The man chosen to film the 1911 Durbar in color was an American named Charles Urban.
Urban was famous for producing early science films
like ‘Cheese Mites’,
and ‘The Acrobatic Fly’
but his film of the Durbar was to be his legacy. which he shot using a primitive red/green color process called ‘kinemacolor.’
The finished film, ‘With Our King and Queen through India’ had its premiere at the Scala in London and was accompanied by a live orchestra and bag pipe corps.
The King and Queen were in attendance.
They reportedly loved it.
Thirty years later, Charles Urban died in obscurity and, by then, all copies of his kinemacolor film were lost.
This is the only fragment that remains.
And so, the abundant but inferior black and white stock of other filmmakers became the medium of record.
At the 1911 Durbar, after King George V and his Queen Mary had been commemorated as Emperor and Empress of India under the Great Shamiana…
…after receiving obeisance by every ‘lesser’ king of the country…
…the Durbar was presumed to be over when he abruptly stood up to announce, (in essence):
By the way,
we're going to move the nation's capital from Calcutta
to the ancient capital of Delhi.
This was an effort to, as he said: “conduce to the better administration of India, and the greater prosperity and happiness of our beloved people.”
Then the Emperor and Empress drove off in their carriage.
Delhi was suddenly the new capital of the Raj - once again the seat of power in India.
Everyone was shocked.
This announcement about Delhi being the new capital had been miraculously kept secret to all but around 9 people.
There are descriptions in the ‘Historical Record’ of how this critical, but totally un-amplified, announcement landed on the crowd: Those who were initially in earshot turned to relay the news to those standing behind them, and on and on, creating a shockwave of voices that rippled out in every direction, eventually carrying the news all the way to the very back of the massive crowd hundreds of feet away.
There was one small problem with the plan to make Delhi the nations capital again: Delhi had become, as Dr. Narayani Gupta says, ‘a bit of a backwater.’