¹ House of Commons Debates (HCD), ‘East India Revenue Accounts (Indian Budget)’, col. 1883, 30 Jul. 1912.

² King, Anthony, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment (London, 1976)Google Scholar. For King, the choice of a building site for the new capital, just to the south-west of the old Mughal city of Shajahanabad on relatively undeveloped agricultural lands, allowed city planners and architects ‘free expression’ concerning ‘colonial theories of social, ethnic and occupational segregation’ (183).

³ See Frykenberg, R.E., ‘The coronation durbar of 1911’, in Frykenberg, R.E. (ed.), Delhi through the Ages: Selected Essays in Urban History, Culture and Society, in The Delhi Omnibus (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar, and Irving, Robert Grant, Indian Summer: Lutyens, Baker, and Imperial Delhi (New Haven and London, 1981)Google Scholar.

⁴ National Archives of India (NAI), Government of India Proceedings (GIP), Home Department (HD), Delhi Branch (DB), Dec. 1911, nos. 8–11, part A, letter from Lord Hardinge and his Executive Council to Lord Crewe, ‘Transfer of the seat of government from Calcutta to Delhi and the constitutional changes in Bengal’, dated 25 Aug. 1911.

⁵ NAI/GIP/HD/DB, Lord Hardinge and his Executive Council to Lord Crewe, 25 Aug. 1911. Hardinge's government realized that the Bengali Hindu majority had a legitimate political grievance against partition due to the recent passage of the Indian Councils Act of 1909 (also known as the Morley-Minto Reforms). The act expanded the number of elected seats on provincial councils but did little for Bengali Hindus whose majority had been weakened by partition.

⁶ Bose, Sugata and Jalal, Ayesha, Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy (London, 1997), 95Google Scholar.

⁷ The Government of India's support for the building project was especially evident between 1912 and 1916, under the viceroyalty of Lord Hardinge. It is clear from Hardinge's personal papers that before he left office he wanted the major government structures rising above the ground, which would make cancelling the building project extremely difficult. Fearing that the project might be cancelled, Hardinge worked hard to receive assurances that his successor, Lord Chelmsford, would continue with the building project.

⁸ Frykenberg, ‘The coronation durbar of 1911’, 235–6.

⁹ Ibid., 240. Frykenberg has written that this secrecy almost caused a constitutional crisis in Britain since parliament was not asked for advice on such a costly colonial policy. He also argues that Muslims had the most to lose with the transfer since their political ascendancy in East Bengal ended with the re-unification of the province. But Hardinge and his advisors argued that Muslim sentiment would be mollified by returning the capital to where earlier Muslim empires had chosen to locate their own.

¹⁰ NAI/GIP/HD/DB, Lord Hardinge and his Executive Council to Lord Crewe, 25 Aug. 1911. Hardinge, his executive council and the secretary of state for India carried on long discussions concerning the importance of Delhi as the traditional seat of empire in India. Also see Stephen Blake, Shajahanabad: The Sovereign City in Mughal India, 1639–1739 (Cambridge, 1991), 5–13. Blake argues that the area around Delhi had been occupied by north Indian rulers for nearly a thousand years because of its strategic location. According to Blake, the remains of at least 10 Indo-Muslim imperial capitals are present in the Delhi Triangle, a 60 square mile area.

¹¹ See Hindess, Barry, ‘The liberal government of unfreedom’, Alternatives, 26 (2001), 93–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Mehta, Uday Singh, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago, 1999)Google Scholar.

¹² Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 104.

¹³ Ibid., 105.

¹⁴ Duncan, James S., The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom (Cambridge, 1990), 4Google Scholar. Duncan shows that the social-spatial and physical-spatial relationship of objects within Kandy – a capital in southern Sri Lanka – operated as a language about Buddhist kingship.

¹⁵ Ibid., 17.

¹⁶ Ibid., 19–22.

¹⁷ King, Colonial Urban Development.

¹⁸ See Morris, Jan, Stones of Empire: The Buildings of the Raj (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar; Nilsson, Sten, European Architecture in India, 1750–1850 (London, 1968)Google Scholar; Davies, Philip, Splendours of the Raj (London, 1985)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ See Irving, Indian Summer, and Metcalf, Thomas, An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar.

²⁰ Irving, Robert Grant, ‘Bombay and imperial Delhi: cities as symbols’, in Hopkins, Andrew and Stamp, Gavin (eds.), Lutyens Abroad: The Work of Sir Edwin Lutyens outside the British Isles (London, 2002), 179Google Scholar.

