‘Return 51 cartons’: Congress, BJP spar over Jawaharlal Nehru’s letters

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Sonia Gandhi during the 137th birth anniversary of India’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru at Samvidhan Sadan on Saturday. (PTI)

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The Congress and BJP on Saturday sparred over the ownership of a repository of letters written by former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, on his 137th birth anniversary.

Congress general secretary in-charge of communications, Jairam Ramesh, sought to underline the popularity of Nehru Archive, a digital repository of the 100 volumes of the selected works of Nehru covering the period 1903-1964, having had over 1 million unique visitors and over 4 million page views over the last year since its launch in January 2025.

In response, BJP national spokesperson CR Kesavan, who accused senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi of “abruptly” taking the letters in May 2008, demanded that it “return the 51 cartons containing Nehru’s letters. Failing to do so “will only strengthen the suspicion that the Congress’s first family is scared and indeed has something to hide,” he said.

The Indian Express, on December 15, 2025, had first reported that Sonia had assured the Prime Ministers’ Museum & Library (PMML) of her cooperation. She, according to sources, had conveyed that “her staff will look into it”.

“The volumes run into around 77,000 pages, have 34,000+ text documents and 3000+ images. They are essential to understanding 20th century India through the eyes of someone who so very profoundly shaped it” Ramesh posted on X.

He added that nehruarchive.in is digitally native, smartphone-friendly, easy to search, download(free) and translate; designed for a vast range of internet users, especially the younger generation, it had “evoked great interest across a wide range” including the general public, students and scholars, professional historians and journalists, admirers, sceptics and critics and had been providing “an authentic primary source that is already being put to use for a variety of purposes.”