Return Mehru’s letters to Prime Ministers’ Museum, BJP to Sonia

BJP has asked senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi to return the letters of the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library. The party said that the historical documents belonged to the country. Briefing media in New Delhi on Monday, party spokesperson Sambit Patra referred to reports of meetings of the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library on the issue and said that 51 cartons of Nehru’s correspondences were given to Sonia Gandhi after approval of the museum’s then-director. He said the letters included Nehru’s correspondences with Edwina Mountbatten, wife of the last British viceroy and eminent leaders Jayaprakash Narayan and Jagjivan Ram. Patra said Rizwan Kadri who is one of the members of the society had recently written to the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi seeking his help in restoring the papers to the museum’s custody. He said  Kadri has not received any reply from  Gandhi. Patra asked what were the contents of the letter that the Nehru-Gandhi family felt should not be made public.

Delhi: BJP MP Sambit Patra says, "51 cartons of letters were retrieved. These letters were between Nehru ji and Edwina Mountbatten, as well as between Nehru ji and Jayaprakash Narayan. Naturally, there are certain facts the Gandhi family wants to hide. What did Nehru ji say to… pic.twitter.com/EzWbI3tzDt

— IANS (@ians_india) December 16, 2024

The Prime Minister's Museum and Library (PMML) has also appealed to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to return the collection of historical letters belonging to former prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. These letters were removed from public access in 2008 at the request of Sonia Gandhi, the then-chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), and have since been stored privately."In September 2024, I wrote a letter to Sonia Gandhi requesting that the 51 cartoons from approximately eight different sections, which were part of the Nehru collections at the Prime Ministers' Museum (formerly the Nehru Memorial), be either returned to the institution, or we be granted permission to scan them, or provided with their scanned copies. This would allow us to study them and facilitate research by various scholars," said Rizwan Kadri, historian and author Rizwan Kadri who is among the 29 members of the PMML Society, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads.