It is within the walls of this fort and among these exquisite palaces that the Imperial durbar was held on the 1st of January, 1903, to proclaim formally the coronation of King Edward VII., Emperor of India, and Lord Curzon, with remarkable success, carried out his plan to make the occasion one of extraordinary splendor.  It brought together for the first time all of the native princes of India, who, in the presence of each other, renewed their pledges of loyalty and offered their homage to the throne.  No spectacle of greater pomp and splendor has ever been witnessed in Europe or Asia or any other part of the world since the days of the Moguls.  The peacock throne could not be recovered for the occasion, but Lord and Lady Curzon sat upon the platform where it formerly stood, and there received the ruling chiefs, nobles and princes from all the states and provinces of India.  Lord Curzon has been criticised severely in certain quarters for the “barbaric splendor and barbaric extravagance of this celebration,” but people familiar with the political situation in India and the temper of the native princes have not doubted for a moment the wisdom which inspired it and the importance of its consequences.  The oriental mind is impressed more by splendor than by any other influence, and has profound respect for ceremonials.  The Emperor of India, by the durbar, recognized those racial peculiarities, and not only gratified them but made himself a real personality to the native chiefs instead of an abstract proposition.  It has given the British power a position that it never held before; it swept away jealousies and brought together ruling princes who had never seen each other until then.  It broke down what Lord Curzon calls “the water-tight compartment system of India.”

“Each province,” he says, “each native state, is more or less shut off by solid bulkheads from its neighbors.  The spread of railways and the relaxation of social restrictions are tending to break them down, but they are still very strong.  Princes who live in the south have rarely ever in their lives seen or visited the states of the north.  Perhaps among the latter are chiefs who have rarely ever left their homes.  It cannot but be a good thing that they should meet and get to know each other and exchange ideas.  To the East there is nothing strange, but something familiar and even sacred,” continued Lord Curzon, “in the practice that brings sovereigns together with their people in ceremonies of solemnity.  Every sovereign in India did it in the old days; every chief in India does it now; and the community of interest between the sovereign and his people, to which such a function testifies and which it serves to keep alive, is most vital and most important.”