PRIME MINISTER’S ADDRESS AT ANNUAL GENERAL BODY MEETING OF THE JAWAHARLAL NEHRU MEMORIAL MUSEUM AND LIBRARY SOCIETY

---

Following is the text of the address of the Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee, at the Annual General Body Meeting of the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Society, which was read out by Shri T.N. Chaturvedi, Vice-Chairman of the Society, here today :

" I thank all of you for a fruitful meeting.

This is the first meeting of the reconstituted Nehru Memorial Museum and Society. It is also my first meeting as the President of the Society. Hence, I can say with satisfaction that our discussions today have helped me in gaining a good understanding of the Society’s activities.

This institution bears the name of one of the greatest men of modern India. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru straddles two crucial eras of modern India – pre-Independence and post-Independence.

He was a towering leader of India’s Freedom struggle. He was also the architect of modern India. But what successive generations of Indians should know is that Nehru was also a Man of Ideas. He was a great lover of books, and he wrote some great books. Our Museum and our Library seek to preserve and promote this precious legacy of our first Prime Minister.

We need to promote the library movement in our country. We need to encourage our young people to get attracted to good books in diverse areas of human knowledge. We also need to create better facilities, not only in big cities but also in smaller ones, for our scholars and researchers. Here I cannot over-emphasise the need to create these facilities not only in English but also in other languages.

I commend the Society for its diverse activities. I especially like the idea of further enriching the oral history archives with the recordings of prominent contemporary Indians.

Oral tradition is a very precious part of our intellectual, cultural and artistic heritage. Modern technologies enable us to preserve this tradition at a lower cost and make it available to people all over the world through the Internet and other digital means.

I remember how, a couple of years ago, the Library of Congress in the United States recorded my poems in my own voice, as part of their plan to acquire the recordings of many Indian literary figures. I would like to see our Ministry of Culture to promote this activity on a broader scale.

I have a suggestion about the promotion of research activities by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. I appreciate that you have offered fellowships to many scholars and organized many national and international seminars. Thus, the institution has continued to remain the hub of intellectual activity.

However, I would urge you to make this activity more representative of the intellectual diversity in contemporary India. Let our Society encourage a vibrant debate among different schools of thought. Let nothing that is a legitimate part of contemporary intellectual and political discourse in India be considered anathema. Let nothing be treated as alien to Nehru’s legacy.

For Nehru’s world-view was very broad. He was a democrat par excellence. Most importantly, he accepted the right of even a dissenting view to freely express itself.

Therefore, it is essential that the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library let all streams of thought in contemporary India flow, inter-mingle and enrich one another. May our institution remain alive to the changing times.

I am sure that this institution of high repute will continue to serve its lofty objectives for a long time to come. I wish it all success in its future programmes.

Thank you."