The national war memorial is long overdue
Almost 70 years after independence, it is heartening that the Government of India is finally moving towards the establishment of a national war memorial that will honour and preserve the memory of the thousands of soldiers who were martyred in order to protect the sovereignty of this nation. Currently, India Gate in Delhi serves as the de facto national memorial, although technically it only commemorates Indian soldiers, who had served in the British Imperial Army and lost their lives while fighting the First World War and the Third Anglo-Afghan War. To that end, India Gate is actually a colonial project that honours Indian soldiers who died on foreign shores. That there is no national memorial that pays tribute to Indian soldiers that died in the line of duty post-independence is, indeed, a travesty. Since 1947, Indian soldiers have fought four wars against Pakistan including the Kargil conflict, battled China once in 1962, and have been involved in many counter-insurgency operations across the country. In each theatre, they have fought with valour and pride, and have raised a distinguished record. That there is no national memorial in honour of the 22,500 soldiers who have made the supreme sacrifice in the past 69 years reflects poorly on our state and society. Many other nations have a similar war memorials — think of the sprawling Australian War Memorial in Canberra which combines a shrine, a museum, and an archive. India has some war-specific memorials around the country, and there are also memorials in foreign countries to Indian soldiers who died in battle there. But these can’t substitute a national memorial.
Such a memorial has been a longstanding demand from the Armed Forces and several Governments in the past have also toyed with idea. However, for a variety of reasons, the project never made it out of the drawing board stage. For example, in 2012, then Defence Minister AK Antony in the Congress-led UPA Government had announced that the Government would build a memorial at the India Gate complex in Delhi. However, months later, the plan was scrapped after the then Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dikshit opposed any changes to the India Gate landscape. She pushed for an alternative site in the national capital which was reportedly not acceptable to the Armed Forces. In 2014, while campaigning for the lok Sabha election, Mr Narendra Modi promised a war memorial if his party came to power. But even after it did, the BJP-led NDA Government has taken more than a year to approve the project. On Wednesday, the Union Cabinet gave its clearance, almost 14 months after it received the green signal from the three Service chiefs in August 2014. On paper, the Rs500 crore project has a five-year deadline, and while it is hoped that the memorial will be completed in that period, let there be no doubt that it will be an uphill task wherein the administrators will have to bring on-board multiple stakeholders with varying views and opinions.