India Gate

India Gate, monumental sandstone arch in New Delhi, dedicated to the troops of British India who died in wars fought between 1914 and 1919. Located at the eastern end of the Kartavya Path (formerly called Rajpath), India Gate is about 138 feet (42 meters) in height.

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 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, but no fires have been set on the rooftop in recent years.

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Britannica Quiz

Explore India Quiz

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

In 1972 the Amar Jawan Jyoti, or the eternal flame, was inaugurated under the arch of India Gate alongside an inverted bayonet with a soldier’s helmet, honoring the soldiers who lost their lives in the India-Pakistan War of 1971. Three years after the National War Memorial was created in an area 400 meters east of India Gate in 2019, the Amar Jawan Jyoti was merged with the eternal flame of the Memorial. Republic Day festivities begin each year with the prime minister of India laying a wreath at the Amar Jawan Jyoti.

In addition to being a site through which the Republic Day parade passes each year on January 26, India Gate is also a popular tourist spot.