‘Cannot be personal property’: Union minister Shekhawat appeals to Sonia Gandhi; seeks return of 26,000 Nehru letters for PM Museum

NEW DELHI: Union culture and tourism minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat on Sunday urged senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi to return correspondences and documents of the country’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru—the father of her mother-in-law and former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi—to the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library (PMML).He asserted that the documents “belong to the country” and “not to any individual.”“We have requested the return of around 57 cartons containing roughly 26,000 documents that were taken from the museum. Sonia Gandhi has said she will look into the matter. Naturally, these ministerial documents cannot be the personal property of any individual. We have written two letters to her, and we once again urge that they be returned,” Shekhawat told news agency PTI.He recalled that in April 2008, on Gandhi’s instructions, her representative MV Rajan wrote a letter stating that she wished to take back all the “private family letters” and notes of the Congress stalwart.The minister elaborated, “Over a 20-year period, from 1970 to 1990, all the non-official documents related to Nehru were brought to the museum. This included personal letters he wrote to people, the replies received, and his personal comments and notes. Similar documents of all the prime ministers are preserved in the museum. There are approximately 2.5 crore such documents, of which 4 lakh relate to Pandit Nehru alone.”While documents of other prime ministers remain the museum’s permanent property, Nehru’s were meant only for “safe custody,” he said, adding that it was therefore decided to return to the family any letters they requested.The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) was established in April 1966, following Nehru’s death in May 1964. In June 2023, its name was changed to the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library Society to recognise all of India’s prime ministers.