Patriots & Partisans

by Ramachandra Guha

  Through the decades, as I had worked at the NMML, the staff had been knowledgeable, and unfailingly helpful. The surroundings were a delight; between spells consulting old files, one could walk around the grounds to see peacocks or hear the brainfever bird or simply admire the massive stone structure of the main building from the back or front lawn. True, the canteen served execrable tea and worse samosas, but here too, the conversation was never less than exhilarating.

  Ravinder Kumar retired in 1997. The government in power, headed by the book-loving Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, appointed a committee to choose his successor. It came up with three names, of which at least two were credible: Mushirul Hasan, who like B.R. Nanda, was a widely published empirical historian; and Madhavan Palat, who like Ravinder Kumar, was a scholar of cultured and cultivated tastes. Unfortunately, the government fell in 1998; and the regime that replaced it was headed by the insular and parochial Bharatiya Janata Party. They rejected these two names—Hasan’s possibly because he was a Muslim, and Palat possibly because he was, in a general sense, too broad-minded. They chose instead the third name on the panel, which was of a bureaucrat called O.P. Kejriwal who happened to have a PhD in history.

  Kejriwal’s tenure as director

  was colourless—he did not enhance the NMML’s reputation, but by respecting the autonomy and capability of the staff, he did not damage it either. At the end of his five-year term, a joint secretary in the ministry of culture assumed temporary charge. By the time I wrote to Jaipal Reddy, Ravinder Kumar had been gone for eight years. My (perhaps widely shared) wish was that his legacy be renewed and even enhanced under a new, and carefully chosen director. When Mr Reddy ducked the challenge, I decided to approach the prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, directly.

  This is the note I sent him:

  Note for the Prime Minister on the choice of a Director for the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML)

  The NMML is the premier research centre for the humanities and historical research in the country. It has achieved its pre-eminence through the work of its first two Directors, B.R.

  Nanda and Ravinder Kumar, who cultivated an atmosphere of excellence and promoted scholarship of quality regardless of any prejudice in favour of or against any particular ideology.

  The post of Director, NMML, has been vacant for some time now. It is imperative that this post is filled through an open, transparent process, with the Director chosen by a committee of acknowledged experts, and after candidates have been canvassed through advertisements in prestigious scholarly journals. As a member of the Advisory Board on Culture, and as a senior historian, the undersigned wrote to the Minister of Culture on the 11th of May urging such a process (letter enclosed). No reply was received to the letter.

  It is believed that much lobbying is going on for the post of Director, NMML. This is worrying, given the predisposition of recent governments to fill such posts on grounds of patronage or ideology.

  The heads of our scientific institutions are chosen by transparent considerations of merit and quality. The widely hailed appointment of Professor André Béteille as the Chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Research gave rise to the expectation that the present government will uphold the same standards as regards the humanities and social sciences.

  Were a careless choice be made as regards the NMML, it could have serious impact on the morale of the staff, and hence on the health of the institution itself. So many academic institutions in India have been undermined and even destroyed by patronage and politics. The NMML has thus far escaped this fate; it must be encouraged to escape it in the future as well.

  Ramachandra Guha

  Bangalore, 15th July 2005.

  Once more, I received no reply. I heard from a friend in New Delhi that Dr Manmohan Singh had read the note, but that like Jaipal Reddy, he believed that this was Sonia Gandhi’s turf, on which he would be wise not to transgress. Like Mr Reddy, he owed his own job to the chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance (and Congress party president). He was not willing to incur her displeasure by suggesting impersonal procedures for the selection of the new NMML director. From my (possibly naïve, certainly pig-headed) point of view, the NMML was a publicly funded institution that had to abide by professional norms. But in this regime the boundaries between party and government were fuzzy, and those between family and government fuzzy as well.

  Apparently, since the institution was named after Jawaharlal Nehru and based in a building where both Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi had lived, their heirs would have the final say.

  IV

  In August 2006, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library finally got a new director. This was Professor Mridula Mukherjee of the Jawaharlal Nehru University. She was chosen without an interview and not on the recommendation of a search committee. Rather, the selection had been made on the basis of the old Indian system of

  sifarish—that is to say, personal influence. Someone had suggested Professor Mukherjee’s name to someone who knew someone who enjoyed the ear and the confidence of Sonia Gandhi.

