IGNCA

Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi (IGNCA) ( Devanagari: इन्दिरा गांधी राष्ट्रीय कला केन्द्र) is a premier government-funded arts organization in India. It is an autonomous institution under the Union Ministry of Culture. It was established in the memory of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, with Kapila Vatsyayan as its founding director.

The IGNCA was launched on 19 November 1985 by Prime Minister Shri Rajiv Gandhi at a function where the symbolism of the components was clearly articulated at different levels. The elements - fire, water, earth, sky and vegetation - were brought together. Five rocks from five major rivers - Sindhu (Indus), Ganga, Kaveri, Mahanadi and the Narmada (where the most ancient ammonite fossils are found) were composed into sculptural forms. These remain at the site as reminders of the antiquity of Indian culture and the sacredness of her rivers and rocks. In a simulated pool, the first of the principles of vegetation, the lotus bloomed. Rajiv Gandhi floated lighted lamps on the water at the inauguration. The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts Trust was constituted and registered at New Delhi on 24 March 1987.

The founder trustees of IGNCA were Shri Rajiv Gandhi, Shri R. Venkataraman, Shri P.V. Narasimha Rao, Smt. Pupul Jayakar, the Finance Minister of 1987, Shri H. Y. Sharada Prasad and Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan.

The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, established in memory of Smt. Indira Gandhi, is visualised as a centre encompassing the study and experience of all the arts—each form with its own integrity, yet within a dimension of mutual interdependence, interrelated with nature, social structure and cosmology.

This view of the arts, integrated with, and essential to the larger matrix of human culture, is predicated upon Smt. Gandhi's recognition of the role of the arts as essential to the integral quality of person, at home with himself and society. It partakes of the holistic worldview so powerfully articulated throughout Indian tradition, and emphasized by modern Indian leaders from Mahatma Gandhi to Rabindranath Tagore.

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