With the announcement of the construction of a National War Memorial and Museum at India Gate and Princes’ Park, a long-pending demand for a war memorial in the heart of Delhi will be met.

India has many war memorials, mostly erected and maintained by the armed forces to remember their fallen brethren, but there are a few being run by the civilians too.

Unlike many countries of South America or Africa, the Indian armed forces did not emerge out of the war of independence which was led by the Congress party under Gandhi, Nehru and Patel. The armed forces are a legatee of the British. The proposed war memorial at India Gate signals continuity with the British legacy of the Indian armed forces.

… War memorials were, historically, constructed to commemorate great military victories by the rulers but the dead were scarcely remembered. As former military officer and academic Anit Mukherjee has pointed out, it was only