From Cambridge to RBI to PM days, Manmohan Singh's private papers to hit public domain

All private papers of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have been given to Ashoka University. The papers, given to the university by the former PM’s younger daughter and writer Daman Singh, include his research papers of Cambridge University as a student, critical ones explaining policy changes during his tenure as RBI Governor, and as Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Finance Minister and later as Prime Minister of the country for two terms, according to an Economic Times report.

The catalogue with over 10,000 photographs and 20,000 documents will be made available soon to researchers, university officials told ET.

Deepa Bhatnagar, director, Ashoka Archives of Contemporary India, Ashoka University, told the newspaper that Daman Singh had over the past few years collected and compiled all of Dr Singh’s works in a digital format. She added that when the university reached out to her and Manmohan Singh, “they were welcoming to donate it.”

“We will soon have a website with a separate server that will showcase his papers for researchers to access them,” ET quoted Bhatnagar as saying.

‘A researchers’ delight’

“Everyone knows he was an economist par excellence, but having all papers related to Dr Singh under one head will be really useful to any researcher. It is the journey of the economist through his papers. In some ways, it also led to his making as the PM and had a significant influence on the economy,” Bhatnagar added.

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This comes when the Centre through the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library’s (NMML) museum for all prime ministers, has reached out to all former leaders for their private papers and correspondences.

It is important to note that papers of Singh’s official work as PM are already part of the national and PMO archives, and some were given to NMML too.

Singh’s daughter Daman said it took her years to compile her father’s material because she had to source it from different institutions. Much of the material was also given to NMML when it had historian Mahesh Rangarajan as its director. Rangarajan stepped down from NMML in 2015 owing to differences with the BJP government.

“I started collecting the material when I started working on a biography of my parents. I had not intended to use all of it in the book but when, once I started, I was surprised how much material there was. And most of it was in the pre-digital era and not easily traceable. That’s when I thought it was important to put it all together,” Daman told  ET.

Catalogue starts from 1956

The private papers that have been catalogued are from the time Singh was economic adviser in the then ministry of foreign trade in 1971, member-secretary of the Planning Commission in 1980, the governor of the RBI from 1982 to 1985, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and also the first secretary-general of the South Commission based in Geneva, apart from the time he was finance minister and prime minister.

The catalogue starts from 1956 with his work at Cambridge University, including an article on international investments for which he was awarded the Adam Smith prize at the institution, the newspaper report said.

Ashoka University had started collecting archives in 2017 to build a diverse and rich collection of primary source material that is most important for any work of research, Bhatnagar said. The university has also acquired all the papers of India’s first vice-president S Radhakrishnan, apart from building a repository of private papers of the country’s noted environmentalists, including Gandhian green activist and Ramon Magsaysay Award recipient Chandi Prasad of the Chipko movement, elephant expert DK Lahiri Choudhury and conversationalist Kailash Sankla, who started the preservation of Tigers project, author and playwright Girish Karnad and writer Prabhakar Machwe, the report added.

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