'Distorians' will target Nehru, but archive will shield his legacy: Jairam

• Jairam Ramesh takes an apparent swipe at Modi over his educational qualifications.

• Nehru Archive records over one million unique visitors and four million page views in its first year.

• Digital repository plans to expand with letters, photographs, films, recordings and other archival material.

In an apparent swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress Rajya Sabha MP Jairam Ramesh on Saturday, 14 November said 'distorians led by the supposed MA in Entire Political Science' would continue to defame and denigrate Jawaharlal Nehru, but the digital archive dedicated to India's first prime minister would serve as a 'kavach' (shield) to preserve his monumental legacy.

On Nehru's 137th birth anniversary, Ramesh said the Nehru Archive had completed its first year and that, over the past 12 months, the digital repository of the 100 volumes of the Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, covering the period from 1903 to 1964, had attracted well over 1 million unique visitors and recorded more than 4 million 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 in a post on X.

He said nehruarchive.in was digitally native, smartphone-friendly and easy to search, download for 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 was only the beginning, adding that the archive would become even richer, with vastly expanded Nehru-related material drawn from many more sources in India and abroad. These would include letters, photographs, documents, books, films, audio recordings and cartoon sketches published during Nehru's lifetime.

Ramesh said nehruarchive.in was an initiative of the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, whose Deed of Declaration of Trust was signed on 21 December 1964, by then vice-president of India Dr Zakir Husain, and Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, along with 30 other 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 educational qualifications.

With PTI inputs