Charles Hardinge, Lord Hardinge of Penshurst

Delhi Durbar and capital transfer

Hardinge, a career diplomat rather than a politician, had served as Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office and as ambassador to Russia before being appointed Viceroy in 1910, a background reflected in the closely negotiated, discreet manner in which the major decisions of his viceroyalty were prepared before being publicly announced. At the Delhi Durbar held in December 1911 to mark the imperial accession of King George V, an occasion attended by the King and Queen in person, the government announced two major decisions closely associated with Hardinge's tenure and prepared under his direction: the annulment of the 1905 partition of Bengal, which had provoked years of sustained nationalist agitation and boycott activity in that province, and the transfer of the capital of British India from Calcutta to Delhi, a step intended partly to relieve Bengal's political tensions by reversing the partition without appearing to retreat under Bengali pressure, and partly to invoke the historical and symbolic authority of the former Mughal capital for the British imperial government. Construction of the new capital, subsequently named New Delhi, began under Hardinge's supervision soon after the Durbar, with the architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker engaged to design its principal buildings, though the city itself was not completed and formally inaugurated until 1931, well after Hardinge had left office.

Assassination attempt

On 23 December 1912, during a ceremonial state entry into Delhi in which Hardinge rode in procession on elephant-back, a bomb was thrown at him from the crowd lining the route. The blast killed the mahout attending the elephant and severely wounded Hardinge, who survived after a period of convalescence. The attack was linked by investigators to revolutionary nationalist networks opposed to British rule, and several individuals were subsequently tried and convicted in connection with the wider conspiracy, though the identity of the person who actually threw the bomb was never conclusively and publicly established at the time.

World War I

Hardinge's final years as Viceroy coincided with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, during which India, under his direction, contributed very large numbers of troops as well as substantial financial and material resources to the British war effort across multiple theatres, including Europe, Mesopotamia and East Africa, a mobilisation that strained the colonial administration and had lasting political consequences once wartime promises of eventual constitutional reward came due. His viceroyalty ended in 1916, after which he returned to Britain for a further senior diplomatic career, including a second term as Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office during and after the First World War.