- Monday, December 16, 2024
The historian alleged that those documents were removed from the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in 2008 at the behest of Congress leader Sonia Gandhi
By: India Weekly
HISTORIAN Rizwan Kadri has requested Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to help the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library Society in getting back some important documents related to former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
Those documents were removed from the library in 2008 at the behest of Congress leader Sonia Gandhi during the UPA rule, Kadri alleged.
The Ahmedabad-based historian is a member of the New Delhi-based Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library Society, which was known as the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in the past.
The museum was expanded to include memorials to all prime ministers and renamed the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library after the BJP came to power at the Centre.
Talking to the reporters in Ahmedabad on Monday, Kadri said he sent an email to Rahul Gandhi after a similar request to his mother and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi yielded no response.
“In 2008, 51 cartons which were part of the Nehru collection in the library were removed on the orders of Sonia Gandhi. These documents were originally part of a collection of Nehru papers, containing both official and personal correspondence of our former PM. These documents are now missing from that collection,” he claimed.
Kadri said that in September this year, he sent an email to Sonia Gandhi, requesting her to either return those documents to the library or give it permission to scan those original papers.
He claimed the documents which were removed from the library included letters exchanged between Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten, wife of Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last British viceroy to India.
Letters written to Nehru by India’s former home minister Govind Ballabh Pant and socialist stalwart Jayaprakash Narayan were also part of the collection, he said.
“When there was no response from Sonia Gandhi, I sent an email to Rahul Gandhi to help the library in getting back those very important documents. These letters are national treasures and our heritage. It must be available to scholars and researchers. We all must know what was there in the correspondence between those leaders,” said Kadri.
During the society’s annual general meeting held in February, Kadri said some members raised questions that how can someone just take these documents away when they have already been donated to the library and remained part of the collection for all these years.
According to Kadri, he had even seen a person destroying some papers using a shredder at the library in the past.
“Following that incident, we had demanded a forensic audit to be conducted to find out how pages were removed from files and
destroyed, and what was the motive behind it. An internal inquiry committee was also formed by the administration to look into that
matter,” he said.
“I am hopeful that the Gandhi family will honour my request. I am a researcher and my aim is to preserve history which is real and neutral. As a researcher, I always wanted to study the correspondence between Nehru and Lady Mountbatten. Since 2019, I have been demanding that this collection should be shared with researchers,” he said.
BJP attacks Sonia Gandhi
The BJP Monday asked former Congress president Sonia Gandhi to return the Nehru’s letters, saying the historical documents belonged to the country and were not anyone’s personal property.
Speaking to reporters, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra cited reports of the PMML’s deliberations on the issue to note that Nehru’s correspondences lay with the erstwhile Nehru Museum and Library Society, which returned them to Sonia Gandhi in 2008.
Patra also raised the issue earlier in the day in the Lok Sabha during Question Hour when union culture minister Gejendra Singh Shekhawat was replying to questions related to his ministry.
Shekhawat noted that Patra’s query, a supplementary, was unrelated to the main question raised in the House by BJP member Saumitra Khan.
The minister said he has noted down Patra’s suggestions and appropriate action can be taken in the matter.
Taking a swipe at the Gandhi family, Patra told reporters that these were not personal property of anyone or any family but historical documents part of the “treasure” of India.
As Nehru was a member of the family, it suffers from a sense of entitlement over his letters, he alleged.
He asked, “What were the contents of the letter that the first family felt should not be made public?”
Patra noted that the digitisation process began in the museum in 2010 but the Gandhi family decided to take back the letters’ possession before that. (PTI)
