Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has written a strongly worded letter to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi raising serious apprehension over PM’s agenda to change the nature and character of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) and the Teen Murti complex. In a letter to PM, he has urged PM Modi to leave the Jawaharlal Nehru memorial complex in Delhi ‘undisturbed’ out of respect for history and heritage. He writes, Jawaharlal Nehru belongs not just to the Congress but to the entire nation.
“Nehru Memorial Museum & Library is dedicated to memory of India’s first Prime Minister. It should be left undisturbed. Jawaharlal Nehru belongs not just to Congress, but to the entire nation,” reads the letter to PM Narendra Modi by Manmohan Singh.
Former PM Manmohan Singh writes a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi; says, ‘Nehru Memorial Museum & Library is dedicated to memory of India’s first Prime Minister. It should be left undisturbed. Jawaharlal Nehru belongs not just to Congress, but to the entire nation’ pic.twitter.com/a88abtAKuP
— ANI (@ANI) August 27, 2018
This letter was sent to PM Modi on Friday, August 24 following a controversy that erupted over government’s plans to combine museum for all prime ministers in the Teen Murti complex that stores the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.
“As Atal Bihari Vajpayeeji himself said in his moving speech to Parliament when Panditji passed away: ‘Such a resident may never grace Teen Murti again. That vibrant personality, that attitude of taking even the opposition along, that refined gentlemanliness, that greatness we may not again see in the near future. In spite of a difference of opinion we have nothing but respect for his great ideals, his integrity, his love for the country and his indomitable courage’. Let us respect this sentiment and keep Teen Murti as a memorial to our first Prime Minister Pandit Nehru and leave the Teen Murti complex undisturbed as it is. This way we will be respecting both history and heritage. Jawaharlal Nehru belongs not just to the Congress but to the entire nation. It is in this spirit that I have written to you. His distinctiveness and greatness have been acknowledged even by his political opponents and rivals. Must remain a centre of first-rate scholarship and professional excellence. The museum itself must retain its primary focus on Jawaharlal Nehru and the freedom movement because of his unique role having spent almost ten years in jail between the early 1920s and mid-1940s. No amount of revisionism can obliterate that role and his contributions,” wrote Manmohan Singh in his letter to PM Modi.
He also cited former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in his letter and said, under Vajpayee’s six-year tenure as prime minister, there was no attempt made to change the nature and character of the NMML and the Teen Murti complex in any way. But sadly, that seems to be part of the agenda of the Government of India now.
