The critics dwelt on a number of other points. They deplored the fact that the decision had been taken in secrecy without consulting the Legislative Council, or even the Lieutenant Governors and Governors of the provinces. The suitability of Delhi as a site for the capital was questioned. It was said that the climate was not healthy, it caused fevers and boils. It was a lifeless backwater of the Punjab province, remote from the major centres of commerce—Calcutta, Bombay, Karachi, and therefore the capital and the
officials would end up in a bureaucratic enclave, distant from important public opinion.
Even the symbolic importance of Delhi’s heritage was questioned—was it not, as one newspaper put it, a graveyard of dynasties?
Among the various arguable weaknesses of the plan, the issue of the
financial outlay was the most obvious and easy target of attack. The debate over the financing of the capital also ultimately came down to a question of the basic understanding of the future role of the empire. Was British rule in India to serve the business interests of the British, or of their colonial subjects, and in what proportion? Those who stood for the continuation of Calcutta as the capital, supported the continuation of the old system of Empire, exclusively by and for British interests.
In the words of Curzon, Calcutta was the ‘expression of British rule in India, it is English built, English commerce has made it the second city in the empire...English statesmen, administrators, and generals have built up to its present commanding height the fabric of British rule in India.’
This was at sharp variance with any opinion that aimed at giving Indians a more participatory role in the empire.
The foundation of the city of New Delhi was thus mired in
controversies, around the very nature of colonial rule and of the British Indian empire. In retrospect, one could probably say that the path to New Delhi as the capital of independent India, finally achieved in 1947, was being laid, though the protagonists at the time could not grasp its significance.
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