Amid criticism, stone laid for ‘Museum of Prime Ministers’

Amid severe criticism from Congress leaders, the foundation stone for the “Museum of Prime Ministers” was laid yesterday by Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma and Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri at the Teen Murti Estate in New Delhi.

The Congress leaders including former prime minister Manmohan Singh had been opposing the move, saying that the government was trying to “dilute” India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s legacy by changing the character of the Nehru Memorial Museum Library.

Sharma the museum to be built at a cost of Rs2.7bn will have a basement, a ground floor and a first floor, with galleries on all levels, and will be completed within a year.

He said the museum would depict modern India through “the collections relating to each prime minister of India, their lives, works and significant contributions made towards nationbuilding”.

The minister said the national capital at present has memorials dedicated to only three of India’s prime ministers - Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri.

“The people of the country deserve to know the contribution of all PMs, including Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, Rajiv Gandhi, V P Singh, Chandra Shekhar, P V Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, H D Deve Gowda, I K Gujral, Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi,” Sharma said.

He said the state-of-the-art design of the museum “is symbolic of an emergent and rising India”.

The central government’s move to construct the museum inside the premises of the Teen Murti Estate, which, apart from housing the Nehru Memorial Museum Library (NMML) was also Nehru’s residence for 16 years until his death on May 27, 1964, has courted much controversy over the past few months.

In a letter to Modi sent last month, Manmohan Singh urged him to “leave the Teen Murti Complex undisturbed as it is”, reminding him that it is a memorial of the first prime minister. “This way we will be respecting both history and heritage.”

He argued that “the museum itself must retain its primary focus on Jawaharlal Nehru and the freedom movement because of his unique role having spent almost 10 years in jail between the early 1920s and mid-1940s.”

Singh said there is hardly any space in the complex for the construction of the “Museum of Prime Ministers” without altering the Nehru Memorial Museum Library.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development last month asked the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, chaired by Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and housed in the Teen Murti Estate, to vacate the premises on grounds of “unauthorised occupation.” Sources told IANS that the move was to procure space for the upcoming museum.

However, N Balakrishnan, administrative secretary of the Fund, rejected the charge of unauthorised occupation and asked that the notice be withdrawn.