Teen Murti, the residence used for the first PM of India, is quite rightly now a museum, not a family property; that ought to be the status of all papers related to the PM Jawaharlal Nehru, too, especially since he is held, again quite rightly, as an iconic figure of India whose life was entirely given over to the nation. In this latter respect the same can be said of the present PM Narendra Modi of India, too. All other PMs had a more personal and family life, but nevertheless their work related papers as PM do and must belong to the nation.
Whatever the human shortcomings of PM Jawaharlal Nehru, he was a good man with an excellent mind and heart, and life given over entirely to India; as per a very high spiritual authority, his soul is one with India post his passing on in 1964. The recent trend of looking again at history with fresh sight and open eyes is good, but blaming a safe target for wrongdoings of someone else who is not safe to blame even correctly, is no good. Nehru becoming the PM instead of Patel, or the congress president instead of Bose for that matter, was fault of someone else, who was held in reverence, above and beyond deserved. His faults are rarely pointed at much less discussed realistically, because it's emotional and brings about responses quite comparable to accusations of blasphemy elsewhere in theocratic countries.
Should Patel have been the PM, yes, he was elected, and it was as incorrect of him to obey Gandhi as that of Gandhi to insist he stand aside. If Nehru, Patel, Bose - and for that matter Bhagat Singh too - had been together, or even separately, heading different parties but working together, in and for India post independence, wow! Defence and foreign affairs, Bose; PM, and home, Patel; education, science, technology, Nehru; and so on.
9 January 2018
