Bharata had come to the forest for one reason: he wanted Rāma to return to Ayodhyā and be king.
Rāma would not go back. Their father's promise had sent him into the forest for fourteen years, and Rāma would keep it.
Bharata could not make him change his mind.
So Bharata asked for something else.
He asked Rāma to place his feet in a pair of sandals decorated with gold.
Rāma put them on, took them off, and gave them to Bharata.
Bharata bowed to the sandals.
Then he made a promise of his own.
For the same fourteen years, he said, he would wear bark and matted hair, live on fruits and roots, and stay outside the city waiting for Rāma.
The responsibility of the kingdom would rest on Rāma's sandals.
Bharata honoured them, went around Rāma in reverence, and placed the sandals on a great elephant for the journey home.
Rāma embraced Bharata and Śatrughna before they left.
Bharata then carried the sandals on his head as the procession travelled away from Chitrakūṭa.
Back near Ayodhyā, Bharata did not move into the palace and sit on Rāma's throne.
He went to Nandigrāma instead.
There he placed the royal canopy over the sandals and treated the kingdom as something Rāma had left in his care.
The text says Bharata governed under the sandals.
When an affair of state came up, he reported it to them first. When a valuable gift arrived, he presented it to them first.
Bharata was doing the work of a king without pretending the kingdom had become his.
He wore bark and matted hair at Nandigrāma, just as he had promised in the forest.
He said he was preserving the kingdom as a trust until Rāma came back.
There was an empty throne in Ayodhyā, and a pair of sandals showing whose place Bharata was keeping.