Extinguishing or Moving Flames? Remaking the Historical Symbols of New Delhi

Over the past few years, Narendra Modi’s government has begun to introduce a number of sweeping physical changes in New Delhi. A majority of these steps represent a wide architectural makeover, while a few are small or even ornamental. The former include, among others, the construction of a new parliament building, and the demolition of a dozen structures, including the National Museum, to find newer homes for them and erect newer government buildings in their places.

The feasibility of such changes can be discussed in pragmatic terms. For instance, it is argued that the old parliament building will be unable to house all the necessary lawmakers once their numbers are increased as per mandated reforms. And yet these larger changes have an additional symbolical value to them as well – all of these modifications, taken together, push the legacy of the British colonial period back into the shadows.

This indeed appears to be one of the current government’s goals. The costly reconstruction of such public buildings is accompanied by the changing of imagery and historical references that are embedded architecturally in them. Sometimes, quite literally, what is being changed is the tone: For instance, the band at a military ceremony held annually in New Delhi, Beating Retreat, will now cease to play the Christian hymn “Abide With Me” and will shift to a patriotic song in Hindi, “Ae Mere Watan ke Logo” (“Oh, the People of my Country!”). In recent weeks, the focus of national debate in India shifted to such symbolical moves, as two new changes were  announced.

On January 21, 2022, it was announced that the flame that represented fallen Indian soldiers at India Gate will be moved to a new site, the National War Memorial, which was opened in 2019, where it is to be “merged” with another such flame. On the same day, it was also announced that the empty pavilion that stands in front of the India Gate will now house a statue of Subhash Chandra Bose, an Indian freedom fighter who was also an ally of Germany and Japan in World War II.

Both announcements immediately caused controversy. This time, however, I do not expect either controversy to cause lasting divides. Despite being critical of Modi’s party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and his nationalist organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in the past, in this case I am of the opinion that in the end these new changes will mostly be understood as banishing the ghost of colonialism, and thereby largely accepted.

As of now, a great number of structures in the government areas of Delhi have been standing since the late colonial period, when a new capital for British India, New Delhi, was built. India Gate, in the center of this zone, is a construction architecturally modeled on the Parisian Arc de Triomphe and it is a memorial to the nearly 100,000 Indian soldiers who died while serving in the British army up to 1921 (when the construction of India Gate began). In 1972, after the 1971 war in which India helped Bangladesh achieve independence from Pakistan, a small structure was added underneath the arc to commemorate the recently fallen Indian soldiers. Until now, its central piece was the Amar Jawan Jyoti, the Flame of the Immortal Soldier, which has not been extinguished since its lighting. The newly built National War Memorial is, in turn, a small monument intended to commemorate all Indian soldiers who died in combat since the country gained independence in 1947.

The decision to move the flame from India Gate to the National War Memorial has indeed found both supporters and critics. Naresh Fernandes, an editor at Scroll.in, considers it to be “part of the Hindutva’s [Hindu nationalism’s] war on India’s past,” a desacralization of the monument at India Gate, and an attempt to “create the illusion that the country was suspended in complete stasis until the Narendra Modi government came to power.” In other words, that Modi’s government is creating new buildings and new symbols to overshadow the work of earlier governments. Contrary to this, Arjun Subramaniam, a former soldier and a historian of the Indian military, considers the move an “inclusive gesture” as the new monument, National War Memorial, will finally provide a place to represent and name “every single Indian soldier, sailor and airman who has been killed in action in the line of duty.”

One may have doubts about what the “merging” of the flames really means, but this is, after all, a matter of our reading of the symbolic. It can be argued that since people decide how to read symbols, it could have been announced that India Gate would now symbolize all fallen soldiers (instead of a decision to build a new war memorial entirely); the inscription on it could have been changed to declare this, just like an addition was made to it in 1972; and the flame could have been kept there with new symbolic meaning. Yet, this rhetoric can easily be reversed: It may as well be said that since the structures are physically real but what they represent exists only in our minds, then India Gate remains locked in the minds of many as a symbol of colonial rule forever: Built by the British government to commemorate the soldiers who fought wars for the British government. This approach explains the need to create the new National War Memorial.

It should be added that there are no plans to demolish India Gate. And an empty pavilion in front of the gate is to have a new inhabitant: a statue of Subhash Chandra Bose. This is a matter of another historical-political debate. The pavilion, another British-era relic, used to host a statue of King George V. It is perhaps no surprise that it was removed in 1968, 21 years after India’s independence. Since then, the pavilion has stood empty, and was only recently announced to be the new home for Bose’s statue.

Subhash Chandra Bose (1897- 1945) was a complex figure and, internationally at least, a divisive one. A student with excellent marks, a person who underwent a perfect British education, he could have easily made a career in the civil service but, being a staunch patriot, he chose to fight the British government instead. Despite being a Communist, he chose to ally with Nazi Germany, and then with Imperial Japan (although neither of these attempts led him to any meaningful military successes). And so, despite being a politician of the radical Left, he is held in high esteem by the Hindu Right in India.

Thus, the installation of Bose’s statue will surely find critics in India – after all, when it came to choosing sides in World War II, most of the Indian independence movement had decided to take the higher moral ground: not to ally with the enemy of the enemy, the Axis powers, against the British. Bose was one of the outliers here, and a sworn political rival to the leaders of this movement, Nehru and Gandhi. And yet it would be unfair to say that his memory is cherished only by the Hindu Right. Regardless of how his alliance with the ghastly governments of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan should be viewed ethically, I think it is fair to assume that within India he is most of all seen as an independence fighter, only one who chose a different path to this goal than the political mainstream: that of violence instead of peaceful resistance.

In the end, both of these changes, not just the first, are about whether flames are being “merged” or whether they are to be “extinguished.” Other Modi government initiatives – such as proceeding with the construction of the Hindu temple in Ayodhya – are instances of standing on one side, rather trying to occupy the middle ground (the Hindu Right supports the construction, the Left is against it). In these two cases, however, the new symbols may indeed straddle the political divide to some degree: a flame to represent all fallen Indian soldiers will not create much controversy, and, despite what we may think of him in Europe or the U.S., Subhash Chandra Bose is a national hero in India.