Prime Minister Inaugurates National War Memorial

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the National War Memorial adjoining the India Gate in New Delhi. The memorial honours the fallen soldiers after Independence.

National War Memorial

• The memorial is spread over an area of approximately 40 acres.
• The memorial comprises four concentric circles, namely ‘Amar Chakra, Veerta Chakra, ‘Tyag Chakra’ and ‘Rakshak Chakra’.
• The memorial includes a central obelisk, an eternal flame and six bronze murals depicting famous battles fought by Indian Army, Air Force and Navy in Veerta Chakra gallery.
• 16 walls have been constructed in the Tyag Chakra for paying homage to the 25,942 battle casualties and their names have been inscribed on granite tablets arranged in a circular pattern, symbolizing the ancient Indian war formation ‘Chakravyuh’.
• The Rakshak Chakra the outermost one comprises of rows of more than 600 trees with each tree representing many soldiers who guard the territorial integrity of the nation round the clock.
• The National War Memorial will have a new ‘eternal flame’, the existing eternal flame at the Amar Jawan Jyoti built in 1972 in honour of soldiers who lost their lives in the 1971 India-Pakistan war will continue as it is.

Genesis of the National War Memorial

• India Gate itself is a war memorial built during the British Raj as the All India War Memorial Arch to honour the soldiers who died in the First World War (1914-1918) and the Third Anglo-Afghan War (1919).
• But there was no memorial to commemorate the sacrifice of fallen soldiers after independence.
• The proposal to set up a National War Memorial had been under consideration since the early 1970s. A Group of Ministers (GoM) in August 2012 recommended “C” Hexagon of India Gate as the appropriate location for the memorial.
• The project got sanctioned in on December 18, 2015, and actual work on it started in February 2018.
• The National War Memorial pays tribute to soldiers who laid down their lives defending the nation during the India-China war in 1962, Indo-Pak wars in 1947, 1965 and 1971, Indian Peace Keeping Force Operations in
  Srilanka and in the Kargil conflict of 1999.

After the inauguration of the National War Memorial by the Prime Minister Rose petals were showered by IAF helicopters. a fly-past in ‘Missing Man’ formation was also part of the event.

Month: Current Affairs - February, 2019