Say this for the ministry of culture under the Congress-led UPA rule: it has summoned the extraordinary capacity to work on a process the Vajpayee-led NDA government could not contemplate in view of the political sensitivity of the enterprise — the calculated crippling of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), a world-famous institution of scholarship established to commemorate the modernist vision of India’s first Prime Minister.
After a report in this newspaper (May 1), the demolition squad have moved double-quick to hasten their project so that they may not be caught out and be pre-empted by the higher powers, especially Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the NMML president, whose name they have up till now sought to invoke to tear down the NMML’s institutional elan.
Not satisfied with wilfully changing the qualifications for the director of the institution, thereby tampering with the aims of NMML as set out in the Memorandum of Association, the chairman of NMML’s executive council, former Kashmir Maharaja, Dr Karan Singh, has threatened the current director, Prof. Mridula Mukherjee, with possible disciplinary action.
The culture secretary, Jawahar Sircar, is understood to have been kept in the loop.
In a clear effort to immobilise the director, the EC chairman has begun issuing firmans which show that he is keen to interfere even with the day-to-day functioning of the institution. Earlier this week, a day before interviews were to be held to select senior fellows, fellows and junior fellows, Dr Karan Singh instructed the director to cancel the interviews, although the interview dates had been fixed by the EC long ago and duly notified on the NMML website.
Dr Singh’s stated logic was that the interview mustn’t go on as the director’s term is slated to end on August 9. Usually, an outgoing leader does not help frame long-term policy; and in this case the selection of fellows is routine activity. Nevertheless, the cancellation of interviews has embarrassed a great institution, and deeply insulted the members of the selection committee, who are among the leading intellectuals of the country. Many senior fellow aspirants are also well known scholars and are very angry at being treated shabbily at the whim of the EC chairman.
When the UPA-I government was formed, for two long years it dilly-dallied over appointing the director of the NMML, leaving the field open for the bureaucrats of the culture ministry to run the show.
Since 2006, every possible obstacle has been placed in the way of the current director who has taken serious steps to modernise the institution. And now the director is being stopped from executing routine functions.
If matters are to be seen in perspective, the Prime Minister, who is the president of the NMML Society, needs to call an urgent meeting of the society and give directions to the EC.