Who is the government to decide what to display about a former PM: Congress

“The problem is that they want to bring down the legacy of Nehru which was about developing a scientific temper and building an inclusive India. They fear him as Nehru is a tall figure,” Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit tells ETV Bharat's Amit Agnihotri.

New Delhi: The Congress was furious on Thursday over the inauguration of the new Museum of Prime Ministers by the PM Narendra Modi Modi saying this was an attempt to dilute the legacy of India’s first premier. “The problem is that they want to bring down the legacy of Nehru which was about developing a scientific temper and building an inclusive India. They fear him as Nehru is a tall figure,” Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit told ETV Bharat.

Modi inaugurated the new Museum of Prime Ministers, which displays the life and works of all former prime ministers, at the well-known Teen Murti House address in the national capital which houses the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML). Dikshit said he had no problem over celebrating the lives of all former prime ministers but the government had no role in any such project.

“Who is the government to decide what to display about a former PM. This government doesn’t understand the legacy of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee leave alone the other PMs,” he said. Sandeep, the son of three-term former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, further said over the past years Teen Murti House had been reduced to a mere tourist destination and the government should ensure that the place became a venue to learn about the history of India’s freedom movement.

Well-known historian Professor Mridula Mukherjee, who earlier served as a director of the NMML, said that the place was not only about India’s first prime minister but displays the entire legacy of the freedom struggle and the decades post-Independence since 1947. “Do all former prime ministers need a museum? I have not come across any such concept about a museum of all prime ministers anywhere in the world,” Mukherjee told ETV Bharat.

Wondering “what was the need to tinker with the existing museum”, Prof Mukherjee said “the government should have instead built a new building to celebrate India’s freedom movement elsewhere.” “I am forced to think why did the government do this. The NMML has a very small section on Nehru himself and instead is more about how the country’s freedom struggle progressed. It talks about social reforms, freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh and even industrialists like Purshottamdas Thakurdas and VKRV Rao,” she said.

The Prof noted that even the Hindu Mahasabha, the precursor to the BJP, had donated their papers to the NMML and today it is the best place to research about that organization. “It is obvious that the present regime is uncomfortable with Nehru,” she said.