Reinterpreting India Gate & its colonial glory

Around the time Edwin Lutyens, in the company of Herbert Baker, was designing the new Imperial Capital that came to be known as New Delhi, he was simultaneously designing memorials to honour those who had died serving and defending the British Empire and her colonies across the globe. In fact, Lutyens, Baker, and Reginald Blomfield, three of the most well-known architects of the time in England, were commissioned by the Imperial War Graves Commission to design memorials to the fallen soldiers during the First World War.

The India Gate, which straddles Rajpath, is one of the 66 war memorials designed by Lutyens. The structure was originally called the All India War Memorial and was part of the work of the Imperial War Graves Commission. It will be interesting to find out exactly who suggested that the All India War Memorial be located across the King’s Way (the Rajpath of today), which was a part of the new city that Lutyens was designing along with Baker, and who approved this bad copy of the Arc de Triomphe of Paris, placed in the middle of a poor man’s Champs-Élysées

The foundation stone of the memorial was laid by the Duke of Connaught on February 10, 1921. It was built to memorialise 82,000 soldiers of the Indian Army who died in the First World War (1914-1918) and the Third Anglo-Afghan War (1919) while protecting British Imperialist interests. The All India War Memorial, the India Gate of today, with about 13,200 names of Indian soldiers and a few British soldiers and officers inscribed on it was inaugurated by Lord Irwin, the then Viceroy of India on February 12, 1931.

Till 1971, the India Gate was essentially a place visited by locals and tourists in the evenings to sit on the lawns, to look at the fountains with their three bands of yellow, white, and green lights. Children ran around and badgered the elders to get them the Tricolour Cassata ice cream that could be bought from a couple of ice cream trollies parked near the canopy that had housed a statue of King George VI till 1967. There weren’t too many cars, and those who had theirs could park next to India Gate and have their ice cream.

In 1971, after the Indo-Pak war that led to the formation of Bangladesh, it was decided to create a memorial for the Immortal Soldier (Amar Jawan), and a symbolic memorial for all those soldiers who died for the country. It was erected in December 1971. Ironically, the memorial was placed beneath the central arch of the structure that was erected to memorialise soldiers who had died serving British Imperial interests. 

This is no nit-picking. Indian soldiers, employed by the Colonial masters, were recruited to defend British interests in different parts of the world. They were martyrs in the eyes of the Empire; they were not martyrs for India. This is how history is rewritten, new discourses developed, old symbols erased from public memory, new icons installed and deified. Throughout the long struggle for freedom from Imperialism, the Red Fort was our symbol. We wanted to throw out the British from the Fort, because it was from here that the symbolic leader of the rebellion, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was ousted by the British, tried for treason and exiled to Rangoon. The legend of the frail and lonely king, pining for his beloved motherland and being denied even this last wish, captured the imagination of the people. Freeing the Red Fort from the British, thus became synonymous with freedom.

The goal was to throw out the British and to replace the Union Jack with the Indian Flag. When Pandit Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, unfurled the Tricolour from the ramparts of the Red Fort, it was the realisation of a long-cherished dream. Replacing the Red Fort with India Gate as a symbol of India is symptomatic of the loss of agency by the people. The symbol of the popular uprising against foreign yolk is no longer the centrepiece of our celebration of freedom. There is a need to encourage people to cherish the symbols that inspire them to free themselves from Imperialist rule and for the will to remain free.

The author is a historian and organises the Delhi Heritage Walks for children and adults.