Congress, BJP exchange barbs as Nehru Memorial name change comes into effect

The official order on the renaming of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) to Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library led to a war of words between the BJP and I.N.D.I.A leaders. Congress’s chief spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said the renaming shows that prime minister Modi suffers from a “bundle of insecurities”.

“Mr. Modi possesses a huge bundle of fears, complexes and insecurities, especially when it comes to our first and longest serving Prime Minister. He has had a single point agenda of denying, distorting, defaming and destroying Nehru and the Nehruvian legacy. He has erased N and put P instead. That P is really for pettiness and peeve,” Ramesh said in a tweet.

BJP leaders, in a rebuttal, said that the Museum will now honour all the prime ministers, and not just one. Rajya Sabha MP Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the Congress thinks that only one family matters.

“There is a basic difference between the thinking of Congress party and Jairam Ramesh & PM Narendra Modi. The Congress thinks that only Nehru ji and family matters. Narendra Modi gave a respectful position to all the PMs of the country at the museum,” Prasad said.

He sought to know from the Congress why did other premiers like Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Morarji Desai, Chaudhary Charan Singh, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, I K Gujral or HD Deve Gowda get no space.

“When all the PMs are getting a space, it is becoming Pradhan Mantri Smriti Library,” he said.

The decision to rename the NMML was taken in June during a meeting of the NMML Society. The building served as the residence of Pt Jawaharlal Nehru, Independent India’s first prime minister, and the house was later turned into a museum. The Modi government extended the museum and built a new building in the premises which served as a museum to celebrate the lives of all former Indian prime ministers.

Several Opposition leaders criticised the BJP for the move. Aam Aadmi Party’s Saurabh Bharadwaj said it is not part of our culture to disrespect someone after his death. Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut said that the BJP was renaming the building since it could not create history like Nehru did.

Union minister Arjun Munda said that the PM is not a person but an institution. “The Museum has been dedicated to all the PMs who served this nation, as it should have been,” Munda said.