India Gate

A wide green lawn stretches out before you, open and inviting. At the far end of it rises a single tall stone arch, standing alone against the wide sky. People gather on the grass in the cool of the evening, spreading out cloths to sit on. Children run and chase one another. Vendors wander past selling snacks, tea, and bright balloons. The great arch watches over it all, calm and plain.

This is India Gate. It is a war memorial, raised to remember soldiers who fought and died far from their homes. It stands at the eastern end of a long, straight ceremonial avenue, right in the heart of Delhi. The arch reaches about forty-two meters into the air. It is built from red and pale sandstone and from blocks of solid granite, materials chosen to last for ages.

The memorial honors the many Indian soldiers who fought and died in the First World War. They served in distant lands far from home, in France, in the Middle East, and in many other places. Tens of thousands of them never came back to their families. The arch also remembers those who were lost soon afterward, in the hard fighting along the northwest frontier.

The names of more than thirteen thousand soldiers are carved directly into the stone of the arch. They cover its surfaces in close, even rows of small letters, almost too many to take in. Walk near the base and let your eyes travel slowly over them. Each single name once belonged to a living person, with a family, a home village, and a life that was left unfinished.

The arch was designed by a noted British architect named Edwin Lutyens. He shaped a great deal of the new capital city during those years of building. He had little taste for heavy, fussy decoration. Instead he preferred clean lines and simple, solid, balanced forms. You can read that preference clearly in the plain but powerful shape of the memorial arch before you.

The foundation stone of the memorial was laid in 1921. The careful work of building it then went on for ten full years. The arch was at last completed and opened in 1931, during the very same period that the grand new capital around it was slowly taking its final shape. At the time of its opening, it carried the name of the All India War Memorial.

Lift your eyes to the very top of the arch. There you will find the single word India, carved boldly on each of its faces, with the dates of the great war set beside it. Shallow carved domes and small details break up the plainness of the upper stone. The lines remain simple throughout, yet the proportions of the whole have been judged with great care.

A short distance behind the arch stands an empty stone canopy, open on every side. Long ago, a statue of a foreign king once stood in the shade beneath it, looking out over the avenue. After India won its independence, that statue was quietly removed. The canopy itself was left standing where it was, open and empty, a calm reminder of how completely times can change.

For many long years, a steady flame burned at the base of the arch, kept alight to honor the unknown soldiers who had no marked grave. In more recent times, that flame was carried over and joined with another at a newer national war memorial built close by. The newer site records the names of soldiers who have fallen in the years since independence.

India Gate has long since become a favorite gathering place for the whole city. On the great national days, dense crowds line the avenue to watch the parades march past beneath the arch. On ordinary evenings, families come for far simpler reasons, just to sit together on the grass, to stroll slowly, and to enjoy the cooler air after the heat of the day.

When the sun finally goes down, lights switch on all around the memorial. The pale sandstone turns slowly from red to gold, and then to a soft, glowing warmth against the gathering dark. The arch seems to grow even taller in the evening light. Nearby fountains catch the changing colors and scatter them, rippling and broken, across the moving surface of the water.

Stand well back for a moment and take in the whole quiet scene. The arch is only stone, after all, shaped and stacked into place by patient human hands. And yet it carries the great weight of many thousands of lives within it. All around you, children laugh and tired families rest on the grass. Perhaps that ordinary, hard-won peace is the truest memorial of all.