²¹ Morris, Stones of Empire, 220. See also Roderick Gradidge, ‘Baker and Lutyens in South Africa, or, the road to Bakerloo’, in Hopkins and Stamp (eds.), Lutyens Abroad.

²² Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 86–101.

²³ Guha, Ranajit, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, MA, 1997)Google Scholar.

²⁴ Thomas R. Metcalf, The New Cambridge History of India, vol. III.4: Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge, 1995), and Cohn, Bernard S., Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, NJ, 1996)Google Scholar.

²⁵ Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, 1.

²⁶ Ibid., 66–112.

²⁷ Ibid., 66.

²⁸ Examples of a new approach to the colonial administration of India can be seen in the Indian Councils Act (1909), the Montagu-Chelmsford Agreement (1917) and the subsequent Government of India Act (1919), the Indian Statutory Commission (1927–30) and the three Round Table Conferences beginning in 1930 which led to the Government of India Act (1935).

²⁹ Hindess, ‘The liberal government of unfreedom’, 101.

³⁰ Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 107.

³¹ Indian Statutory Commission (ISC), Report of the Indian Statutory Commission, Volume I – Survey, Cmd 3568, 148–52.

³² Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 105.

³³ ISC, Volume I, 155–6.

³⁴ ISC, Volume I, xvi. Section 84A of the Government of India Act of 1919 authorized parliament to appoint a commission to inquire ‘into the working of the system of government, the growth of education, and the development of representative institutions in British India’.

³⁵ Morris, Stones of Empire, 84.

³⁶ See Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia. The economic and social dislocations caused not only by World War I but also by Britain's continued use of an economic philosophy that saw India as an exporter of raw materials for British manufacturers caused massive inflation and rural and urban unrest between 1919 and 1922. The shortcomings of the Government of India Act of 1919 alongside the continued use of the anti-sedition Rowlatt Act and the tragic killing of 379 Indian men, women and children in Jallianwallah Bagh park in Amritsar on 13 Apr. 1919 further exacerbated the strained relations between Britain and India.

³⁷ Ibid., 113.

³⁸ Ibid., 116.

³⁹ ISC, Volume I, xiii. Parliament formed this first and only commission after 8 rather than 10 years due to nationalist pressure. See also Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, especially pp. 116–18.

⁴⁰ Cadogan, Edward O., The Indian We Saw (London, 1931)Google Scholar. Cadogan was appointed to the Simon Commission as a conservative member. His biography, published almost immediately after his service on the commission, provides first-hand accounts of the many angry responses shown by Indians to the work of the Simon Commission.

⁴¹ Bakshi, S.R., The Simon Commission and Indian Nationalism (New Delhi, 1977)Google Scholar. See also Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia.

⁴² Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 117.

⁴³ Three round-table conferences were eventually held in London between 1931 and 1935. The Indian National Congress boycotted the first conference but more moderate Indian nationalists as well as a delegation from the Indian states attended the meetings in London. See Copland, Ian, The Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire, 1917–1947 (Cambridge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a detailed analysis of the role Indian princes played in Britain's attempt to create a federal system in India.

⁴⁴ Copland, The Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire, 90.

⁴⁵ Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 125.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 105.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 105.

⁴⁸ NAI, Foreign and Political Department (FPD), No. 131-H, 1930, ‘Invitation to ruling chiefs to attend the inauguration events.’

⁴⁹ Throughout the building project, the Viceroy's House seems to have been the focus of many of New Delhi's detractors. As Jane Ridley has shown, in The Architect and his Wife: A Life of Sir Edwin Lutyens (London, 2002), parliament members and others who disagreed with the policy of transferring the capital used Lutyens' well-known extravagance to attack the entire building project.

⁵⁰ Times, ‘The New Delhi: eastern and western architecture: a problem of style’, 3 Oct. 1912.

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Irving, ‘Bombay and imperial Delhi: cities as symbols’, 175.

⁵³ Nehru Memorial Library (NML), Chelmsford Papers (CP), letter from secretary of state to Chelmsford, 7 Apr. 1920.

⁵⁴ NML/CP, letter from secretary of state to Chelmsford, 8 Sep. 1920.

⁵⁵ Thapar, Romilla, A History of India (London, 1966), 73–5Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 279. See also Spear, Percival, Delhi: Its Monuments and History, ed. Gupta, Narayani and Sykes, Laurie (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Times of India, ‘The Dominion Columns: modeled after the style of Asoka's pillars’, 10 Feb. 1931.

⁵⁸ Irving's Indian Summer has photos that capture Indians standing on the roof of at least one Secretariat.

⁵⁹ Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge, 79.

