India Gate

India Gate

Subject – Art and Culture

Context – The government has put out the eternal flame of the Amar Jawan Jyoti underneath India Gate and merged it with the one instituted at the National War Memorial in 2019 a few hundred meters away.

Concept –

• The India Gate, All India War Memorial, as it was known earlier, was built by the British in 1931. It was erected as a memorial to around 90,000 Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army, who had died in several wars and campaigns till then.
• India Gate, formerly known as the All-India War Memorial, was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and inaugurated by Lord Irwin, then Viceroy of India, in 1931. It was erected as a memorial to around 90,000 Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army, who had died in several wars and campaigns till then.
  • The foundation stone of India’s largest war graves and memorials to soldiers killed in the First World War was laid down on 10 February 1921 by the Duke of Connaught.
• The names of more than13,000 dead soldiers are mentioned on the 42-m-tall memorial, built in an architectural style that is often compared to the ArcdeTriomphe in Paris.
• It stands as a memorial to 90,000 soldiers of the British Indian Army who died in between 1914 and 1921 in the First World War, in France, Flanders, Mesopotamia, Persia, East Africa, Gallipoli and elsewhere in the Near and the Far East, and the Third Anglo-Afghan War.
• The Amar Jawan Jyoti was built under its arch to commemorate India’s victory in the Indo-Pak War of 1971.
• The structure is inspired by the 18th century Mahabalipuram pavilion and had statue of King George V until 1947.