For the first time, the private correspondence of Mahatma Gandhi, once managed by secretary Pyarelal Nayar, are being opened and being sorted at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library. But experts say it’s not enough — the papers need to be made public.

These correspondence include notings and personal correspondence of Gandhi and other leaders such as MA Jinnah and Subhash Chandra Bose. They also include files on state Congress committees, Mira Behn’s diaries, and even poems written by 19th century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.

But historian Ramchandra Guha says that Gandhi led a transparent life and it’s time that the papers are made accessible to scholars. “He donated most of his personal papers to Navjeevan Trust. These papers should be opened to the public,” he says.

Historian Sumit Sarkar, on the other hand, said that while some of the Pyarelal Papers have been published before, not all have appeared on print. “Certainly it should be opened, even if it’s repetitive, it doesn’t matter.”

Museum officials say that about 50 per cent of Pyarelal Papers, numbering 4,250 files and stored in some 425-odd boxes, relate to Gandhi’s correspondence. Guha suggested that Gandhi’s personal correspondence should be seperated from Pyarelal’s private correspondence. The sorting, which began last year, is expected to be completed in three months.

The museum currently has some 1,000 private papers in its custody, of which about 12 collections are closed. Other than Pyarelal, who has edited and published many of Gandhi’s letters, Oxford-based academician S Gopal and the Jawaharal Nehru Memorial Fund, which publishes Nehru’s Collected Works, have been given permission to see the papers.

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