New Delhi: Former Indian PM Manmohan Singh has written to PM Modi urging him to leave Nehru’s legacy and that BJP party should stop pursuing “agenda” to “change the nature and character” of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) and the Teen Murti complex.
Since Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) and the Teen Murti complex have become a controversy between leading government BJP and Congress after the current government planned to set up a museum for all the PMs of India within the Teen Murti complex, the IBT times reported.
The former PM in his letter said that NMML and the Teen Murti complex should be left “undisturbed” and it does not belong to Congress but to the “entire nation,” reported Indian Express.
Speaking about Vajpayee’s governance, he said, that no attempts were made to “change the nature and character of the NMML and the Teen Murti complex in any way. But sadly, that seems to be part of the agenda of the Government of India now,” he said.
“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’.
Let us respect this sentiment and keep Teen Murti as a memorial to our first Prime Minister Pandit Nehru and leave the Teen Murti complex undisturbed as it is. This way we will be respecting both history and heritage.
Jawaharlal Nehru belongs not just to the Congress but to the entire nation. It is in this spirit that I have written to you.
NMML is dedicated to the memory of India’s first Prime Minister and prime architect of the Indian nation-state who left behind an indelible imprint on our country and indeed on the world. Nehru’s distinctiveness and greatness have been acknowledged even by his political opponents and rivals.”