On June 21, 1948, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who was then a minister in his Cabinet, that Vande Mataram is not feasible as a national anthem “chiefly because of its tune which does not suit orchestral or band rendering”.
Nehru told Mookerjee that “Jana Gana Mana, on the other hand, has already been greatly appreciated in foreign countries as well as in India and the music of it has a great appeal to people who hear it in India or abroad”.
“Vande Mataram is of course intimately connected with our entire national struggle and we are all emotionally attached to it and will continue to be so attached. It will, in any event, remain as a famous national song, but I personally think that a song which represents poignant longing for freedom is not necessarily a song which fits in with the achievement of freedom. Jana Gana Mana has an element of triumph and fulfilment about it. But the main consideration is the music,” he wrote.
Nehru was replying to Mookerjee’s letter that in view of strong feelings expressed in several quarters over the Cabinet’s provisional decision to adopt Jana Gana Mana as the national anthem, the government should issue a press statement.
Asserting that there was “no misunderstanding” on the matter, Nehru told Mookerjee, who later founded the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, that “Our decision was that Jana Gana Mana should be used officially as an anthem till such time as a final decision is made by the Constituent Assembly”.
This letter is among 77,000 pages and 35,000 documents made publicly and freely available online by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund (JNMF) on The Nehru Archive, a 100-volume archive launched recently to mark the 136th birth anniversary of India’s first PM.
From his correspondence with his Indian and foreign contemporaries to his views on the Sino-Indian border war, ties to the United States, and a range of policy issues, the archive is a “final authoritative and authenticated resource” on Nehru.
On May 28, 1949, Nehru delivered an address to Indian soldiers 16 months after Pakistan invaded Kashmir with the intent to annex it. “Every nation has to pay the price of freedom by blood, sweat and tears. We have paid the price for our freedom in blood but now we have to build up the country with our sweat and tears. India is determined to defend Kashmir until the threat to the State’s peace and security is removed beyond its boundaries,” Nehru said, while praising the Indian Army, saying it had raised India’s prestige in the world.
On Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s 75th birthday on October 31, 1950, Nehru sent a message to Gujarat Congress president Kanhaylal Desai, saying, “I should like to pay my homage and affection to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on the occasion of his completing his 75th year. Few persons can have such a long and notable record of service to their credit as Sardar Patel has had.”
Similarly, Nehru wrote to former Ireland president Sean T O’Kelly on February 8, 1963, regarding the 1962 Sino-Indian war, referring to “the shock caused to us by this invasion by a country we have tried to be friendly with”. “This betrayal has driven us to military conflict, which is distasteful to us, but you will no doubt fully appreciate that we had no choice. No country can submit to compulsion exercised through military force. We are, therefore, determined to face this situation,” Nehru said.
On November 24, 1958, Nehru wrote a letter to American children who had come to the Indian High Commission in the US to send him birthday wishes, saying: “I hope that when you grow up, you will not become rigid and stand-offish and will remember that people of all countries, even though they differ, are members of the same human family. It is, perhaps, good that they differ in many ways, because if everyone was alike, the world would become a very dull place.”
Nehru delivered a speech in Chicago on October 27, 1949, in which he said, “President (Harry) Truman had described my visit as a voyage of discovery. I wish it to be a discovery of a more intimate kind, an understanding more of the mind and spirit of America than merely of formal things. It is important that India should know America and in the reverse process that America should know India. My object is that there should be both understanding and cooperation between India and America.”
When the Congress’s then Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kailas Nath Katju visited an RSS camp, Nehru wrote to him on February 21, 1963, to admonish him. “The general principle of Congressmen associating themselves with communal organisations like the Jana Sangh and other organisations which differed completely from the Congress was discussed. It was decided that no Congressman should associate himself with any function organised by these organisations. I have read the note sent by you. I think you were not right in attending the camp of the RSS.”
In a message to the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) on May 7,1963, Nehru spelt out his vision on education. “Unfortunately educational matters are often considered by politicians on the political plane. This makes them political issues and the educational aspect is not considered objectively and dispassionately. It is true that it is not always easy to separate them. Nevertheless it is desirable and such questions should be considered by educational experts. In doing so, we have to keep the end in view,” Nehru said. “This is not merely training for the job, although that is often necessary, but rather training for life and also training for a particular kind of society that we aim at.”
The archive has been put in place by an organisation called OIJO, which runs The Indian History Collective, on a contract from the JNMF, a private entity whose chairperson is Congress leader Sonia Gandhi. Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh was actively involved in the process.
Historian Madhavan Palat, who is JNMF secretary and The Nehru Archive editor, told The Indian Express, “This saves the labour of going to a library, locating the volumes required, and searching the indexes of the volumes. Each word is searchable in the archive. This phase has been about putting the Selected Works of Nehru in the archive. In the next phase, we will make it complete work to the extent possible. Every text will be as it is in the original, and will be digitised. We will also access photos, audio and video material, his books and also his Hindi writings from all sources possible.” Palat refrained from setting a date for the completion of the next phase.
Historian Aditya Mukherjee said the archive is a resource not just for the historian but also for journalists and citizens. “It is aimed not just at the academic researcher but also the journalist – you can check whenever there is a controversial claim about Nehru. The venom in the social media needed to be at least challenged by providing genuine material. Let the public decide,” he told The Indian Express.
While the Prime Ministers Museum and Library (PMML), administered by the Centre, also has a Nehru Portal that was created to mark his 125th birth anniversary, what marks out The Nehru Archive, Mukherjee says, is the “finesse” with which it has done its work, making each document searchable and downloadable.
The coordination of the data entry work was done by two researchers who studied history at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jahanvi Sodha and Pranav Pandey, over the course of a year beginning November 14, 2024.
“The ideation was going on from June 2024, and the announcement was made on November 14, 2024. From then onwards the actual work began… The idea was to separate each letter, each note, each press conference of Nehru. So we copy-pasted each document separately. We created meta data with tags – 30,000 tags were created, and then attached to the relevant speeches and documents,” Sodha told The Indian Express.
The JNMF had received government funding when the Congress was in power, the last of which came in 2013-14, when it received Rs 5 crore for Nehru’s selected volumes. The JNMF also built the planetarium at Teen Murti Marg in 1983, but gave it to the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library – now the PMML – in 2004-05.
The JNMF’s office is also housed on the PMML premises. In 2018, the government sent it a notice regarding its occupation of the premises. The JNMF moved the courts, and the Delhi High Court stayed the eviction notice.
“The archive is a goldmine for foreign policy. Nehru’s visits abroad, his notes when he visited countries like the Soviet Union, China or the US, can be accessed in it. One can read about the first general elections and Partition. The thing has been designed after studying the best archives of this kind, like Wilson Archives and Churchill Archives. It would be superior, not less,” Aditya Mukherjee said.