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Drama of name-changes in politics is a convenient gate pass but not when one is in power

By D N Singh

Soon the governments at the Centre change a lot of other changes follow, And, obviously all those endeavors are part of political quest to leave the foot prints which is either inherited or worse, for something which are not abiding morally.

True that the Nehruvian legacy has been long stretched spanning over 7 seven decades hypothesizing in the name of Nehru clan and later Ganhdis. Just being an overload of family name while diminishing the name and fame of others who had tremendous contributions to respective areas in the country.

When the next dispensation comes to power it either changes the earlier names of the roads or institutions according to their convenience or political suitability.

The Congress on Friday slammed the Centre’s decision to rename the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library as the Prime Ministers Museum and Society.

Which sounds little inconvenient to accept the vast contribution of Nehru in the field of intellect or even erudition. A renowned author himself Jawahar Lal Nehru had remained a template in himself leaving aside the political aspects.

Taking to Twitter, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said: “Pettiness & Vengeance, thy name is Modi. For over 59 years Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML) has been a global intellectual lamdmark and treasure house of books & archives. It will henceforth be called Prime Ministers Museum & Society.

Which means the incumbent Prime Minister will be in the league of those personas who had a space in the sphere of intellect.

“What won’t Mr. Modi do to distort, disparage and destroy the name & legacy of the architect of the Indian nation-state. A small, small man overburdened by his insecurities is the self-styled Vishwaguru.”

Ramesh’s remarks came a day after the decision was taken at a special meeting of the NMML Society on Thursday, which was presided over by Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who is the vice-president of the Society.

The Society has Prime Minister Narendra Modi as its chairman, and Union Ministers Amit Shah, Nirmala Sitharaman, Dharmendra Pradhan, G Kishan Reddy, Anurag Thakur, among its 29 members.

The museum was inaugurated at the Teen Murti complex last year in April, which served as the official residence of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru since 1948 till his death in 1964.

Modi no less

While talking about the Nehruvian dominance in such nomenclature match, it cannot be lost sight of that, Narendra Modi while playing the Sardar Patel card, by implication tried to downplay Nehru.

Modi took to the extravaganza of erecting one of the tallest statue of the Sardar in Gujarat. Good.

Political u-turn by Modi

But what happened subsequently was a political over-stepping and a self-arrogation of nomenclature drama which is perhaps third such aberration in the world.

Modi, seemingly an ardent admirer of Sardar Patel, just removed the ‘iron man’ in a huff to change the name of the Sardar Patel stadium and renamed after his own!

Standing there with the Australian PM few days back, he(Modi) was seen playing to the galleries without a shred of regret that, it is rare that, when in power one should not allow his or her name to be prefix of any such place or institution.   Interestingly the Australian PM has done the same gaffe by naming a stadium after his name.

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