Every year at 11 am on January 30, Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary, the President lays a wreath at Rajghat. The Vice President of India, the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister and other dignitaries, too, pay floral tributes, after which a two-minute silence is observed to pay homage to those who sacrificed their lives during India’s freedom. This is followed by the Indian Army band playing the Last Post, a solemn British military bugle call to honour fallen soldiers.

Though the two-minute silence and the bugle call is a January 30 ritual, it was only in 1955 that the tradition began and the day came to be observed as Martyrs’ Day. Documents released a few months ago on the Nehru Archive, a digital library of the writings and speeches of India’s first Prime Minister, show that it all began with a letter that Field Marshal K M Cariappa, then High Commissioner of India to Australia and New Zealand, wrote to Nehru in 1954.

In his letter dated May 14, 1954, Cariappa wrote that a minute’s silence should be observed on January 26, Republic Day, in the memory of those who sacrificed their lives for the country’s freedom. Cariappa also suggested that the........

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