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ABSTRACT
This paper traces the colonial and postcolonial histories of one of India’s most iconic structures, New Delhi’s All-India War Memorial. Designed and built by Edwin Lutyens immediately after the Great War, the memorial commemorated both Indian soldiers who had died in defence of the empire and the reason for such human sacrifice. As such the memorial reaffirmed and celebrated Britain and India’s unbreakable imperial bond, now strengthened by the fiery crucible of war. After independence in 1947, India took ownership of the memorial by renaming it India Gate to symbolise the country’s transition from what it had been to what it was becoming through India’s passion to be free. In the process, the memorial was re-evaluated and re-imagined in ways that transformed this site of unwelcome colonial memory into one of India’s most important symbols of national renewal. And yet this new interpretation remained as highly contested and problematic as its original colonial meaning. While the memorial became a site of national cohesion for many, it also perpetuated a colonial politics of division along communal (religious) and inter-communal (caste) lines that has eroded a sense of well-being and security for significant sections of the Indian community. Today, India Gate serves as a symbol of both national renewal and national fragmentation.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the archivists, librarians and staffs at the British Library, the National Archives of Britain, the School of Oriental and African Studies and the London School of Economics and Political Sciences Library.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Scholars have long been interested in the connections among death, commemoration and memory. See Arnold, ‘Deathscapes’; Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning; Tarlow, Bereavement and Commemoration; Bradley, Significance of Monuments; Harrison, Dominion of the Dead; Lacquer, Work of the Dead; King, Memorials; Gaffney, Aftermath; Inglis, Sacred Places.
2 Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments; Gillis, ed., Commemorations; Mosse, ‘National Cemeteries’.
3 Brown, ‘Patna’s Golgar’; Brown, ‘Inscribing Colonial Monumentality’.
4 Stoler, Imperial Debris.
5 Frykenberg, ‘Coronation Durbar of 1911’.
6 Hardinge, My Indian Years: 1910–1916, 225–246.
7 Ibid. The transfer of the capital was just the most spectacular element of a policy that created two new British-Indian provinces, Assam and Bihar, and a new chief commissionership, Assam. A major critique heard in both houses of parliament was the way in which the new policy massively expanded the size of the colonial administration and thus the cost of British rule in India.
8 George, Hansard: House of Commons Debates, 12 Dec. 1911, vol. XXXII, 2154.
9 Curzon, Hansard: House of Lords Debates, 21 Feb. 1912, 164. Irving argues that New Delhi was meant to symbolise an Indian unity made possible by the strength and good governance of the British Raj. See also Bose and Jalal, Nationalism, Democracy and Development.
10 Governor General in Council, ‘Transfer of the Seat of Government of India from Calcutta to Delhi and the Creation of a New Lieut.-Governorship at Patna’, Home Department, Public Branch, no. 448, 1923, National Archives of India, New Delhi.
11 Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj.
12 Ibid.
13 These debates can be seen in both houses of parliament during the 1912 reading of the bill (to transfer the capital) and during the 1912–14 readings of the House of Commons’ East India budget. Throughout 1912 The Times carried editorials and opinion pieces concerning India’s political evolution and the importance of the new imperial capital to its development. The Royal Society of Arts entered the debate when it sponsored a talk by Sir Bradford Leslie, a well-respected and long-serving Indian Railway engineer, titled ‘Delhi: The Metropolis of India’, 12 Dec. 1912.
14 Johnson, New Delhi. Edwin Lutyens served as the architectural member on the official town planning committee that selected a building site in the Delhi District and planned the general layout of the new imperial capital.
15 Baker, ‘The New Delhi: Eastern and Western Architecture: A Problem of Style”, The Times, 3 Oct. 1912. Irving discusses this aspect of New Delhi in detail. Irving, Indian Summer.
16 Over 1.5 million Indians served in the war.
17 Blomfield was a leading and outspoken British architect in the first half of the twentieth century.
18 Winter, Sites of Memory, 23; Crellin, ‘Some Corner’, 101. See also Irving, Indian Summer, 258; Amery, ed., Lutyens, 179–81; Skelton and Gliddon, Lutyens and the Great War.
19 ‘War Graves: Uniform Pattern Memorial Decided On’, Times, 25 Nov. 1918, 5.
20 ‘War Memorials’, Times, 9 Jan. 1919, 7.
21 Hussey, Life of Sir Edwin Lutyens.
22 Lutyens designed small memorials for families as well as large public ones such as Thiepval Memorial to the missing of the Somme in France and the Cenotaph in London.
23 Scott, Seeing Like a State, 320.
24 Of course, it need hardly be said that these principles could be and were used as justification for Britain’s economic exploitation of India.
25 ‘The New Era in India’, Times, 8 Feb. 1921, 11.
26 ‘India in the War’, Times, 15 Feb. 1921, 11.
27 Johnson, ‘A British Empire’.
28 Transcript of speeches by Major General Fabian Ware and Lord Irwin, Lahore Times, 14 Feb.1931.
29 Ibid.
30 Engraved in stone, the placards are located on the east-facing sides of the two Secretariats, which abut the main government intersection.
31 India received independence on 15 Aug. 1947. From that date until Jan. 1950 a Constituent Assembly governed the country and drafted a new constitution. India became a sovereign republic on 26 Jan. 1950.
32 Letter from A. C. B. Symon, Deputy High Commissioner for India, to Sir Paul Patrick, Commonwealth Relations Office, 21 Sept.1948, DO 142/255, vol. I, ‘Future of Memorials, etc. in India and Pakistan’, The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA).
33 Lala Onkar Nath, ‘Future of Memorials in India and Pakistan’, DO 142/256, DO 142/256 vol. II, TNA.
34 Ibid.
35 Letter from A. C. B. Symon, Deputy High Commissioner for India, to Sir Paul Patrick, Commonwealth Relations Office, 21 Sept. 1948, DO 142/255, vol. I, ‘Future of Memorials, etc. in India and Pakistan’, TNA.
36 Ibid. In multiple instances, Britain was forced to swallow its pride. As just one example, the Delhi Mutiny Memorial’s epitaph, which originally praised those who put down the 1857 mutiny, was replaced by a new epitaph that paid ‘homage to those who laid down their lives in the struggle for independence’. See Future of Memorials in India, Part II, ‘Mutiny Memorial Epitaph to Be Changed Soon’, DO 142/256, TNA.
37 Goswami, Producing India.
38 Government of India Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, The 4th Year. The Ministry of Information published an annual summary of government decisions and activities in the first years of Indian independence. The intention was to bring government closer to the people.
39 Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘Independence Resolution/Framing of the Constitution,’ speech to the Constituent Assembly, 13 December 1946, in Mushirul Hasan, Nehru’s India: Select Speeches (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
40 Hasan, Nehru’s India.
41 Nehru, ‘Independence Resolution/Framing of the Constitution,’ in Hasan, Nehru’s India.
42 Nehru, ‘The National Flag,’ speech to the Constituent Assembly, 22 July 1947, in Hasan, Nehru’s India.
43 Nair, Changing Homelands; Hasan, Inventing Boundaries; Talbot and Singh, The Partition of India; Khan, The Great Partition.
44 Nehru, ‘Travails of Partition’.
45 Along with Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj and Said, Culture and Imperialism, see Mehta, Liberalism and Empire; Hall, Civilising Subjects.
46 Reserved seats were centrally important to the 1909 Indian Councils Act, the 1919 Government of India Act, and the 1935 Government of India Act, Britain’s last significant political reform. See Muldoon, Empire, Politics; Bridge, Holding India to the Empire; Moore, Crisis of Indian Unity.
47 Hasan, Inventing Boundaries.
48 India Record, vol. 1, no. 22, 2 June 1949, London: High Commissioner for India Public Relations Department, India House. The India Record was a weekly government publication issued by the Indian High Commission in London. It traced political happenings, decisions and events in newly independent India.
49 Hasan, Nehru’s India.
50 Nehru, Speech to the Constituent Assembly, 8 November 1948, in Hasan, Nehru’s India.
51 India Record, 1, no. 22, 2 June 1949.
52 Government of India Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, The 4th Year.
53 India Record, 2, no. 5, 2 Feb. 1950.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 Lok Sabha Debates, vol. XVIII, no. 9, 21 Aug. 1958, 2057–59; Lok Sabha Debates, XXII, 24 Nov. 1958, 1187–88; Lok Sabha Debates, XXV, no. 4, 12 Feb. 1959, 558–60; Lok Sabha Debates, XXIV, no. 27, 8 Sept. 1959, 6846–48; Lok Sabha Debates, vol. XLV, no. 13, 18 Aug. 1960, 3121–22; Lok Sabha Debates, vol. XVII, no. 45, 18 Apr. 1963, 10402; Lok Sabha Debates, vol. XX, no. 28, 3302; Lok Sabha Debates, vol. XXXI, no. 15, 8 Aug. 1969, 62–63.
57 Lok Sabha Debates, vol. XXXIV, no. 16, 28 Sept. 1964, 4003–04; Lok Sabha Debates, vol. XLVIII, no. 18, 29 Nov. 1965, 4287; Lok Sabha Debates, vol. LII, no. 24, 21 March 1966, 6667–72; Lok Sabha Debates, vol. LVII, no. 1, 25 July 1966, 76–77; Lok Sabha Debates, vol. I, no 7, 27 March 1967, 959; Lok Sabha Debates, vol. III, no 5, 29 May 1967, 1378–79; Lok Sabha Parliamentary Debates, vols XI–XXII, 1 Sept. 1972, 86–87.
58 Lok Sabha Debates, vol. LII, no. 24, 21 March 1966, 6670.
59 Lok Sabha Debates, vol. XV, no. 46, 17 May 1972, 20–28.
60 The date also coincides with the Indian National Congress’ declaration of Purna Swaraj (complete self rule) in 1930.
61 The annual parade began in 1953.
62 Kidambi, Making of an Indian Metropolis.
63 Ratna Bhushan, ‘India Gate: India’s Single Largest Ice-cream Selling Point’, The Economic Times, 3 Apr. 2010.
64 Ibid. One lakh is equal to Rs 100,000.
65 Ruhi Bhasin, ‘DUAC (Delhi Urban Art Commission) Shoots down Proposal to Screen 3D clips on India Gate’, Indian Express, 27 July 2014. The DUAC relented after government threatened to take the show to Mumbai.
66 Staff writer, ‘Laser Show Planned at India Gate in October’, The Times of India, 3 Sept. 2015.
67 Saloni Bhatia, ‘Banta and Indian Gate for Gunjan Utreja’, The Times of India, 18 Nov. 2014.
68 Garima Sharma and Aarushi Nigam, ‘B’wood Wants India Gate’, The Times of India, 22 May 2010.
69 Ibid.
70 Alley, ‘Gandhiji on the Central Vista’.
71 Ibid. Charles Sargeant Jagger, a talented war memorial sculptor, designed the memorial.
72 Nanda, Gandhi and His Critics .
73 Trevor Fishlock, ‘Not for Gandhi, This Parade’, The Times, 31 Jan.1981, 12.
74 See Sisson, War and Secession; Zaheer, The Separation of East Pakistan.
75 Stoler, Imperial Debris.
76 Staff writer, ‘Docs Block Traffic Near India Gate’, The Times of India, 19 Feb. 2011.
77 Jason Burke, ‘Anna Hazare’s Anti-Corruption Protest Sees Delhi Signal Compromise’, The Guardian, 23 Aug. 2011.
78 Aesha Datta, ‘India Gate Turns into a War Zone as Protests Swell’, The Hindu, 23 Dec. 2012.
79 Barthwal, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’; Tiwari, ‘Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Policy’; Sharma, A Restatement of Religion.
80 Dalits occupy the lowest rung of the Hindu caste system and are seen by Hindus as horribly impure both physically and spiritually. Such was their low social status that even Jawaharlal Nehru, who hated the notion of reserved seats for minorities in India’s parliament, believed it was an unavoidable policy for this group.
81 It is impossible to give an extensive list of anti-Dalit and anti-Muslim attacks, but the following news stories provide a sense of the degree of the problem. John Lancaster, ‘In Rumour of Cow’s Death, A Reason to Kill: Hindu Lynching of Five Rekindles National Debate in India over Faith and Culture’, Washington Post, 29 Oct. 2002; Rhys Blakely, ‘“Untouchable” Boy Is Murdered over Love Letter to Girl’, The Times, 21 Nov. 2008; Christopher Thomas, ‘Hindus Set Fire to Sleeping Muslims: India’, The Times, 9 Jan. 1993; Edward A. Gargan, ‘Hindu Attacks on Muslims Rip Bombay’s Social Fabric’, New York Times, 7 Feb. 1993.
82 Correspondent, ‘Cops Prevent Candlelight Vigil at India Gate’, The Hindu, 26 Feb. 2016.
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid.
86 Kritika Sharma Sebastian, ‘Umar Khalid Not a Practising Muslim’, The Hindu, 19 Feb. 2016.
87 Ibid.
88 Staff writer, ‘My Name Is Umar and I Am Not a Terrorist: JNU Student Umar Khalid’, Afternoon Voice (India), 22 Feb. 2016.
89 Correspondent, ‘Cops Prevent Candlelight Vigil at India Gate’, The Hindu, 26 Feb. 2016.