  Like some other scholars, I was disappointed by the manner in which the new director was chosen. Still, the deed was done; and the institution had to live on. Shortly after Professor Mukherjee took over, I wrote to her offering help in getting new collections of private papers for the library. I noted that since I did not teach in a university, the NMML meant more to me than any other Indian institution; and I would be delighted to do what I could to help it grow. There was no answer. A little later I wrote another letter to the director, this time with a fellow historian, Dilip Simeon. This urged that extended oral interviews be conducted of remarkable Indians now in their seventies and eighties. Among the names we mentioned were the social worker Ela Bhatt, the veteran worker for communal harmony Satyapal Dang, the environmentalist and founder of the Chipko movement Chandi Prasad Bhatt, the writer–activists U.R. Anantha Murthy and Mahasweta Devi, the security specialist K. Subrahmanyam, the Gandhian freedom fighter Narayan Desai, and the trade unionist Parvathi Krishnan. We volunteered to set up these interviews ourselves. There was no reply to this letter either. Letters offering support by other historians were likewise disregarded. The grandson of the great Tamil novelist A. Madhaviah wrote offering rare documents; he too received no reply. More shockingly, several letters sent by the Sabarmati Ashram suggesting the sharing of their respective collections went unanswered.

  One can only speculate as to why these offers were scorned. What soon became apparent, however, was that Professor Mukherjee had her own agenda for the NMML. The family of which Sonia Gandhi was the most conspicuous and powerful legatee was to be made more visible in the programmes of the NMML. An exhibition was commissioned and mounted in the main foyer of the library. This was based on the letters exchanged between Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. For more than a year, every visitor to the library was greeted by the words and pictures of two former Congress prime ministers.

  In the forty years of its history, the NMML had refused to identify itself with a particular party, still less a particular family. Its collections included the papers of the Hindu Mahasabha and the Communist Party as well as the All India Congress Committee. It had, under its own imprint, published the speeches and writings of Acharya Narendra Dev, who was a vocal critic of Nehru; and of Jayaprakash Narayan, who had been jailed by Indira Gandhi. The NMML

  was intended to be a serious centre of documentation and research, which paid attention to all political strands in modern India.

  The Nehru–Indira exhibition

  was an artless attempt at ingratiation. Worse was to follow. The seminar room of the NMML was handed over to the Youth Congress, for meetings addressed by the family and party’s presumptive heir, Rahul Gandhi. Meanwhile, the normal academic activities of the institution ground to a halt. There were no oral histories being conducted. In the past, the staff was sent on regular missions to different parts of India to seek out collections of private papers and old newsp
apers. The practice was disbanded; offers by individuals to donate important papers in their possession were ignored. The publication of books by Fellows and of series of historical documents also came to a standstill.

  If some of the exhibitions and all of the Youth Congress meetings were intended to promote the family name, other efforts were aimed at protecting it from calumny and criticism. In May 2007 my book India after Gandhi was published. Among its sources were the private papers, housed at the NMML, of Subimal Dutt and Y.D. Gundevia, who had served in the foreign ministry under Nehru; and of Indira Gandhi’s principal secretary, P.N. Haksar. These had proved crucial in reconstructing India’s border disputes and wars with China and Pakistan. I had been the first to use these collections; but now, seeing my footnotes, other scholars wanted to consult them too. However, whereas I had free access, under the new director curbs were put in place, in case materials inimical to Nehru’s or Indira’s reputation were located in these papers. Every file relating to foreign affairs had now to be cleared by the director and by a senior official of the foreign ministry. This policy was probably illegal, for the donors of these collections of private papers had not imposed any such restrictions.

  ‘Security reasons’ were cited; but as the then serving foreign secretary (who was consulted by the NMML administration) told me, the director was being unnecessarily paranoid—at least 95 per cent of the files brought to his ministry for clearance, he said, had no bearing on national security at all. *

  Meanwhile, the number of seminars organized by the NMML precipitously declined. Instead of one every week there was one every month (at best). The speakers were now mostly from Delhi. Likewise, the range of topics became much narrower, reflecting the new director’s desire (as stated in a press interview) that her task was merely to promote the ‘secular and scientific ideals of [Jawaharlal] Nehru’.

  A further manifestation of the redirection of the institution was the decline of the library. The NMML was known for its excellent holdings of old and new books in history and the social sciences.

  It was the library of first or second recourse for thousands of students and scholars in Delhi, and the library of last recourse for students and scholars from other parts of India. The collections of old books had been steadily augmented by reaching out to families of deceased scholars. The purchase of new books was supervised by an acquisition committee composed of NMML Fellows from the various disciplines.

  Shortly after the new director took over, the book acquisition committee was disbanded. The post of chief librarian, which had recently fallen vacant because of the incumbent’s retirement, was left unfilled (and remained unfilled for the next five years). Opportunities to acquire collections were not taken; in a particularly sad, and shocking, instance, the NMML rebuffed the daughter of the literary journalist and bibliophile Sham Lal, when she offered to donate his collection for free. Meanwhile, with no one to lead or guide them, the library staff became apathetic and indolent. Books lay on tables for days, unshelved.

  As compensation for the abandonment of scholarly work, the new administration of the NMML chose to start a Children’s Centre. Groups of ten-year-olds were fed snacks and then taken through a library whose contents they must, given their age, have been completely confused by. This was done under the rubric of ‘democratizing’

  access. The comment of a sceptical older scholar was that this was, at the very least, a safe and non-political alternative to critical intellectual activity; besides, it might make of these young Indians future Congress voters and family loyalists.

