New Delhi, May 22 (PTI) The Nehru Memorial Museum was converted into the Prime Minister’s Museum because it was felt the earlier building was not “democratic”, according to Nripendra Misra, the chairman of the museum’s executive council.
Misra, who was reappointed to the position for a second term in January, told PTI in an interview that he had been given a mandate of ensuring that there was an “element of equity” in the treatment of each prime minister at the museum.
The executive council is the highest decision-making body of the Prime Ministers Museum and Library Society.
The prime minister is the ex-officio president of the Prime Ministers Museum and Library Society and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is currently the vice-chairman.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi felt that this building should become more democratic. It must display the achievements of all the prime ministers of the country so that the future generation is enthused to know that all the prime ministers were sincere to the country and they did their best according to their ability and people coming from different classes, income levels, backgrounds can also aspire to become the prime minister,” Misra said.
The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Society, an autonomous body under the government of India, was set up in 1966 as a memorial to Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister.
It was renamed the Prime Ministers Museum and Library Society in 2023, setting off a political controversy and a war of words between the Congress and the BJP.
“Like in the USA, there are libraries for presidents. In fact, they give so much importance that each president is given money to establish his own library where all the artefact are put. So, here, at least the minimum he could do was to at least have all the prime ministers at one place,” he said.
Misra, who was Modi’s principal secretary during his first tenure, said the prime minister had two demands from him when he was tasked with the museum job.
“He wanted that we should display only the positive qualities of prime ministers so that people who come do not get into negative thoughts. They should only aspire and become ambitious,” the former bureaucrat said.
“And second, he wanted very much an element of equity. There should be no display or allocation or stories or whatever you have in which we don’t treat the prime ministers at the same level… Equity as they call it. So that element of equity has been ensured. So that is how this museum has been made,” he added.
Talking about future plans for the museum, Misra said it would be developed into an academic centre for people to study the features and philosophy, the ideas of those prime ministers who governed India and then see the manner of implementation of various programmes and particularly how each prime minister strengthened the roots of democracy.
“That is the future programme. There are junior and senior fellows and they are given a fairly reasonable amount as compensation. They work here for two years and they write papers. So now we are encouraging that the people who get selected, they select topics of various prime ministers more relevant to different periods,” he said.
Asked if there was any resistance from academics or the archival community during the transition, Misra said, “Not at all.” “There has been no controversy. There was a minor difference when Nehru Memorial got changed to Prime Ministers’ Memorial but everybody understood that, if you have 15 prime ministers here, it cannot be called with the name one prime minister. It will have to be changed to all the prime ministers,” Misra said.
“So it was also very logical and has been received well. There are expectations that it should now become a very high centre or let it be one centre for research on the subject of democracy in India and the contributions of the prime ministers,” he said. PTI GJS GJS SZM SZM
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