 "Jawaharlal Nehru is seen here with Indira Gandhi, then U S ambassador to India John Galbraith and his wife Kitty, and then US First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1962")
Walking inside the serene environs of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, or NMML, in New Delhi does not reveal any of the turmoil that has recently shrouded the institution. The grounds are pristine, barring the occasional peacock, the concrete pathways are spotless and there is a sense of calm all around. There is enough excitement too: preparations are under way for an evening of Urdu music, which has the staff decorating the place with marigold garlands.
The world inside NMML seems oddly untouched by the controversy outside. Recently, Minister of State for Culture Mahesh Sharma announced that 39 bodies under his ministry, including NMML, will go through a "revamp". In the case of NMML in particular, this would involve making the museum more "contemporary" in order to showcase the present government's programmes and initiatives.
This spurred eminent people such as Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Romila Thapar, Girish Karnad and Ananya Vajpeyi to issue an extensive statement that expressed their apprehensions about the revamp. While they welcomed the building's architectural restoration, they strongly opposed any tinkering with the institution's academic character.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's logic for this revamp, as it appears from recent news reports, is that NMML is focussed on the life, times and ideas of Jawaharlal Nehru. While this may be true of the museum, which was the residence of Nehru, India's first prime minister, the library and archives function independently, scholars insist.
"The library, unlike the museum, is in no way limited to Nehru's papers, Nehru's writings or scholarship that might be described as Nehruvian. Why are ministers, spokespersons and special appointees of the current administration making statements to the press suggesting that the Nehru Library is focused on Nehru alone? This is patently false," the joint statement reads.
Most academicians in Delhi are reluctant to speak on the subject after the controversy broke out earlier this month. NMML Director Mahesh Rangarajan, while polite and helpful on matters pertaining to access to NMML, declines comment on the revamp. He points, instead, to an official statement issued by NMML on September 3, which says that to celebrate the 125th birth anniversary year of Nehru, NMML will lay greater focus on Nehru's years as prime minister, an aspect that "has been largely left out in the present exhibition".
In that sense, the Congress's worries that the revamp programme is an attempt to dilute Nehru's legacy seem unfounded. The plans to "improve and enrich the museum", according to the statement, were cleared by the NMML board on June 27. After all these details, the statement ends on an enigmatic note: "NMML will also enhance the intellectual component of governance through national seminars and international conferences, an input that Nehru always considered of high value."
It is believed that the contract for the restoration of the building has been given to Abha Narain Lambah, an architect who has been associated with the restoration of monuments such as the Ajanta Caves in Maharashtra and Mahabodhi Temple in Bihar. Lambah declined comment. Email questionnaires to the culture ministry and members of the NMML board went unanswered.
Technology, not ideology
Adding to the scholars' statement, a Delhi University professor says that Nehru could not have been more absent from the workings of the library, seminars and archives. "The institution was created with a clear mandate and it was never about Nehru. You just need to look at the papers published in the last two years to see that," she says.
She and other academicians who have spent time at NMML speak highly of Rangarajan, too, whose appointment, according to media reports, may be under review. "He is a scholar himself, so he knows what other scholars need and how archives should be maintained," says a regular visitor at the library.
Other visitors, too, suggest that in the three years that Rangarajan has been in-charge, he has turned the place around. "There's always a seminar to attend, other scholars to interact with and space for open, free debate," says a 27-year-old history fellow.
Ramachandra Guha, historian and author, while declining comment on the current controversy, shares an essay that he wrote in 2012, chronicling NMML's long history of struggle and internal conflict. In the 38-page essay, titled "In Nehru's House: A Story of Scholarship and Sycophancy", Guha details how, before Rangarajan's appointment in 2012, NMML had lost its academic fervour and become a Congress stronghold.
According to the essay, the library became a puppet of the Congress and its premises were used by Rahul Gandhi, the party's current vice-president, for his meetings. Citing "security reasons", scholars were sometimes denied access to the archives, and requests from private collectors who wanted to donate their collections to the library went unanswered.
According to Guha, the selection of the then director carefully eliminated from the list of probables the names of any scholars who may have written anything against Emergency or was "too liberal". The oral history project and the weekly seminar series also saw its demise at that time.
Concurring with those at NMML today, Guha says that barely a month into office Rangarajan managed to restore the academic character of the institution, almost miraculously.
But the fear that all this may soon change for the worse is palpable, even among scholars who now teach abroad. Aijaz Ahmad, distinguished professor at the University of California, Irvine, is one of them. "It is associated with the memory not only of Nehru as an individual but also the great founding traditions of the republic that he represented," he says in an email. "No wonder it is so prominently in the sights of who have been historically opposed to that tradition."
Ahmad's seminal work, In Theory, was written at NMML, where he spent ten years, perhaps the longest time any scholar spent at the institution. For him, the added "tragedy" is that the ministry of culture seems to have lost "its own moorings". "I am no admirer of Murli Manohar Joshi, but he had taught at a university and was restrained by a prime minister with some sense of institutional norms. One cannot say the same of the political leadership today," he adds.
Tug of war
Vani Tripathi Tikoo, former BJP secretary, offers an "objective" view to the controversy. "While I understand the scholars' apprehensions, it is a well-intentioned move on the part of the government that should not be viewed with a pre-emptive negative perspective," she says. She adds that there is a need for dialogue among scholars and policy makers and till that happens, "no broadstroke comments should be made".
Congress's worries seem only to be precipitated with the recent developments. "The current government's vision for India seems to be a mirror image of what Mohammed Ali Jinnah had for Pakistan. They seem to be intent on destroying Nehru's secular vision for India," says Congress leader Manish Tewari. According to him, the matter is simple: when a Kennedy library cannot be a Nixon library, why must anyone attempt to change what Nehru's memorial stands for?
The final words in Guha's 2012 essay seem ominous: "After five years of despair, I left Delhi that September day in a mood of cautious optimism. Now, with luck, persistence, and the absence of partisan political interference, perhaps NMML might yet be restored to something like its former glory." This September, though, may have other plans.
