In a letter to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library urged him to return Jawaharlal Nehru’s letters, which Sonia Gandhi had allegedly taken during the UPA regime.
The Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library has requested formally to return personal letters written by India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, that were sent to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi in 2008 during the UPA regime.
In a letter dated December 10, PMML member Rizwan Kadri wrote to Congress MP Rahul Gandhi urging him to retrieve Sonia Gandhi’s original letters or provide photocopies or digital copies. This follows a similar request made to Sonia Gandhi in September.
The letters, reputed historical artifacts, were first stored with the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, now PMML, in 1971 by Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial. However, Sonia Gandhi was supposed to be sent in 51 boxes in 2008.
The collection includes letters exchanged between Nehru and other important personalities such as Edwina Mountbatten, Albert Einstein, Jayaprakash Narayan, Padmaja Naidu, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Aruna Asaf Ali, Babu JaJuan Ram, and Govind Ballabh Pant, among many others.
In his letter to the Gandhi scion, Kadri mentioned that Nehru’s private papers were given to the PMML by his daughter and former PM Indira Gandhi in 1971 “for safekeeping rather than an outright gift.” He also cited the minutes of a 2008 meeting in which Sonia Gandhi took away 51 cartons of donated papers.
The PMML said the letters “give invaluable insights into a critical period of Indian history” and requested their return to the institution’s archives.
“We know that these documents may hold personal importance to the ‘Nehru family.’ However, the PMML believes that making these historical materials. more accessible to the world would greatly benefit scholars and researchers,” the letter stated.
After the PMML’s letter seeking the letter’s return came to the fore, the BJP lost no time to dig at the Gandhi family. In a post on X, BJP IT cell in-charge Amit Malviya questioned the motive behind gatekeeping the former PM’s correspondence,
