As we remember Jallianwala Bagh massacre that happened 106 years ago on April 13, 1919, let's on this occasion also remember other historic sites associated with our freedom movement. Read about 11 landmarks which were significant to the freedom struggle.
This quiet garden, with its bullet marks, stands as a silent testimony to the atrocities of the British against their Indian subjects. Here on April 13, 1919, British Indian Army soldiers opened fire on an unarmed gathering, killing people indiscriminately. The firing was said to have lasted for about 10 minutes andt killed, by some accounts, over 1,500 people.
More of a walled city, originally it was just a brick fort under the reign of the Rajputs. A Ghaznavid force captured it in 1080 AD. Later Sikandar Lodi became the first Sultan of Delhi to shift to Agra & rule from here. The fort was the site of a battle during the First War of Independence in 1857.
Gandhi Smriti or Birla House was where Mahatma Gandhi spent his last days before being assassinated on January 30, 1948. The Birla business family house was acquired by the government in 1971 and opened as a museum August 15, 1973. View the room in which the Mahatma lived. Take a walk on the grounds where he was shot, where Martyr's Column now stands.
Designed by British architect Henry Irwin, the majestic Viceregal Lodge was the official summer residence of the viceroys and governor generals of India. It now houses the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies but was the venue of the historic meetings between the colonial administration & Indian leaders and the unfortunate venue where the Partition policy was finalised.
Located in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, it was perhaps the most infamous of prisons of the British Raj. Rebels and dissidents fighting the British were packed off to this jail. It's most famous inmates included Batukeshwar Dutt and Veer Savarkar among others.
Constructed in memory of Indian soldiers who died in World War I and the Afghan Wars, India Gate, set within lush green lawns, with its 42-m-high canopy, is best known for its eternal flame in the memory of the Unknown Soldier or Amar Jawan Jyoti.
Mahatma Gandhi established his first ashram in Kochrab, Ahmedabad in 1915. It shifted to the current site, along the banks of the Sabarmati, in June 1917, where he experimented with farming, animal husbandry, cow breeding, khadi. The Sabarmati Ashram remained Gandhi's home until 1930 and the centre of the ideology of Satyagraha that would eventually set India free.
The beating retreat ceremony, held since 1959 every evening before sunset, at the border of India and Pakistan, involves a loud parade as infantrymen from each side open the gates, lowers his country's flag, shakes the other's hand brusquely, closes the gates. Visitors from both sides gather to watch what British actor Michael Palin describes as a display of 'carefully choreographed contempt'.
The temple in a wee coastal town in Gujarat -- attached to the 220-year-old house where Mahatma Gandhi was born -- is a memorial to him and his wife, Kasturba. Kirti Mandir upholds a principle that was close to the Mahatma's heart -- secularism.
Located about 13 km from Gandhi Smriti, Raj Ghat is the final resting place of Mahatma Gandhi. A memorial in black marble, the place embodies the tenets of peace that Gandhi so enlightenedly preached all his life.
The 17th-century palace of Shah Jahan's new capital Shahjahanabad, it remained the capital of the Mughal Empire till 1857 when the British Indian government exiled Bahadur Shah Zafar. Over the centuries it has been a silent witness to the many Indian power struggles. Visit if only to admire its architectural brilliance or witness the PM addressing the nation from its ramparts.