The exit of Mahesh Rangarajan as director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) has raised uncomfortable questions on the government’s alleged role in appointments at the highest level of institutions that have been central to the intellectual life of the nation (“Create, but don’t destroy,” and “Mistaking a scholar for a bureaucrat,” Sep.24). Dr. Rangarajan’s name is only the latest in a long list of martyrs who have ceded office to the Narendra Modi government’s appointees. Malayalam author Sethu was replaced at the National Book Trust by a former editor of Panchajanya , the RSS mouthpiece. IIT Delhi director Raghunath K. Shevgaonkar and Anil Kakodkar, chairman of the board of governors of IIT Bombay, were practically forced to tender their resignations. Such forced exits go against the PM’s vision to make India an intellectually progressive nation.
Vani A.,Hyderabad
It is sad that the BJP government is meddling with the affairs of reputed institutions such as the NMML to further its misplaced agenda. That a respected scholar like Mahesh Rangarajan has had to resign is an indication of the low priority accorded to propriety and academic excellence by the present dispensation. All these point to the perverted motives to belittle great personalities like Jawaharlal Nehru at the active insistence of the Sangh Parivar which has nothing to boast about when it comes to our freedom struggle.
J. Anantha Padmanabhan,Srirangam
The credentials of Mahesh Rangarajan are impeccable. But that alone is not enough to erase the controversial nature of his appointment by the outgoing UPA regime. Dr. Rangarajan must have been aware of the circumstances that prompted the UPA to hasten his appointment. The Congress party had been treating national institutions as its fiefdom. Anyone who accuses the BJP of ‘saffronising’ institutions must also question the ‘Nehru-visation and Indira-visation’ that took place for long. We need to admit that the history of India is not the history of Nehru-Gandhi family alone.
C.G. Kuriakose,Kothamangalam
It is no surprise that the saffron party’s political bickering against the Congress has made its way into the field of academia too, as the painful and sordid NMML episode shows. Prof. Rangarajan is credited with turning the institution into a vibrant academic space. The Modi-led NDA government has shown that it was only interested in subverting the NMML’s mandate by diluting the salience of Nehru. There is no doubt that the upheaval at NMML will further strengthen the perception that the NDA government intends to change the character of academic institutions.
R. Sivakumar,Chennai
