Return Nehru’s letters, museum member writes to LoP Rahul

A member of the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library (PMML) Society has written to the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, requesting him to return papers pertaining to India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s correspondence with Edwina Mountbatten, Albert Einstein, Aruna Asaf Ali and Jayaprakash Narayan.

In a letter to Rahul, Rizwan Kadri, a member of the PMML Society and historian, claimed that the documents were withdrawn from the museum allegedly on the orders of senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi.

Today, BJP MP Sambit Patra also asked the Congress to return the documents of Nehru that were withdrawn from the museum allegedly on Sonia’s orders in 2008.

Pertain to correspondence with Edwina, others

Rizwan Kadri, a member of the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library Society and historian, said the letters pertained to India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s correspondence with Edwina Mountbatten, Albert Einstein, Aruna Asaf Ali and Jayaprakash Narayan

“In September this year, I wrote to Sonia requesting that the 51 cartons from eight sections, which were part of the Nehru collections at the PMML (formerly Nehru Memorial), be either returned to the institution or we be granted permission to scan these or provided with scanned copies. This will allow us to study these and facilitate research by scholars,” Kadri said.

He added that these letters were a significant part of the Indian history and had been proven through records to have been withdrawn from the museum in 2008 on Sonia’s direction.

Patra said, “In this memorial, initially, only Nehru ji’s historical records were present, including all letters he wrote to global leaders. Later, it came to light that there were 51 cartons containing letters Nehru ji had written to Edwina Mountbatten, Jayaprakash Narayan and other leaders. In 2008, when Sonia was the UPA chairperson, she visited the memorial and took all these letters with her.”

Patra said people wanted to know what Nehru had written to Edwina. “When a decision was taken in 2010 to digitise all these documents, why did Sonia take these letters before the digitisation could happen? What was in these letters that the Gandhi family did not want the nation to know,” he asked.