In the letter, Singh has raised concerns over the NDA government’s “agenda to change the name and character” of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) and the Teen Murti Complex.
Manmohan Singh has written a letter to PM Narendra Modi elucidating his concerns over the Centre’s proposal to convert the Teen Murti complex into a museum for all prime ministers, as per a report in
In the letter, Singh has raised concerns over the NDA government’s “agenda to change the name and character” of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) and the Teen Murti Complex.
Asserting that Jawaharlal Nehru “belongs not just to the Congress, but to the entire nation”, Singh requested that his residential complex, the Teen Murti Bhavan, should be left “undisturbed”.
Invoking former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Singh said that there was no attempt during his six-year tenure to change the nature and character of the Teen Murti complex, but now it seemed to be the agenda of the government.
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Clarifying that “no amount of revisionism” can “obliterate” Nehru’s legacy, Singh quoted Vajpayee’s speech in the parliament after Nehru passed away. Singh wrote: “As Atal Bihari Vajpayeeji himself said in his moving speech to Parliament when Panditji passed away: ‘Such a resident may never grace Teen Murti again. That vibrant personality, that attitude of taking even the opposition along, that refined gentlemanliness, that greatness, we may not again see in the near future. In spite of a difference of opinion we have nothing but respect for his great ideals, his integrity, his love for the country and his indomitable courage.”
Singh urged that the Teen Murti Complex should be kept as a memorial to the first Prime Minister of independent India, which would be “respecting history and heritage both”.
He said that the museum must retain its primary focus on Jawaharlal Nehru and the freedom movement that he engineered. On Nehru, he wrote, “His distinctiveness and greatness have been acknowledged even by his political opponents and rivals.”