For children: How the national emblem of a free India came to be

It was the morning of 22 July 1947.

Members of India’s newly elected Constituent Assembly were getting ready for one of their many lively debates. There were 299 of them, and they were drafting independent India’s very own, brand new Constitution.

The members of this Assembly had gathered in a building that was, at the time, called Council House. (Council House became our Parliament building post-Independence, and was the seat of the Legislature, till 2023.) It had been built and inaugurated just twenty years earlier by the British after they moved their capital from Calcutta (now Kolkata) to New Delhi. The imposing new buildings laid out across Raisina Hill by architects Edward Lutyens and Herbert Baker were designed to project imperial power, to reflect the might of the British.

When these monumental structures were planned for the new capital city of New Delhi, the cost was initially estimated to be 4-5 million pounds. Due to the delays caused by World War II, eventually the cost was 10 million pounds! In today’s value, this would be approximately 819 million pounds, or almost 91 billion rupees. Evidently, the British believed it was a worthwhile investment since they thought they would govern India forever from these buildings!

But just twenty…

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