Don't battle over new war memorial; settle for the old

Along the wide octagon at Delhi's India Gate where King George's statue once stood, the government has given its approval for a Rs 100-crore war memorial. On the occasion of the Kargil Vijay Divas, a vast open stretch of land was identified by the minister of de fence Arun Jaitley, and Narendra Modi himself proposed that an international consortium of architects be invited to design the structure.
Questions are now being raised on both the location, as well as the need for such a memorial. Why does India's volunteer army require a national commemoration, ask critics. Aren't soldiers who join the army, aware of the dangers of their tasks? Isn't death the unfortunate but inevitable byproduct of war? Should there then also be memorials to fire fighters, police, private investigators, and others who face constant threat of death? What about politicians who die while serving the country or engineers who are killed for exposing fraud and graft? Death in the line of duty opens up a whole chasm of possibilities.
Obviously the soldiers who lost their lives in battle need to be remembered. But wouldn't their memory be better served in their own regiments or on their own home ground? A large contingent of soldiers from the Kumaon Regiment was killed in the Kargil War. On one of the largest parade grounds in Ranikhet, a granite memorial was erected and every year there is a sombre commemoration ceremony with full military honours.
Because of the presence of family and friends from the soldier's village, it is a touching, heartfelt ceremony.
A repeat of their names on yet another plaque in the Capital is an odd method to perpetuate remembrance.
The tendency amongst ministers and military to inflate every event to national significance is not an act of magnanimity, but one in which the government and the army itself come to be seen as heroes. When Kargil, other Pakistani wars and the China debacle are all clumped into a singular setting, the memorial becomes a national act of charity; meaningless and expensive, it gives an awkward stamp of anonymity to the event, and the person being recalled is made all the more remote by the sheer scale of the effort.
For the most part, memorials in India invite an ambivalent response. Recent history remains silent even in its most public and horrific of events. The open ground of Jallianwallah Bagh remains the only reminder of the massacre; at Tees January Marg, Gandhiji's cement footsteps are the only clue to his murder. Among other events of recent history -the Partition, the Freedom Struggle, the 1989 Sikh riots, the 2002 Gujarat riots - none figure in public space. Monumental public proclamations are unknown in a country where -but for political figures -little of public life is ever deified.
Most of the recent memorials in the West are in fact places that invoke peace. Memories are too bitter, and the idea of war is a burden hard enough to bear, certainly not celebrate. So the Vietnam memorial, though diligently noting all the names, buries the structure below ground, making a more effective statement about the futility of war itself. The names of the dead from the 911 tragedy are similarly carved in tombstones washed in water.
If the Indian army is so desperate for a public proclamation, it should perhaps consider an easier option: India Gate is itself a war memorial honouring 90,000 Indian soldiers who died during World War I and the Afghan wars. Designed as a triumphal arch, its shape is precisely in tune with the army's wish to demonstrate a soldier's `ultimate sacrifice'. What then if the names of the war dead after Independence were carved alongside others already commemorated on India Gate? Just as the Indian President moved into the house of the English Viceroy and converted Rashtrapati Bhawan to indigenous memory, a structure of such architectural and historic eminence as India Gate could become the rightful and longstanding insignia of the Indian army.
The meticulous use of its surface for all recent -and future -wars would effectively quash the irrelevant debate on the new memorial's location and to which foreign architect its design should be entrusted.
At a time when history books are being subverted, funds being directed to statues of community icons, a growing political divide and a sense of unease between religions, the government must direct its most public and visible actions to serious forms of collective appeasement. Certainly, the defence of the country is a monumental act of territorial integrity and requires remembering. But in the wide open arena of nationalism and at its centre of focus around India Gate, any large-scale structures would go against the grain of Indian eulogies. India Gate as open space still remains the most effective memorial.
The writer is a Delhi-based architect