At one end of the group of the buildings is the Moti Majid, or
Pearl Mosque, which answered to the private chapel of the Moguls,
and has been declared to be "the daintiest building in all India."
In grace, simplicity and perfect proportions it cannot be surpassed.
It is built of the purest marble, richly traced with carving.
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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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