NEW PARLIAMENT AND MEMORIES OF THE OLD

On February 12, 1921, the British Duke of Connaught set the cornerstone for Parliament House, declaring that it would serve as a “symbol of India’s rebirth to yet higher destinies”, 26 years before India attained independence.

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It took six years for the construction work of the Parliament House to complete. The then viceroy and governor-general of India, Lord Irwin, inaugurated the Indian Parliament during its opening ceremony on 18 January 1927. Designed by British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker in 1912-1913 as part of their wider mandate to construct a new administrative capital city for India, the Parliament of India was originally called the House of Parliament. 

The old Parliament, which has been around for a century, is the shrine of Indian democracy. On April 8, 1929, rebels Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt shook the old Parliament, which was ruled by the British Raj. The Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA)’s message was printed on red flyers that the two freedom fighters dropped from the Visitors’ Galleries. When Sir John Allsebrook Simon and other people were in the Central Legislative Assembly, Singh and Dutt detonated bombs. Strong protests against the Simon Commission spread throughout the nation, and “Simon Go Back” emerged as one of the most potent catchphrases of pre-Independent India.