War memorial and museum soon

volume piano music in the background that fully involves the listener and completely relaxes him physically and mentally and the mind and the body receive a floating effect. The twin music helps one to stay with positive ideas. It rejuvenates and recharges the body and mind. Finally, the ball has started rolling for the construction of India’s first national war memorial and national war museum. Tuesday (12 September) is the last day to receive bids from civil work contractors for the war memorial and the war museum to be built at India Gate and its vicinity. These prestigious projects are already behind schedule. They are expected to cost about Rs 500 crore. The war memorial and the war museum will honour over 22,600 soldiers, who had laid down their lives in different wars and operations since Independence. The tentative inauguration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is being planned for 15 August 2018. The deadline for the war museum is said to be mid-2020. India is the only nation not to have a dedicated war museum despite having a rich war history, which include foreign battles. The Army has been maintaining about 120 regional and individual war memorials. India Gate was built by the British to honour the 84,000 Indian soldiers who were killed fighting for the Empire in the two World Wars and the Afghan campaign. The Amar Jawan Jyoti was built under the arch of India Gate after the 1971 war to honour the 3,843 soldiers who died liberating Bangladesh. The war memorial was first proposed by the armed forces 57 years ago but the project did not take off due to politico-bureaucratic apathy. However, on 7 October 2015, the Union Cabinet approved the proposal for the construction of the war memorial at the “C” Hexagon of India Gate and the war museum, most probably at nearby Princess Park complex or any other suitable site in the vicinity. Architect Yogesh Chandrahasan and his team won the first prize for the design of the war memorial. The Spa Studio View had won the first prize for the museum. The war memorial will basically be a landscape-style monument. The “retaining walls”—partly below ground-level to go with the aesthetic beauty of the Central Vista—will carry the names of all the martyrs inscribed on them. The adjoining museum will showcase India’s glorious moments in the military history. It will display the jeep mounted RCL gun that was used by Havildar Abdul Hamid to destroy three Pakistani Patton tanks in the famous battle of Asal Uttar during the 1965 war. Abdul Hamid of 4 Grenadiers and Lt-Colonel A.B. Tarapore of 17 Horse were the only two Param Vir Chakra awardees, both posthumously, in that war. Man Mohan can be contacted at rovingeditor@gmail.com