OdishaLIVE Bureau, 13th February 2017: Today is the 86th birthday of our national capital city. In 1931, on this day, New Delhi was inaugurated as the capital city of British occupied India by the then Viceroy Lord Irwin after the construction of the city completed.
Calcutta (now Kolkata) became the first capital for British East India Company since their decisive victory over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies on 23rd June 1757 in the Battle of Plassey.
The Delhi Durbar of 1911 with King George V and Queen Mary seated upon the dais (Photo Courtesy – Wikipedia)
In 1911, New Delhi replaced Calcutta as the capital of India when King George V of Great Britain visited Delhi for a Durbar, a pompous royal ceremony and decided that the city would be shaped accordingly. Calcutta, as it was called then, had served for 150 years as the Britain’s capital India.
However, Delhi was an ancient city and had been the financial and political center of many empires that had earlier ruled India. Some of the best examples of this are the reign of the Delhi Sultanate as well as the reign of the Mughals from 1649 – 1857.
One of the main reasons that were cited for the capital shift was the location of Delhi. Calcutta was situated in the eastern coastal part of the country, while Delhi was located in the northern part. The British government of India felt that ruling India from Delhi was easier and more convenient. The proposal was heartily accepted by the British Raj.
King George V and Queen Mary at the Delhi Durbar on 12th December 1911 (Photo Courtesy – Royal Fans UK)
Historians also cited another reason for this shifting. Calcutta was the literary and the commercial centre of the country. In 1905, the British sliced into two, the massive, powerful province of Bengal, which was centred on Calcutta in an attempt to weaken the opposition to their rule. The decision inflamed nationalist sentiments and lead to a call to boycott all British goods. Eventually, bombings and political assassinations took place in Calcutta.
Since Calcutta was made less than a hospitable place for them, the British were in a rush to leave Calcutta and Delhi was a natural choice for them for its historical importance. The then Viceroy of India, Lord Hardinge, stated in a letter why Britain should move its empire capital from Calcutta to Delhi. The letter was sent from Shimla to London on 25th August 1911 and addressed to the Earl of Crewe, Secretary of State for India. Hardinge highlighted the anomaly that the British governed India from Calcutta, an eastern extremity of its Indian properties. Hardinge argued that the rising importance of elected legislative bodies required Britain to find a more centrally located capital. Hardinge’s plan was approved by the first British monarch, King George V who announced the reunification of Bengal and decided to immediately move the Capital.
During the Delhi Durbar on 12th December 1911, King George V, the then ruling Emperor of India, along with Queen Mary, announced that the capital of India would be shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. Along with the announcement, the foundation stone for Coronation Park, Kingsway Camp, was also laid. It took another 20 years for architects to complete ‘New Delhi’.
The initial planning and architecture for New Delhi were done by two noted British architects Herbert Baker and Edwin Lutyens. Once the plan was sanctioned, the contract of building the city was endowed on Sobha Singh. The construction work began after the First World War and the whole construction got over by 1931. The city was finally inaugurated by the then Viceroy of India, Lord Irwin, on 13th February 1931.