A series of letters written by Jawaharlal Nehru has become the focal point of a fresh Congress-BJP debate this month. The ruling party asked former Congress president Sonia Gandhi to return the correspondences of India’s first prime minister on Monday, insisting that the historical documents belonged to the country and were not anyone’s personal property.
How did the issue come up in 2024?
The letters became a matter of discussion earlier this year as historian Rizwan Kadri urged Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi to return the documents or at least permit digital access to the private papers. The historian is a member of the PM Museum and Library Society in Delhi — formerly known as the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.
The matter was also flagged during the annual general meeting of the PMML in mid-February. Excerpts from the minutes of the meeting indicate that members had raised questions about the legal status of such private papers — with some wondering how documents that had already been donated to the library could be removed.
“When there was no response from Sonia Gandhi (to the September message)…I sent an email to Rahul Gandhi to help the library in getting back those very important documents,” explained Kadri.
What do these documents include?
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra and others have claimed Sonia Gandhi was given 51 cartons of correspondences in May 2008 while officials were segregating his personal papers from government-related documents.
“51 cartons which were part of the Nehru collection in the library were removed on the orders of Sonia Gandhi in 2008. 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,” the historian added.
According to Kadri the ‘missing’ documents include letters exchanged between Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten — the wife of British viceroy Lord Louis Mountbatten. Letters written to Nehru by former home minister Govind Ballabh Pant and socialist stalwart Jayaprakash Narayan were also believed to be part of the collection.
How did the matter turn political?
The BJP asked former Congress president Sonia Gandhi to return the correspondences on Monday — contending that the historical documents belonged to the country. Party MP Sambit Patra cited the PMML deliberations during a media interaction and lambasted the Gandhi family for feeling a ‘sense of entitlement’ towards the documents. He also flagged the matter in the Lok Sabha while Union Culture Minister Gejendra Singh Shekhawat was replying to questions related to his ministry.
(With inputs from agencies)
