Manmohan legacy comes alive at new Cong library

At the heart of the Congress’s new headquarters, Indira Bhawan on Kotla Marg, stands a striking tribute to the former PM, the Manmohan Singh Research and Library.

Inaugurated on September 26 by Sonia Gandhi, in the presence of Dr Singh’s wife Gursharan Kaur, Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, the library has steadily taken shape as one of the most significant additions to the party headquarters.

The party has tried to make it more than a collection of books. It aims to transform the library into a carefully built archive of Indian politics that reflects the party’s history as well as as the intellectual ethos of the Dr Singh.

From party manifestoes since 1951 to rare photographs of the Constituent Assembly, the space attempts to capture the arc of India’s political journey. Its shelves are lined with about 1,200 volumes.

On one side of the entrance is a rare photograph of the entire Constituent Assembly, while the other side showcases an image of Manmohan Singh in 1991, seated in his office as Finance Minister, on the eve of his historic Budget that altered India’s economic course.

The library features devoted sections on Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Subhas Chandra Bose, Maulana Azad, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, among others. There is also a section on Singh himself, alongside shelves carrying works of other Prime Ministers, including Lal Bahadur Shastri and PV Narasimha Rao.

Entire volumes of ‘The Encyclopedia of the Indian National Congress’, compiled over decades by librarian Abdul Moin Zaidi and his wife Shahida Gufran Zaidi, sit here as a testimony to their meticulous archival labour.

The party has also included biographies of leaders who walked away from the party, works by former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and the writings of Congress dissenters like Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tewari, share the same space as books by loyalists like P Chidambaram, Salman Khurshid and Mani Shankar Aiyar. Party insiders see this inclusivity as true to Manmohan Singh’s belief that debate and dissent are essential for democracy.

The library also features the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Motilal and Jawaharlal Nehru, Ambedkar and Rajaji, as well as books on diplomacy, economics, foreign policy and culture.

Party leader Jairam Ramesh has also donated more than a thousand books to the library.

Indira Bhawan, designed by architect Hafeez Contractor, already stands as a monument to the Congress’s 139-year-old history. Its walls are lined with iconic images of the freedom struggle and early years of governance. The library aims to deepen that narrative.

The library stands as the unwritten autobiography of Dr Manmohan Singh, who always resisted writing a memoir. It aims to capture his journey through his speeches, reports and writings scattered across the shelves.