Editing India Gate (section)

== Design and structure ==
[[File:India Gate For Soldiers.JPG|thumb|Angled view]]
The memorial gate was designed by [[Sir Edwin Lutyens]], who was not only the main architect of New Delhi but also a member of the Imperial War Graves Commission and one of Europe's foremost designers of war graves and memorials. He designed sixty-six war memorials in Europe, including the highly regarded  [[The Cenotaph, Whitehall|Cenotaph in London]] in 1919, the first national war memorial erected after World War I, for which he was commissioned by [[David Lloyd George]], the British Prime Minister.<ref name="The History Teacher /9 April">{{cite journal |last=David A. Johnson |author2=Nicole F. Gilbertson |title=Commemorations of Imperial Sacrifice at Home and Abroad: British Memorials of the Great War |journal=The History Teacher |date=4 August 2010 |volume=43 |series=4 |pages=564–584 |url=http://www.societyforhistoryeducation.org/pdfs/Johnson_and_Gilbertson.pdf|access-date=9 April 2014}}</ref> The memorial in New Delhi, like the Cenotaph in London, is a secular memorial, free of religious and "culturally-specific iconography such as crosses". Lutyens according to his biographer, Christopher Hussey, relied on the "elemental mode", a style of commemoration based on a "universal architectural style free of religious ornamentation".
[[File:India Gate ceiling.jpg|thumb|Looking up, through the main arch]]

The India Gate, which has been called a "creative reworking of the Arc de Triomphe" has a span of {{convert|30|ft|m}} across the larger opening and lies on the eastern axial end of Kingsway, present-day Kartavya Path, the [https://centralvista.gov.in/ central vista] and main ceremonial procession route in New Delhi.<ref name="The History Teacher /9 April"/> The {{convert|42|m|ft|adj=mid|-tall}} India Gate stands on a low base of red [[Bharatpur district|Bharatpur]] stone and rises in stages to a huge [[cornice]] moulding above a [[frieze]] with [[sunburst]] motifs. The shallow domed bowl at the top was intended to be filled with burning oil on anniversaries, but this is rarely done.{{citation needed|date=September 2019}} The memorial-gate hexagon complex, with a diameter of about {{convert|625|m|ft}}, covers approximately {{cvt|306,000|m2|sqft}} in area.{{citation needed|date=September 2019}}

The India Gate structure is oblong, with a large archway on each of the four faces, but the arches on the long sides are larger and higher.  The arches on the shorter sides are blocked at the bottom, with doorways, but open higher up. Technically the four arches make the building a [[tetrapylon]]. There is a large ornament in stone above the blocked bottom of the arches on the shorter sides.  [[Molding (decorative)|Mouldings]] run around the building at the levels from which both sizes of arch rise, and the [[Keystone (architecture)|keystones]] of the arches protrude slightly. The top of the keystones on the short sides' arches touch the bottom of the moulding at the base level of the higher long sides' arches.  The ceilings and undersides of the arches are decorated with well-spaced [[coffer]]s.

=== Inscriptions ===
The cornice of the India Gate is inscribed with Imperial suns while both sides of the arch have INDIA, flanked by the dates MCMXIV ('1914'; on the left) and MCMXIX ('1919'; on the right). Below the word INDIA, in capital letters, is inscribed:
[[File:India Gate, New Delhi.jpg|thumb|290x290px|Inscription at top of the gate]]
{{blockquote|To the dead of the Indian Armies who fell and are honoured in France and Flanders, Mesopotamia and Persia, East Africa, Gallipoli and elsewhere in the Near and Far East and in Sacred Memory also of those whose names are here recorded and who fell in India on the North West Frontier and during the Third Afghan War.}}
13,313 names are engraved out of which 12,357 are Indian.{{sfnp|Chhina, Last Post. Indian War Memorials Around the World|2014|pp=78}}<ref name="DELHI MEMORIAL" /> Access to read the names on the memorial is restricted, though they can be seen on the [[Commonwealth War Graves Commission]] (CWGC) website, which lists the names with their respective date of death, unit name, regiment, place on gate where name is inscribed, location, and other information).<ref name="war Dead, India gate">{{cite web|author1=|year=|title=Find War Dead: DELHI MEMORIAL (INDIA GATE)|url=https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/search-results/?Surname=&Forename=&Initials=&ServiceNum=&Regiment=&Cemetery=DELHI+MEMORIAL+(INDIA+GATE)&CemeteryExact=true&CountryCommemoratedIn=null&Unit=&Rank=&SecondaryRegiment=&AgeOfDeath=0&DateDeathFromDay=1&DateDeathFromMonth=January&DateDeathFromYear=&DateDeathToDay=1&DateDeathToMonth=January&DateDeathToYear=&DateOfDeath=&Honours=null&AdditionalInfo=&Tab=&Page=1|access-date=3 September 2014|website=|publisher=Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC)}}</ref>