New Delhi | In an apparent swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Saturday said the "distorians led by the supposed MA in Entire Political Science" will try to defame and denigrate Jawaharlal Nehru, but the digital archive on him will be a "kavach" that will preserve his monumental legacy.
On the birth anniversary of India's first prime minister, Ramesh said the Nehru archive has turned one year old and, over the past year, this digital repository of the 100 volumes of the 'Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru' covering the period 1903-1964 has had well over 1 million unique visitors and 4 million-plus page views.
"The volumes run into around 77,000 pages, have 34,000-plus text documents and 3,000-plus images. They are essential to understanding 20th-century India through the eyes of someone who so very profoundly shaped it," Ramesh said on X.
He said nehruarchive.in is digitally native, smartphone-friendly and easy to search, download (free), and translate.
"It has been designed for a vast range of internet users, especially the younger generation. It has evoked great interest across a wide range -- the general public, students and scholars, professional historians and journalists, admirers, sceptics and critics -- and has been providing an authentic primary source that is already being put to use for a variety of purposes," Ramesh said.
He asserted that this is only the beginning and the archive will be even richer and contain vastly expanded Nehru-related material from many more sources in India and abroad, including letters, photos, documents, books, films, audio recordings and cartoon sketches that appeared during his lifetime.
He said nehruarchive.in is an initiative of the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund whose Deed of Declaration of Trust was signed on December 21, 1964 by the then vice president of India, Dr Zakir Husain, and prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, along with 30 other extremely distinguished men and women.
"Their names, along with their signatures for the deed, make for fascinating reading. What a glittering galaxy that was. The appeal by the then president of India, Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, was compelling and moving," he recalled.
"The distorians led by the supposed MA in Entire Political Science himself will do what they have been doing to defame and denigrate Nehru. But this digital archive will be a kavach that will preserve, protect, promote and propagate his monumental legacy," Ramesh said, in an apparent reference to the controversy surrounding Modi's degree.