The Nehru letters: What’s in the private papers at the centre of PMML-Sonia Gandhi talks

The material offers rare insight into Nehru’s views on politics, diplomacy and nation-building, as well as his personal relationships during the formative decades of the Republic.

A simmering dispute over a cache of private papers belonging to India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, is reportedly headed for de-escalation after Congress leader Sonia Gandhi conveyed her willingness to cooperate with the Prime Ministers’ Museum & Library (PMML), sources said.

Gandhi’s message, that “her staff will look into it”, is understood to be her first response since the institution sought access to the documents, as per an Indian Express report.

PMML records describe the collection as personal correspondence exchanged by Nehru with key figures in India and abroad.

The letters include exchanges with Jayaprakash Narayan, Edwina Mountbatten, Albert Einstein, Aruna Asaf Ali, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and Jagjivan Ram. The material offers rare insight into Nehru’s views on politics, diplomacy and nation-building, as well as his personal relationships during the formative decades of the Republic, states the report citing scholars.

PMML, an autonomous body under the Union Culture Ministry, had reportedly written twice to Gandhi this year requesting access, either physical or digital, to the papers for research and public scholarship. The first letter, sent in January, followed discussions at the PMML Society’s 2024 annual general meeting, where members agreed to seek legal opinion on the status of the documents.

That communication also recorded, for the first time in an official letter, PMML’s position that a portion of the Nehru papers, packed in 51 cartons, was taken from the then Nehru Memorial Museum & Library in 2008.

According to the report, PMML Society members debated whether the papers could be reclaimed, noting that the collection had originally been donated to the institution in 1971 by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. A broad consensus emerged to seek legal clarity on ownership, custodianship, copyright and permissible use of the archival material.

The matter was revisited at a subsequent AGM in June, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where members reiterated the view that papers relating to the country’s first prime minister are a “national treasure” and should ideally remain with PMML to safeguard Nehru’s legacy.

Meanwhile, the Union Ministry of Culture, on Monday, told Parliament that no Nehru-related documents are missing from PMML’s collection and that the institution does not conduct annual audits of its archival holdings. The ministry said no decisions were taken in 2025 on the alleged unavailability of Nehru papers, triggering a political response from the Congress, which questioned earlier claims that documents had gone missing.

The developments come amid the December 5 launch of a digital Nehru archive by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, a non-profit trust chaired by Sonia Gandhi and located on the same Teen Murti campus as PMML. The digital archive offers free public access to 100 volumes of Nehru’s selected works, comprising over 35,000 documents.