Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a museum commemorating the contributions of all his predecessors and the highlights of their terms, saying the complex will help raise national consciousness by showing the challenges they overcame to lay the foundation of a ‘New India’.
“It is my honour to dedicate this museum to the nation as we celebrate 75 years of India’s Independence. . . this is our attempt to raise national consciousness,” the PM said while addressing a gathering comprising families of some of the former PMs among others.
The museum has come up on the Teen Murti Estate in the national capital, where the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, dedicated to the first PM, is located. Artefacts related to Nehru have been retained in the original Nehru Memorial Museum building, redesignated as Block I, and contain interactive screens about India’s journey to becoming a republic and features a gallery on the writing of the Indian Constitution, apart from books and memorabilia related to Nehru.
Interestingly, ‘Pandit’ honorific nearly synonymous with Nehru is missing from the reference to him in the gallery containing pictures of all PMs. Equipped with state-of the-art interactive technologies, Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya has separate galleries dedicated to the 14 PMs where artefacts, speeches, hand-written notes and rare pictures drawn from their families’ personal collections and from various government repositories are displayed.
A separate section has also been set aside for displaying the gifts all PMs received from across the globe while in office.
Modi, who toured the old and the new blocks for over one hour as the museum’s first ticket-bearing visitor, said the Sangrahalaya reflects the shared legacy of every state and each prime minister. He also said it is the nation’s collective responsibility to strengthen democracy which India has sustained with a solitary aberration. Though he did not elaborate, the PM’s comment was an oblique reference to the Emergency period, when the Indira Gandhi government suspended civil rights and political process. Members of the Nehru-Gandhi family, which gave the country three PMs, skipped the opening, while Manmohan Singh conveyed his inability to attend due to illhealth. The space dedicated to Indira Gandhi also comprises a section on the Emergency period.
