[4] The Duke also read out a message from the King, which said, "On this spot, in the central vista of the Capital of India, there will stand a Memorial Archway, designed to keep", in the thoughts of future generations, "the glorious sacrifice of the officers and men of the Indian Army who fought and fell".

[5][6] Ten years after the foundation stone's laying on 12 February 1931, the memorial was inaugurated by Lord Irwin, who, on the occasion, said "those who after us shall look upon this monument may learn in pondering its purpose something of that sacrifice and service which the names upon its walls record.

"[7] In the decade between the laying of foundation stone of the memorial and its inauguration, the rail-line was shifted to run along the Yamuna River, and the New Delhi Railway Station was opened in 1926.

[9][10][11] In 2017, the India Gate was twinned with the Arch of Remembrance in Leicester, England, another Lutyens war memorial, following a very similar design but on a smaller scale.

The India Gate, which has been called a "creative reworking of the Arc de Triomphe" has a span of 30 feet (9.1 m) across the larger opening and lies on the eastern axial end of Kingsway, present-day Kartavya Path, the central vista and main ceremonial procession route in New Delhi.

[13] The 42-metre-tall (138 ft) India Gate stands on a low base of red Bharatpur stone and rises in stages to a huge cornice moulding above a frieze with sunburst motifs.

[citation needed] 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.

[15][16] In the autumn of 1930, Jagatjit Singh, the Maharaja of Kapurthala State, organized an appeal amongst the Indian princely rulers to erect a statue of King-Emperor George V in New Delhi to commemorate the sovereign's recent recovery from sepsis.

[17] As originally conceived, the statue would have depicted the monarch in marble riding in a howdah atop a red stone elephant; a canopy was not then included in the design.

[19] An 18.75 feet (5.72 m) tall marble statue of the King-Emperor wearing his Delhi Durbar coronation robes and Imperial State Crown, bearing the British globus cruciger and sceptre, was placed atop the pedestal, which bore the Royal Coat of Arms and the inscription GEORGE V R I, the "R I" designating him as 'Rex Imperator' or 'King Emperor'.

The canopy was topped by a gilded Tudor Crown and bore the Royal Cyphers of George V,[21] with the completed monument intended to "mark the loyalty and attachment of the Ruling Princes and Chiefs of India to the Person and Throne of the King-Emperor.

[21] With increasing pressure from Socialist members of Parliament, then-Deputy Minister Home Affairs Lalit Narayan Mishra stated in May 1964 that all British statuary would be removed from the national capital by 1966.

[20] Efforts to move the statue to a Delhi park were strongly opposed by the nationalist Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which then held power in the city.

On 8 September 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the newly made statue of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose near the India Gate.

Amar Jawan Jyoti, or the flame of the immortal soldier, is a structure consisting of black marble plinth, with reversed rifle, capped by war helmet, bound by four urns, each with the permanent light (jyoti) from compressed natural gas flames,[27] erected under the India gate to commemorate Indian soldiers martyred in the war of the liberation of Bangladesh in December 1971.