Only recently, the government was mauled in the Supreme Court on the issue of the appointment of the CVC as it was in flagrant violation of the letter of the law and its spirit. The Prime Minister had to express regrets in Parliament. A similar moment could conceivably approach if the Manmohan Singh dispensation does not exert due
care in the matter relating to the altering of the basic character of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) by changing the criterion for who its director should be. The exercise is well under way.
A measure of the importance of NMML is that the Prime Minister is the president of the NMML Society, and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee began this trend although his party is no admirer of Nehru. Congress president and UPA chief Sonia Gandhi is a Society member.
If an interested party moves court, or if the top court takes suo motu notice of the unhappy goings-on at this internationally famous institution of scholarship relating to modern Indian history, the government may be in for a sweat. A key reason for this is that the Prime Minister was the minister for culture when the serious distortions in question were introduced.
The NMML is an autonomous institution under the culture ministry. But, in reality, for some years, the culture secretary, Jawahar Sircar, has sought to run the show, by sometimes seeking to browbeat the executive council of the NMML through suggestions that he is giving effect to the wishes of none other than the culture minister (at that time the Prime Minister).
According to well-placed sources, Dr Karan Singh, the EC chairman, has succumbed instead of interrogating the secretary and his subordinates who are ex-officio members of the EC.
The point of friction is that a basic change of rules of the hallowed institution — which clashes with its founding objectives — has been made. This has drawn a howl of protest from the country’s top historians. In February, at its annual meeting, the Indian History Congress passed a strong resolution against the government’s initiative to distort the NMML’s character. The resolution was moved by Professor Irfan Habib, widely regarded as a historian’s historian.
The NMML Society was founded after the death of the country’s first Prime Minister. According to its Memorandum of Association, its object was to preserve “historical materials” pertaining to Nehru, his party, and those associated with him- in effect, the dramatis personae of the anti-colonial struggle. The institution was also to promote study and research “in the field of modern Indian history, especially the study of Indian nationalism, and the life and work of Jawaharlal Nehru”.
As such, the Memorandum of Association stipulated that the director must be an eminent scholar with “specialisation in modern indian history”. So steeped is the institution in the tradition of history on account of its plainly written-down aims that all lower-down academic staff are also required to have higher university qualifications in modern Indian history. Other disciplines are precluded.
In flagrant disregard of this, last summer the culture ministry — without care for NMML’s autonomous status — changed the rules to say that the director should be a scholar with “specialisation in social sciences”. Sotto voce, the Prime Minister’s sanction was touted. The decision was conveyed to the executive council months later.
Angry intellectuals are now asking: does an economist, sociologist or political scientist have a specialist’s command over the varied sources in respect of the various aspects of the freedom movement? Or, for that matter, can the Atomic Energy Commission be headed by a molecular biologist?
It is shockingly funny, but in a media interaction the culture secretary has said that historians were “not precluded” from applying for the post of NMML director!
Some historians say the authorities have a particular candidate in mind who is not a historian, or they would not dare move away from the NMML charter. Many more appear to think that the idea is to scuttle an edifice that stands in Nehru’s name and to advance the understanding of struggles in the way of a secular vision of Indian nationalism.
In his official capacity, Dr Karan Singh has come to head a search committee to appoint a new director. None of its members is a historian. But is there a vacancy? The present director, Prof. Mridula Mahajan, who heads the Modern India section of the History Congress, took charge in August 2006 and came on deputation from JNU.
If games aren’t being played, she can be asked to simply stay, and that would end the envisaged distortion. Previously, two directors have served about 15 years each.