India Gate

Lutyens, Sir Edwin: All India War Memorial arch

India Gate, official name Delhi Memorial, originally called All-India War Memorial, monumental sandstone arch in New Delhi, dedicated to the troops of British India who died in wars fought between 1914 and 1919. India Gate, which is located at the eastern end of the Rajpath (formerly called the Kingsway), is about 138 feet (42 metres) in height.

India Gate

India Gate is one of many British monuments built by order of the Imperial War Graves Commission (later renamed Commonwealth War Graves Commission). The architect was Sir Edwin Lutyens, an Englishman who designed numerous other war memorials and was also the principal planner of New Delhi. The cornerstone was laid in 1921 by the duke of Connaught, third son of Queen Victoria. Construction of the All-India War Memorial, as it was originally known, continued until 1931, the year of the formal dedication of New Delhi as the capital of India.

Lutyens declined to incorporate pointed arches or other Asian motifs in his design but strove instead for classical simplicity. The result is often described as similar in appearance to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. On the rooftop above the archway is a broad shallow domed bowl that was intended to be filled with flaming oil on ceremonial occasions. No fires have been set on the rooftop in recent years, but four eternal flames are now sheltered at the base of the structure. The flames demarcate the Amar Jawan Jyoti, a small monument that has served as India’s tomb of the unknown soldier since 1971.

Inscribed above the archway, in English, is the following dedication:

MCMXIV India MCMXIX

To the dead of the Indian armies who fell and are honoured

in France and Flanders, Mesopotamia and Persia, East Africa, Gallipoli and elsewhere

in the Near and the Far East and in sacred memory also of those whose names are here

recorded and who fell in India on the north west frontier and during the Third Afghan War.

Most of the place-names in the dedication were theatres of operation in World War I, but the Third Anglo-Afghan War is also singled out. The names of individual Indian soldiers—more than 13,000 of them, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission—are inscribed in smaller letters on the monument.