New Delhi, July 12 - A controversy over the functioning of the prestigious Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) in the capital has reached the office of the prime minister and is making waves among top Indian scholars.

A group of 57 scholars including Rajmohan Gandhi, Sunil Khilnani, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Ramachandra Guha, Nayanjot Lahiri, Sumit Sarkar, Krishna Kumar, Partha Chatterjee, Sugata Bose, Joya Chatterji, Nivedita Menon, Rukun Advani, Mahesh Rangarajan and Mushirul Hasan, in an open letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, urged him to set in motion steps necessary to revive the NMML.

'Until 1990, the NMML was a world class centre of scholarship and research and a worthy memorial to Jawaharlal Nehru, the great democrat and scholar after whom it was named. In recent years, however, the institution has been trapped in a culture of apathy and mediocrity,' the scholars said in their letter sent in June.

They said the library has discontinued its publication programme, acquisition of rare manuscripts and oral histories have come to a standstill and it has 'abandoned its principled non-partisanship by opening its door to political use and misuse'.

In their letter, a copy of which is with IANS, the scholars urged the prime minister to 'end the nepotistic tenure of consultants, induct into the executive council of NMML three or four respected scholars, encourage the executive council to restore the NMML to its position as India's pre-eminent centre of dispassionate scholarship in humanities and social sciences'.

They demanded that 'once the present director Mridula Mukherjee's term ends in August, her successor must be chosen through an open, transparent process'.

When contacted in Bangalore, historian, social scientist and writer Ramachandra Guha, one of the signatories to the petition, told IANS on phone to 'quote the petition because it contained the complete scenario'.

However, some other scholars who refused to be named alleged that the petition was an effort to 'remove eminent historian Mridula Mukherjee', a former professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, from her post as director and was 'an attempt to cover up certain serious irregularities in the NMML under the previous bosses in 2004-05'.