Material on Nehru a click away soon with digital archive dedicated to him being compiled

If one wants to read or research material related to India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, it will be available next year at the click of a mouse or on mobile phones with a digital archive dedicated to him being in the works.

'The Nehru Archive' will go online next year on 14 November, the birth anniversary of the former prime minister.

The Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund (JNMF) on Wednesday announced 'The Nehru Archive', a cutting-edge multimedia digital archive.

It will make easily accessible 100 volumes of 'The Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru', his letters to chief ministers from 1947 to 1964 and published books by Jawaharlal Nehru such as 'Letters from a Father to His Daughter', 'Glimpses of World History, An Autobiography', 'The Unity of India', 'The Discovery of India', 'A Bunch of Old Letters' and his lesser-known writings.

The digital archive, that is being created on the lines of the US-based Wilson Center, will also house Nehru's speeches from 1917 to 1964, writings on him by his contemporaries, material on him from global archives and lesser-known published and unpublished writings of the former PM.

On whether this was an attempt to counter some of the false narratives about Nehru and the political attacks aimed at him, senior Congress leader and a trustee of the JNMF Jairam Ramesh asserted that this is not a political exercise but an intellectual and historical one.

Ramesh said the digital archive would make easily available for the user material on Nehru which one can search, cross reference and download.

Vice-Chairman of JNMF Karan Singh said, "I am sure that this archive will make Nehru more accessible to successive generations who need to be informed of his contribution towards the making of modern India and the world."

JNMF Secretary Professor Madhavan K Palat said, "We aim to make the archive as comprehensive as possible, open-ended and dynamic, constantly updated with newer archival sources as and when they become available. It should be the single most important source for research and study on Jawaharlal Nehru."

The JNMF was established in 1964 through a Deed of Declaration of Trust. It has published 'The Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru' and organised the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture.

It also awards the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fellowship annually to noted scholars, administers scholarships to doctoral students in different disciplines and manages Anand Bhawan and the Jawahar Planetarium in Prayagraj.

It has, at present, 14 trustees and is headed by Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi.