Parade that announced the birth of the Republic

The Republic Day Parade is now a spectacular event. Yet, perhaps, the warmth and enthusiasm, and the genuine sense of wonderment and pride, that were earlier its hallmark have reduced.

- Pavan K Varma

On Republic Day today, as the 76th Republic Day Parade rolls down the imposing Kartavya Path (earlier Raj Path), how many of you know where this celebration and Parade took place on the same day in 1950? Few eyewitnesses remain, and most, including myself, were not born then.

On January 26, 1950, the Parade took place in the grounds of a somewhat run-down building called the Irwin Amphitheatre, renamed in 1951 as the National Stadium (now the Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium). It stands next to India Gate and was built as a gift by the Maharaja of Bhavnagar in 1933, who "appropriately" named it the Irwin Amphitheatre after Lord Irwin, the former Viceroy of India, who had inaugurated New Delhi in February 1931 as the new British capital of India.