  Perhaps because of the manner of her appointment, the new director was deeply insecure about her position. This was reflected in the somewhat obsessive urge to promote or protect the First Family of the Congress party. The director’s insecurity was also manifest in the manner in which she bypassed the existing—and often very capable staff—by recruiting (often unqualified) consultants instead. These were very often from her own institution, the Jawaharlal Nehru University. The consultants were charged with such activities as putting up posters on trees around the campus (featuring the sayings of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi), and hosting lunches and teas for children. The staff, used to more substantive work such as the collection of manuscripts and the conducting of oral histories, were at first bemused. As the tamasha continued, however, their attitude went from resignation to cynicism.

  In 2006 and 2007, I watched the institution deteriorate from very close quarters. I made at least half a dozen trips a year from Bangalore to Delhi, each time spending a week or two working through the priceless collections of the NMML. I saw the promotion of the First Family come and grow; and the morale of a once-devoted staff shrink and fade.

  On one of these visits, I made a discovery that underlined the staggering distance between the NMML as it once was and as it had since become. In a back drawer of an upstairs hall, I found nine microfilm reels containing records of the South African government for the period 1893–1910. These had priceless information on the life and labours of the Indian community in Transvaal and Natal, at a time when Gandhi was working there. In a file of acquisitions kept in the office, I was able to trace the process by which they came to the NMML. The apartheid regime was in place then; and no contact was possible between Indians and South Africa. However, the visionary deputy director of the NMML, Haridev Sharma, had located an American scholar who had trawled through the South African archives. This man was prevailed upon to microfilm these documents, and pass on a set to the NMML. For this, Dr Sharma had to overcome not merely the diplomatic cold war between India and South Africa, but the obdurate and unhelpful Indian bureaucracy as well, out of whom he had somehow cajoled the necessary permissions to compensate, in scarce foreign exchange, the American scholar. That was the kind of work the NMML staff were once motivated to perform.

  Now they were being instructed to distribute barfis to schoolchildren and facilitate Youth Congress meetings.

  V

  In the summer of 2008, the deputy director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Dr N. Balakrishnan, was abruptly divested of his existing responsibilities. Like his predecessors, Dr Balakrishnan had served as a crucial bridge between the director and the staff. He was extremely knowledgeable and competent; and deeply committed to the institution. One of his recent initiatives had been to rescue a huge caché of Gandhi papers which were in the illegal control of the family of the Mahatma’s last secretary, Pyarelal. Under Dr Balakrishnan’s supervision, these papers had been classified, sorted, preserved and indexed. This was the largest collection of Gandhi papers outside the Sabarmati Ashram; now, for the first time since Gandhi’s death, officials of the NMML had made them accessible to scholars.

  In the preface to his War and Peace in Modern India, the brilliant young historian Srinath Raghavan writes: ‘In researching this book I have benefited from the expertise of archivists in fourteen institutions across four continents. But for their professionalism this book would never have got off the ground. It may seem invidious to single out an individual, but I am particularly grateful to Dr N. Balakrishnan, Deputy Director, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.’

  Why had this very capable archivist and administrator fallen foul of his boss? He had, it seems, expressed reservations about the Children’s Centre, and the director’s neglect of the staff in favour of outside consultants. Anyway, this humiliation of Dr Balakrishnan upset many users of the NMML, who could testify to his uprightness and competence.

  It seemed of a piece with the general decline of the NMML as a whole. A group of former Fellows now wrote to the chairman of NMML’s executive council, Dr Karan Singh, expressing concern at the direction the institution was taking. Their note drew attention to the abandonment of the oral history programme, the lack of interest in acquiring manuscripts, the new-found political partisanship, and other signs of departure from the NMML’s history and mandate. It concluded with these paragraphs:

  A dynamic institution requires to keep ab
reast of change, whilst remaining true to its founding perspectives. This is especially true of the NMML, whose activities define it as a pro-active historical archive of modern India. We believe that six decades after Independence, the focus of this activity needs to go beyond the freedom struggle, important as it is. Oral testimonies of freedom fighters will soon become inaccessible. Meanwhile significant developments have taken place in the life of the Republic that require documentation and research. (The Centre for Contemporary Studies was established by Professor Ravinder Kumar to fulfil precisely this purpose.) These include social movements; new political alliances, civic activism; insurgencies; communal conflagrations; caste and class eruptions; changing gender relations; the media and communications explosion; the emergence of new business enterprises and new trends in education. The NMML should be active on these issues to retain its cutting edge.

  If the NMML’s

  governors consider our observations useful, they could establish an advisory committee of reputed academics charged with recommending institutional objectives. A strategic guideline of this kind might assist the NMML in making policy decisions and allocating resources. In any event, it will always require the care and retention of its existing instruments such as a fine library, ongoing oral history collections, an active manuscripts section, and a lively seminar for ongoing work.