Objecting to the renaming of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) as the Prime Ministers’ Memorial and Museum Library (PMML), the Congress on Wednesday said the move displayed the Narendra Modi government’s “pettiness” in trying to remove Jawaharlal Nehru’s legacy.
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In a statement, posted on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Congress general secretary (communication) Jairam Ramesh alleged that the Modi government had the “single point agenda of denying, distorting, defaming and destroying Nehru and the Nehruvian legacy”.
“From today, an iconic institution gets a new name. The world renowned Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) becomes PMML—Prime Ministers’ Memorial Museum and Library. Mr. Modi possesses a huge bundle of fears, complexes and insecurities, especially when it comes to our first and longest serving Prime Minister,” Mr. Ramesh said.
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“He has erased N and put P instead. That P is really for pettiness and peeve,” he noted.
The Congress leader added Mr. Nehru’s “gigantic contributions in the freedom movement and his towering achievements in building the democratic, secular, scientific and liberal foundations of the Indian nation-state are now under assault by Mr. Modi and his drumbeaters”.
Mr. Nehru would continue to inspire generations to come and his legacy would go on despite the “relentless assault,” Mr. Ramesh said.
Lok Sabha member and Congress member Manickam Tagore, remembering former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on his death anniversary, posted an old clip of Vajpayee recounting a story how, as an External Affairs Minister, he had questioned the removal of Pandit Nehru’s photo from South Block that houses the External Affairs Ministry.