The India Gate (formerly known as All India War Memorial) is a war memorial located near the Rajpath (officially called Kartavya Path) on the eastern edge of the "ceremonial axis" of New Delhi. It stands as a memorial to 74,187 soldiers of the Indian Army who died between 1914 and 1921 in the First World War, in France, Flanders, Mesopotamia, Persia, East Africa, Gallipoli and elsewhere in the Near and the Far East, and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. 13,300 servicemen's names, including some soldiers and officers from the United Kingdom, are inscribed on the gate. Designed by Edwin Lutyens, the gate evokes the architectural style of the ancient Roman triumphal arches, such as the Arch of Constantine in Rome, and later memorial arches; it is often compared to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and the Gateway of India in Mumbai. Following the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971, a structure consisting of a black marble plinth with a reversed rifle, capped by a war helmet and bounded by four eternal flames, was built beneath the archway. This structure, called Amar Jawan Jyoti (Flame of the Immortal Soldier), has since 1971 served as India's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The India Gate is counted amongst the largest war memorials in India and every Republic Day, the Prime Minister visits the Gate to pay their tributes to the Amar Jawan Jyoti, following which the Republic Day parade starts. India Gate is often a location for civil society protests, and is popular with tourists.
History
The India Gate was part of the work of the Imperial War Graves Commission, which came into existence in December 1917 under the British Raj rule for building war graves and memorials to soldiers who were killed in the First World War. The foundation stone of the Gate, then called the All India War Memorial, was laid on 10 February 1921, at 4:30 p.m., by the visiting Duke of Connaught in a ceremony attended by officers and men of the Imperial Indian Army, Imperial Service Troops, the Commander-in-Chief, and Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy. On the occasion, the Viceroy is reported to have said, "The stirring tales of individual heroism, will live forever in the annals of this country", and that the memorial which was a tribute to the memory of heroes, "known and unknown", would inspire future generations to endure hardships with similar fortitude and 'no less valour'. The Duke also read out a message from the King, which said, "On this spot, in the central vista of the Capital of India, there will stand a Memorial Archway, designed to keep", in the thoughts of future generations, "the glorious sacrifice of the officers and men of the Indian Army who fought and fell". During the ceremony, the Deccan Horse, 3rd Sappers and Miners, 6th Jat Light Infantry, 34th Sikh Pioneers, 39th Garhwal Rifles, 59th Scinde Rifles (Frontier Force), 117th Mahrattas, and 5th Gurkha Rifles. The land was owned by contractor Sir Sobha Singh who helped construct large tracts of New Delhi and was the primary contractor.
Ten years after the foundation stone's laying on 12 February 1931, the memorial was inaugurated by the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, who, on the occasion, said "those who after us shall look upon this monument may learn in pondering its purpose something of that sacrifice and service which the names upon its walls record." In the decade between the laying of foundation stone of the memorial and its inauguration, the rail-line was shifted to run along the Yamuna River, and the New Delhi Railway Station was opened in 1926. The Gate, which is illuminated every evening from 7 o’clock until 9:30 hrs, today serves as one of Delhi's most important tourist attractions. Cars used to travel through the gate until it was closed to traffic. The Republic Day Parade starts from Rashtrapati Bhavan and passes around the India Gate. The India Gate is often a location for civil society protests, including demonstrations in response to the 2011 anti-corruption movement. In 2017, the India Gate was twinned with the Arch of Remembrance in Leicester, England, another Lutyens war memorial, following a very similar design but on a smaller scale. In a ceremony, India's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom laid a wreath at the arch in Leicester and the British High Commissioner to India laid one at the India Gate.
Design and structure
The memorial gate was designed by Edwin Lutyens, who was not only the main architect of New Delhi but also a member of the Imperial War Graves Commission and one of Europe's foremost designers of war graves and memorials. He designed sixty-six war memorials in Europe, including the highly regarded Cenotaph in London in 1919, the first national war memorial erected after World War I, for which he was commissioned by David Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister. The memorial in New Delhi, like the Cenotaph in London, is a secular memorial, free of religious and "culturally-specific iconography such as crosses". Lutyens according to his biographer, Christopher Hussey, relied on the "elemental mode", a style of commemoration based on a "universal architectural style free of religious ornamentation".
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