan Ram. There is no word yet on whether these papers will also be part of the new archives.

Prof Palat said the upcoming Nehru Archive will make accessible 100 volumes of ‘The Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru’ (put together by the JNMF over the last 50 years), his letters to chief ministers from 1947 to 1964 and published books by Jawaharlal Nehru such as ‘Letters from a Father to His Daughter’, ‘Glimpses of World History, An Autobiography’, ‘The Unity of India’, ‘The Discovery of India’, ‘A Bunch of Old Letters’ and his lesser-known writings.

The digital archive will also house Nehru’s speeches from 1917 to 1964, writings on him by his contemporaries, material on him from global archives and lesser-known published and unpublished writings of the former prime minister. Ramesh said the digital archive would make material on Nehru easily available to users who can search, cross reference and download the same.

Vice-chairman of JNMF Karan Singh said, “I am sure that this archive will make Nehru more accessible to successive generations who need to be informed of his contribution towards the making of modern India and the world.”

The JNMF was established in 1964 through a Deed of Declaration of Trust. It has published ‘The Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru’ and organised the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture. It also awards the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fellowship annually to scholars, administers scholarships to doctoral students in different disciplines and manages Anand Bhawan and the Jawahar Planetarium in Prayagraj. It has 14 trustees at present and is headed by Sonia Gandhi.