A Gallery On PM Modi's Life Soon At Museum Earlier Dedicated To Only Nehru

While the removal of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's name from the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library or NMML has become the latest flashpoint between the BJP and Congress, the Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya - a museum dedicated to all 14 former Prime Ministers of India since Independence built inside the Teen Murti complex - is getting ready to have a "mother of democracy" gallery and another one dedicated to PM Narendra Modi's life, governance and achievements by September.

The Teen Murti complex housed the official residence of Nehru where he lived for 16 years, and was converted into a museum in his honour after his death. Last year, on the occasion of Ambedkar Jayanti on April 14, PM Narendra Modi inaugurated the Pradhan Mantri Sanghralaya in the same complex which featured the life stories of all former Prime Ministers of the country. The BJP has been insisting that this was the democratisation of the cultural space, with every Prime Minister of the country getting the space he or she deserves.

According to those in know of the matter, three new galleries - orientation, mother of democracy and another one exclusively on PM Modi are likely to get ready in the next three months. While the orientation gallery will give the visitors a glimpse of the entire museum in a few minutes, the mother of democracy will show how India progressed as a democracy in the last 75 years.

The gallery on PM Modi is likely to showcase his life and learnings, his evolution as the PM, his governance style, diplomacy and policy making. It will also showcase his relationship with his mother, his thoughts on the environment among other aspects of his personality. The museum will also feature content on how India has advanced in areas such as sports, arts, education and economy. "These will be showcased on ramps that connect the different PMs. As of now, we are getting at least 3,000 people every day," an official in the know of the matter said.

The government renaming the NMML society as the Prime Ministers' Museum and Library Society has drawn a sharp reaction from the Congress that called it a "petty act" and said that legacies do not get erased by renaming buildings. BJP president JP Nadda has hit back saying the Congress is incapable of accepting that there are leaders beyond "one dynasty" and that is a classic example of "political indigestion."

The decision to rename the museum was taken at a special meeting of the NMML Society on Thursday, presided over by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who is the vice-president of the society.

For six years now, the NMML has drawn many contentious debates between the BJP and the Congress. Be it dropping of Congress leaders such as Jairam Ramesh, Mallikarjun Kharge and intellectuals such as Nitin Desai and Nayanjyot Lahiri from the museum's society to even introducing seminars on Sangh Parivar leaders such as Deen Dayal Upadhyay and Syama Prasad Mookerjee, or even Hindutva idealogue Veer Savarkar.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Friday slammed the renaming, saying the NMML has been a global intellectual landmark and treasure house of books and archives while Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said "those who do not have their own history are trying to wipe the history of others." However, former PM Chandra Shekhar's son Neeraj Shekhar, also a BJP MP, welcomed the renaming saying this was a fitting tribute to all the Prime Ministers who served the nation and slammed the Congress, saying that it never looks beyond the dynasty.

As of now, the museum that was earlier dedicated only to Nehru, has 43 galleries, displays on freedom struggle and a framing of the Constitution of India. It starts with where India was in 1947 in terms of literacy, economy and exports among other parameters, clubbed under the British inheritance, and a separate space celebrating the achievements of all 14 former Prime ministers. With a sound and light show and audio guides in six foreign languages, it will also feature the retelling of India's telecom and vaccination success stories.

Prime Minister Modi, while inaugurating the museum last year, had said that in the coming years, it would help the youth understand the hardships each PM faced and how they overcame them. Family members of former PMs Lal Bahadur Shastri, Morariji Desai, Chaudhary Charan Singh, Chandra Shekhar, Deve Gowda, PV Narsimha Rao and Atal Bihari Vajpayee were present at the inauguration.