Breaking norms: Sonia Gandhi permits access to Nehru's private papers

In a first, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and the legal heir to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s paper has allowed free access to the official papers written by him after 1946, according to reports_._

Before this, scholars had to take permission of the Gandhi family and the Prime Minister’s Office to access the papers, which were donated by the Gandhi family to the Teen Murti library.

According to an Economic Times report, permission will still be required the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and Nehru’s papers “which are in the custody of The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library ( NMML), is divided into two parts: pre and post 1946.”

The report adds that while the pre-1946 papers are in the public domain, the post-1946 documents required special permission to be accessed.

This granting of permission is an interesting one because it would help research scholars who are looking at post-Independence India and encourage better academic writing on the Nehru, but the political consequences of this move can’t be ignored.

For the first time, since Indira Gandhi put the system in place, it means that there is easy access to Nehru’s private papers and the Congress will be hoping to counter opinion on Nehru’s stance on various issues like Kashmir and China.

Ironically the access is still controlled by the PMO’s office, and where Narendra Modi is concerned, he has on several occasions during his Lok Sabha campaign raised the issue of ‘a Congress mukt-bharat’ (Congress free-India) and even spoken about how Indian history would have been different had Patel and not Nehru been the first Prime Minister.

“Every Indian wishes that Patel should have become the first PM of India. If it had been so, then the face and the fate of the country would have been something else,” Modi had said in October last year.

The Indian Express notes  that the PMO will assess “requests on a case-by-case basis” but adds that “there are at least six other sets of private papers at the Teen Murti library, which can be seen by scholars only with the permission of their heirs.”