New Delhi, July 3 (IANS) The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library here will see a change of guard in August when the term of the incumbent Mridula Mukherjee comes to an end. Culture ministry sources indicate that professor and columnist Mahesh Rangarajan might be the next director.
‘I have read some reports in the media about it, but I have not been formally informed about the appointment by the ministry of culture,’ Rangarajan told IANS over telephone.
He is currently out of the capital and will return July 6.
‘Technically, I am still a professor in the Delhi University. It will not be fair to comment on Nehru Memorial Library. I will be able to speak only after I am apprised of it by the culture ministry,’ Rangarajan said.
Rangarajan is also a political commentator. His areas of specialisation are environmental and colonial history.
A senior official in the culture ministry said that with ‘Rangarajan’s appointment, the row over change in recruitment norms would also change’.
In a revamping of norms, the executive council had said even a social scientist was eligible to head the library. Earlier, only a historian of modern India could lead the archive and research institution.
‘But by appointing a modern India historian (Rangarajan), apprehensions have been laid to rest,’ the official in the culture ministry said.
The Prime Minister’s Office had approved an extension for Mridula Mukherjee in 2009 despite protests by 57 scholars, including Rajmohan Gandhi, Ramachandra Guha, Sumit Sarkar, Partha Chatterjee and Mahesh Rangarajan.
They had written an open letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, urging him to set in motion steps necessary to revive the lost glory of the research institution.
Mukherjee’s term expires Aug 9.
The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, located at the Teen Murti House, was set up in the memory of former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. It is an autonomous institution with four components — a library, a memorial museum, a centre for contemporary studies and a planetarium.
