Nehru’s memory, legacy will live on, no matter

The renaming of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) in Delhi as the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library is in line with the Narendra Modi government’s and the ruling BJP’s policy of blacking out history that they do not like and specifically exiling from history names that they do not approve of.

The country’s pre-eminent freedom fighter and first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru has always been belittled and demonised by the ruling establishment and so the change of name is no surprise. The NMML, which was housed in Teen Murti Bhavan, where Nehru lived during his tenure, was converted into a museum in his honour after his death. It also houses a research centre which has archives and records of the freedom struggle, including of those who were opposed to Nehru politically.

The present government had started the move to change the status of NMML in 2018. It had said that the plan was to set up a “modern museum” there to showcase the “life and contributions of all other Prime Ministers and the evolution of India’s democracy.” 

But it is not clear why Nehru’s name had to be removed to showcase the contributions of other PMs. There is enough room in Delhi to commemorate the names and work of other PMs. Nehru was not only the first Prime Minister but the main architect of modern India, towering above his contemporaries as well as the PMs who followed him.

He laid the foundations of a free, independent and modern India and tried to establish it on the best constitutional ideals of equality, diversity, secularism and republican democracy. All these ideals are under stress and being challenged now and that is why his name, which symbolised them, is being excised from institutions, places and even books. 

It is claimed that the name change represented the ‘democratisation’ of the institution and the representation of PMs, presumably on the nation’s stage and in its memory. But it is not clear how democracy is involved in it. Democracy, by common understanding, means equal rights of all citizens but not the right of all PMs to equal reckoning in history.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said the institution would now showcase the contributions of all PMs, from Nehru to Modi. But the name change can only be considered as the latest move by the present government to erasing Nehru from history and memory. But just as the past cannot be changed by rewriting history, men and women cannot be exiled from history and national memory.

The rejection of Nehru is part of the attempt to reject and degrade the idea of India that he promoted, but just as that India, his legacy too will withstand the name change and the defamation.