1936, he announced that he would attend a Durbar in Delhi during the winter following his coronation in 1937. When Edward abdicated in December 1936, it was initially envisaged that his brother George VI would continue with the Durbar as already planned, with the enthusiastic backing of the Secretary of State for India, Lord Zetland and the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow. However, persuaded by the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin and his doctors, George decided that travelling to India in the aftermath of his coronation in May would place too great a strain on his health, and it was announced on 9 February 1937 that the Durbar had been postponed until "a later date". The reason given was that it was "impossible to contemplate a prolonged absence during the first year of his reign", so as not to give credence to rumours circulating about the king's physical and mental wellbeing. By August 1937, the situation in India had changed. The Government of India Act 1935 had set in motion modest moves towards Indian self government; the pro-independence Indian National Congress had dominated the 1937 Indian provincial elections in seven out of eleven provinces, and had made it clear that they would not only boycott the Durbar but refuse to vote the funds to pay for it. Linlithgow wrote to Zetland in August saying that the king ought to be warned of "unpleasantness" if he visited India. Zetland took up the matter with the new prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, while the viceroy sought the opinion of the British provincial governors, who were all against the idea. Meanwhile, Jawaharlal Nehru, the leader of the Congress party, told the Indian press that if the British Government wanted to protect the king from any sort of "untoward incident", then they ought to "keep him in England". Chamberlain was persuaded and initially omitted any mention of royal visit to India from the king's speech of October 1937, but under pressure from the king and against the advice of the viceroy, included the non-committal line; "I am looking forward with interest and pleasure to the time when it will be possible for Me to visit My Indian Empire". Linlithgow and Zetland then made a determined effort to dissuade the king from visiting India, even on a more modest scale, using the pretext of finance rather than Indian politics. Quoting a cost of £1 million pounds, all of which