Tucked away in a corner of the busy Barakhamba Road lies a quiet building that belies its rich historical tapestry, having helped shape India’s foreign policy for the past seven decades. Standing as a testimony to a changing nation, this “Mother Institute” celebrated its 70th anniversary this May — it is the Sapru House.
Built in the art deco style with Makrana marble pillars, the Sapru House is more than just the headquarters of the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA). Diplomats, scholars and historians refer to it as a living repository of ideas, diplomacy and culture, which has stood resilient through India’s modern evolution.
For Delhi, it’s an equally important landmark building that has seen the Capital grow alongside it, as its red sandstone facade and Lutyens-inspired symmetry became symbolic of India’s blend of various architecture. The building features a stupa-like dome, entrance gateway arches and colonnaded exteriors.
As the ICWA marks 70 years at Sapru House, there is quiet pride among diplomats who work here. “We have grown with India,” said Nutan Kapoor Mahawar (IFS), an additional secretary with the ministry of external affairs, under whom the facility comes.
“Our past is rich, but our eyes are on the future, as this institute believes in collaborating with institutes from across the India and we nurture some of the smartest and brightest foreign policy scholars,” she said, adding that ICWA presently holds over 100 memorandums of understanding (MoU) with think-thanks and institutions across the world for knowledge sharing.
Inception of ICWA
Founded in 1943, four years before India’s independence, the ICWA was the country’s first independent think-tank on international affairs, established mainly by the efforts of Tej Bahadur Sapru—the liberal nationalist and opposition member in the Council of States, who lent his name to the place—and Pandit Hriday Nath Kunzru.
Sapru House, named after Sapru, who envisioned a sovereign platform for Indian foreign policy, became ICWA’s permanent home in May 1955, when the building was inaugurated by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
Former diplomat TCA Raghavan and Vivek Mishra, in their book “Sapru House: A Story of Institution-Building in World Affairs”, wrote that a fund collection drive to raise ₹10 lakh was launched to erect the iconic structure in 1949. The donors included Maharaja Yashwant Rao Holkar of Indore, who donated ₹1.5 lakh, then president Rajendra Prasad and PM Jawaharlal Nehru who donated ₹1,000 and ₹500 respectively—their salaries for a month.
According to officials, at a time when foreign policy debates were largely shaped by colonial interests, the ICWA offered a distinctly Indian perspective. Its founding members included Nehru and then foreign minister VK Krishna Menon, who believed the council could help India find its voice on the global stage. “We needed an Indian institution that would speak with both authority and independence,” Mahawar.
A cultural and diplomatic landmark
Sapru House has also incubated many influential international think tanks and institutions, said Hitesh J Rajpal, joint secretary. “Indian School of International Studies was founded here, which was later moved to Jawaharlal Nehru University, the genesis of Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA) was here… so, in nutshell, this building has nurtured a lot of important institutions,” he said.
“Subsequently, this institute held the first Asian Relation Conference in 1947, which laid the groundwork for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) later,” he said, emphasising its historical importance.
According to official records, then president of Vietnam Ho Chi Minh was felicitated at Sapru House in February 1958 and its key visitors included Rajendra Prasad, Abdul Kalam Azad and Jawaharlal Nehru, among others. In subsequent years, notable figures, such as the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese president Xi Jinping are among the facility’s visitors, delivering key lectures or taking part in important discussions about India and the world.
But Sapru House was never limited to just diplomacy. It has played host to an array of cultural events, ranging from Amrita Pritam’s poetic tribute during the felicitation of Ho Chi Minh to renowned ghazal singer Begum Akhtar’s performance in December 1964.
Turning into a venue for cultural dialogue, music recitals, literary festivals, panel discussions and art exhibitions, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, it counts poets Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’, Harivansh Rai Bachchan and Shiv Batalvi among the performers it has hosted. The ICWA clarified that these performances were not organised by them, but by organisers or poets who sought to rent their premises.
Renowned Kathak dancer Shovana Narayan, in Raghavan and Mishra’s book, said: “In the sixties and seventies, the ruling theatre were Sapru House, Ashoka Theatre and AIFACS, if any artiste was presented by either of the two namely, Ashoka and Sapru, or if by both, then one would say that the artist has arrived.”
In their book, Raghavan and Mishra, noted that after the highs of the 1960s and 70s came the fall of the 1980s and 90s. “The quality of functions declined during the 1980s and 1990s, research declined both in quantitative and qualitative terms and standards,” they wrote in their book.
Cultural activities, however, were suspended after the ICWA Act, 2001, set the tone for its purpose — to study and promote Indian and international affairs, with the venue classified as an “institute of national importance”, according to Rajpal.
The library
Among the most powerful assets of the House is the ICWA Library. Less in the public eye, it is a vast repository of over 100,000 books, journals and diplomatic records dating to pre-independence, officials said.
“We have a collection of few rare books, some dating back to the 18th century, including ‘The History of Japan’ by Engelbertus Kampfer (1727) and ‘The Himala Mountains: Rivers Jumna and Ganges’ by James Baillie Fraser (1820),” said Narendra Kumar, the librarian at ICWA.
He said that researchers and students described the library as a hidden sanctuary, a place where rare historical books offered exceptional insight and inspiration. “With its collections on non-alignment, South-South Cooperation, and India’s early foreign policy debates, it continues to serve as a vital resource for those seeking to understand the roots of India’s global outlook,” he said.
The library membership is open to a wide range of individuals, including diplomats, parliamentarians, civil servants, journalists, historians, academicians and postgraduate students in various fields.
In recent years, as India’s foreign policy has become more dynamic, the ICWA has also modernised, with digital archives, policy briefs and collaborative research across continents, the librarian said.