CORONATION PARK

On 1 January 1877, Viceroy Lord Lytton held the first Imperial Durbar in an area north of Shahjahanabad (later named Coronation Durbar Park) to mark the proclamation of Queen Victoria as the Empress of India. It was a ceremonial event meant to show the British as the successors to the Mughal Empire (Durbars were meetings where the emperor met with his court and made official decisions). Although Queen Victoria did not attend herself, it is said that the Durbar was an extravagant event, attended by the royal families of the princely states of India and filled with processions and banquets. Notably, it was not a popular event as it took place during the Great Famine of 1876-78, caused by crop failures in the Deccan region – from which funds were being diverted to the Durbar.

Another, grander Durbar was held in 1903 by Viceroy Lord Curzon, but the third and most important Durbar was held in 1911 at Coronation Park, to celebrate the coronation of King George V to the British throne. Preparations started a year in advance, with an elaborate temporary city being built – a sprawling area of about 200 square kilometres. Infrastructure like electricity and water was built from scratch, and the total cost of the Durbar was 900,000 pounds. The Durbar was held on 12 December 1911, and was the greatest spectacle of the British Raj: nearly 100,000 spectators gathered as the King – who, for the first time, attended in person – made two announcements that changed the course of Indian history: proclaiming the reunion of east and west Bengal (which had been partitioned in 1905 much to popular uproar), and transferring the capital from Calcutta to a newly built city in Delhi (because of the political instability in Calcutta and Bengal, which had caused the aforementioned partition). The foundation stones of the new city were laid, and it would become New Delhi.

After independence, statues from around the country were transported to pedestals made in Coronation Park arranged in a semicircle around a statue of King George V designed by Lutyens which was earlier near India Gate. The park fell into disrepair until 2011, when INTACH (the Indian Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) restored it.