© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
It was over a year ago that the name of the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML) – which is what the Teen Murti campus was called ever since the NMML was set up there in 1966 – was changed to Prime Ministers’ Museum & Library (PMML). The name change, the Narendra Modi government said, was reflective of the premises now hosting the life and times of all PMs, rather than the first, Jawaharlal Nehru, alone.
However, the name and a separate building on the premises recording the history of post-Nehru PMs are not the only changes at Teen Murti. The PMML Society and Executive Council which were reconstituted last week – the first formal notification after the name change in June 2023 – now bear a clear Modi government stamp.
Nripendra Misra, the former principal secretary to PM Modi, continues as chairperson of the Executive Council, getting another term of five years. From 29, the council has been expanded to 34 members, and they now include former Union minister and senior BJP leader Smriti Irani, Sanskar Bharati’s Vasudev Kamath, educationist Chamu Krishna Shastry who has contributed to the Modi government’s National Education Policy, and archaeologists K K Mohammad and B R Mani, who excavated the site of the Babri Masjid at various points.
Others include filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, who also heads the government’s flagship International Film Festival of India; Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Economic Advisory Committee to PM Modi; former NITI Aayog vice-chairman Rajiv Kumar; and retired Army General Syed Ata Hasnain.
Among those retained was researcher Rizwan Kadri. Ahmedabad-based Kadri has written multiple letters to Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi recently seeking the return of a chunk of Nehru papers taken away from the NMML, at Sonia Gandhi’s behest, in 2008.
Asked about the changes at the PMML last week, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh told The Indian Express that its management has moved from “historians to di-storians”, and that the change of members just marks “one set of di-storians (being) replaced by another”.
* The importance of PMML
Technically an autonomous organisation under the aegis of the Union Ministry of Culture, the NMML’s stated objective – besides housing a memorial for Nehru at what was his official residence as PM — is to contribute to a better understanding of contemporary India through key documents pertaining to PMs and other eminent personalities.
The NMML’s archives are a major source of primary and non-governmental research material for modern Indian history, and it remains a centre where some landmark historical and social science work has been done.
* Selection of members
Its members are selected by the government, generally for a period of five years. Over the last two decades, both the Congress-led UPA and BJP-led NDA governments have been accused of trying to bend the society to their ideological leanings.
While the PMML Society has senior ministers, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the President and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh as the Vice-President, the Executive Council is headed by a chairperson. The vice-chairperson used to be Dr A Surya Prakash, the former chairperson of Prasar Bharati, who is now a member of the PMML Society.
The Director, NMML, is former Power Secretary Sanjiv Nandan Sahai.
* NMML, over the years
In the 1970s, with Indira Gandhi as its president and Karan Singh as vice-president, the NMML published Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru. In 1974, the Nehru Memorial library was formally inaugurated.
Between the 1980s and 1990s, though the dominance of the Congress and specifically the Nehru-Gandhi family receded at the Centre, Sonia Gandhi remained the NMML chairperson for the most part. During these years, several new sets of Nehru papers were donated to the NMML by Sonia Gandhi and the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund.
In 1989, an annexe building was completed to store more research material. In the following year, the Centre for Contemporary Studies was set up inside the building.
In 2004, the Congress returned to power as the head of the UPA, and brought in historian Mridula Mukherjee as Director not long after.
In 2010, a group of historians led by Ramchandra Guha accused the NMML administration of being “somewhat aligned” to a party, after its auspices were used for a meeting of the Congress Youth Wing. They also urged the Central Vigilance Commission to constitute an inquiry into the financial and other affairs of the NMML, and to urgently set in motion necessary steps “to save (the) NMML from becoming a failed institution”.
* After 2014, to PMML
Just days before the Lok Sabha election results of 2014, which saw the Congress crumble under the Modi wave, outgoing PM Manmohan Singh cleared the “permanent absorption” of Mahesh Rangarajan as NMML Director, overruling the objections of the Department of Personnel and Training.
After the BJP-led NDA formed the government, Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma criticised the “haste” in appointing Rangarajan as “permanent” director, calling it “illegal and unethical”. Sixteen months later, Rangarajan resigned as Director.
Amid accusations by the Congress that the NDA was trying to “saffronise” the NMML, Sharma pointed out that economist Nitin Desai and political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta (now a Consulting Editor with The Indian Express), who were appointed by the UPA government to the NMML Society, were still its members.
In 2016, the Modi government mooted a museum dedicated to all the PMs of India on the premises of the Teen Murti. The proposal was formally introduced at an annual general meeting of the NMML in July 2018 chaired by then Home Minister Rajnath Singh.
Six members objected vociferously to the proposed changes, including Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Jairam Ramesh, who had been appointed to the NMML under the UPA.
In a strongly worded letter to Modi in 2018, former PM Manmohan Singh claimed an “agenda to change the nature and character” of the NMML, asking that the Teen Murti complex be left “undisturbed”. In the wake of Singh’s letter, then NMML director Shakti Sinha, former private secretary to PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, told The Indian Express: “I respect the former Prime Minister’s views. However, I would humbly like to say that the objections are a little misplaced… Nowhere are we obliterating Nehru, we will make it Nehru-plus.”
Kharge said: “We are opposed to it as this is the legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru and associated with the freedom movement. It cannot be destroyed.” Ramesh termed the move “diabolical, intended only to obliterate Jawaharlal Nehru”.
Besides Congress leaders, eminent historians and writers such as Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Romila Thapar, Girish Karnad and Ananya Vajpeyi issued an extensive statement expressing their apprehensions about the revamp. While they welcomed the building’s “architectural restoration”, they strongly opposed any tinkering with the institution’s “academic character”.
In 2018, a foundation-laying ceremony was held for the Rs 270-crore ‘Museum of Prime Ministers’ or ‘Padhanmantri Sangrahalaya’ in the Teen Murti complex. Within a fortnight, Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Nitin Desai were replaced as members.
Later, the Centre appointed Rajya Sabha MP Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, television anchor Arnab Goswami, and veteran journalist and head of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts Ram Bahadur Rai to the NMML Society.
In 2022, the Sangrahalaya was inaugurated. Last year, a special gallery dedicated to Modi’s first term was thrown open to the public, while the NMML’s name was changed to PMML.
