Located in the verdant South, Teen Murti House was built by the British for their Commander-in-Chief during the days of the Indian Empire. A long, austere white colonial building with columns and balconies on the second floor. It was home to an illustrious Indian, Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of independent India since the British left in 1947, who made it his official residence. Having lost his wife, Kamala, in 1936, he lived here during his three terms in office with his daughter, Indira, who accompanied him everywhere, and his two grandsons, Rajiv and Sanjay Gandhi, who roamed the large gardens, with their freshly trimmed lawns, majestic trees, dogs, peacocks, parrots and monkeys.

Following Nehru's death on May 27, 1964, the Teen Murti House was transformed into a museum in which visitors can walk the creaky wooden floors and enter his private world, catching a glimpse of his wooden desk with its three antique telephones, objects he never parted with, his living room, his bedroom and even his deathbed. The museum includes a library and a research center on the history of the Indian independence movement, in which the former leader played a leading role. It houses numerous archives, including his writings and those of Mahatma Gandhi, but also more personal items, such as the private correspondence between Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten, wife of the last Viceroy of India and the leader's great secret love.

Since August 14, 2023, the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library has been renamed the Prime Minister Museum and Library. The Nehru name has disappeared. The house can still be visited, but the current government has built a new, architecturally unsightly building adjoining it, dedicated to the leader's successors, disfiguring the sumptuous gardens and, above all, trivializing this place of memory. Even the surrounding wall has been doubled as if to erase all memory of Nehru from the Indian capital's landscape.

The fate of Teen Murti House encapsulates the current mood in India, ruled by a prime minister haunted by a rival who died six decades ago. Narendra Modi, 73, India's 14^th prime minister, dreams of surpassing the man who opened the chapter of modern India, the nation's founding father with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, leader of the non-aligned and a personality admired the world over, in every respect his opposite.

After a 10-year reign, Modi won a third term on Tuesday, June 4, but failed to win by a landslide. Modi matches Nehru, who was also elected three times, but his victory falls short of expectations. Modi had asked Indians to give him 370 seats, 400 with his coalition, i.e. two-thirds of the majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, required to amend the Constitution. He has failed, obtaining with his allies around 290 seats, barely more than the simple majority, set at 272 seats.

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