⁶⁰ Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, 105

⁶¹ Thornton, A.P., The Imperial Idea and its Enemies: A Study in British Power (London, 1963), 359Google Scholar.

⁶² Lahore Tribune (LT), ‘Inauguration of New Delhi: dominions' sympathy for India’, 11 Feb. 1931.

⁶³ Simon, John, India and the Simon Report: A Talk by the Rt. Hon. Sir John Simon (New York, 1930), 36–7Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ LT, ‘Inauguration of New Delhi: lacks popular fervour, demonstration of whiteman's superiority’, 13 Feb. 1931.

⁶⁵ Ibid.

⁶⁶ Times, ‘The inaugural ceremony: dominions' gift, four pillars of fellowship’, 11 Feb. 1931.

⁶⁷ HCD, col. 1890, 7 Aug. 1913.

⁶⁸ Spear, Percival, Twilight of the Mughals (Cambridge, 1951), 35Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 64.

⁷⁰ See Dalrymple, William, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 (London, 2007), especially 320–62.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Dalrymple, The Last Mughal, 4.

⁷² Ibid., 355.

⁷³ King, Colonial Urban Development, 210.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 210.

⁷⁵ An interesting side note to the pageant of transportation is that in the early years of the New Delhi building project, Harcourt Butler, an Executive Council Member under the Hardinge government, had complained that the construction of the new capital was drawing too much money away from more important infrastructural developments such as rail and roads (NML, Hardinge Papers, letter from Harcourt Butler to Lord Hardinge, 3 Mar. 1914).

⁷⁶ Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 82.

⁷⁷ Guha, Dominance without Hegemony, 3.

⁷⁸ Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 82.

⁷⁹ Ferguson, Niall, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London, 2003), 170Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ Bose and Jalal, Modern South Asia, 82–3

⁸¹ According to Bose and Jalal, almost 60,000 Indian soldiers died fighting for the British Empire in Europe and the Middle East, ibid., 102.

⁸² David Crellin, ‘“Some corner of a foreign field”: Lutyens, empire and the sites of remembrance’, in Hopkins and Stamp (eds.), Lutyens Abroad, 103.

⁸³ Ibid.

⁸⁴ NAI/HD File No. 66, Public 1931.

⁸⁵ Winter, Jay, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, 1995), 23Google Scholar, and Crellin, ‘“Some corner of a foreign field”’, 101.

⁸⁶ LT, ‘Indian war memorial opened: General Ware dwells on memories of Great War’, 14 Feb. 1931.

⁸⁷ Ridley, The Architect and his Wife, 219.

⁸⁸ King, Colonial Urban Development, 231–2.

⁸⁹ Ibid., 244.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 245.

⁹¹ Ibid., 232.

⁹² Lutyens designed small memorials for families as well as large ones such as Thiepval in the Netherlands and the Cenotaph in London.

⁹³ Some of Lutyens' deepest thoughts about commemorating death are found in a collection of letters, The Letters of Edwin Lutyens to his Wife Emily, ed. Clayre Percy and Jane Ridley (London, 1985).

⁹⁴ Crellin, ‘“Some corner of a foreign field”’, 101.

⁹⁵ Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, 107. See also Crellin, ‘“Some corner of a foreign field”, 108.

⁹⁶ See Ridley, The Architect and his Wife; Metcalf, An Imperial Vision; and Percy and Ridley's edited volume, The Letters of Edwin Lutyens to his Wife Emily, for examples of his well-documented chauvinism.

⁹⁷ Metcalf, An Imperial Vision, 234.

⁹⁸ Irving, Indian Summer, 259.

⁹⁹ These included India's commander in chief, the chancellor of the chamber of princes on behalf of the ruling princes and chiefs, the representatives of the dominions and the adjutant general on behalf of the Ex-Services Association of India and Burma.

¹⁰⁰ NAI/HD File No. 66, Public 1931.

¹⁰¹ Ibid.

¹⁰² LT, 4 Feb. 1931. For a detailed examination of the relationship between the British Raj and the Indian Army, see Bayly, C.A.'s Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰³ LT 14 February 1931.

¹⁰⁴ Ferguson, Empire, 251.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., 251.

¹⁰⁶ See Hindess' ‘The liberal government of unfreedom’ and Mehta's Liberalism and Empire.

¹⁰⁷ LT, 14 Feb. 1931.

¹⁰⁸ India Office Records of the British Library, London, Willingdon Collection, MSS EUR E 240 75, ‘The Indian Liberal's appeal for co-operation’.

¹⁰⁹ Bombay Chronicle, ‘New Delhi autocracy’, 13 Feb. 1931.