The final volume of the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru — a 100-volume project — will be released on the occasion of Nehru’s birth anniversary on Thursday, bringing to completion an exercise which has spanned almost half a century.
The volumes, which have an average length of 700 pages each, have been brought out by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, a private trust chaired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The first volume appeared in 1972, under the editorship of eminent historian Sarvepalli Gopal assisted by a team of researchers.
“There is a huge amount not published as it was not made available. Whatever was considered confidential — on Kashmir or China — was not released to us. The MEA (Ministry of External Affairs) and MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) have released very little, so there is a disappointingly small quantity of his writings on Kashmir, for instance,” said Dr. Palat.
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“Not even Indira Gandhi [the first chair of the Fund] was able to extract that material.”
The latest editor has been historian Madhavan Palat, who took over the project in 2011, beginning at Volume no. 44.
“This is the largest archival collection published anywhere in India ... A lot of work has gone into collecting source material,” said Dr. Palat.
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The volumes include Nehru’s letters, speeches, interviews and writings, as well as correspondence from others, which he responded to.