The nationalist tenor of the controversy over whether the United Kingdom should return the storied Kohinoor diamond to India reveals the grudging peace that India has made with its colonial past. It is perfectly legitimate and understandable for a country to demand the return of a piece of its heritage that is in the possession of another country. The aggrieved country is also well within its rights to pursue legal, diplomatic and other measures to seek the return of such treasures. But in the Kohinoor’s case, even the Indian government has admitted that it is difficult to draw simplistic conclusions on the ownership of the much-vaunted diamond. At least four or five nations can lay claim to the diamond: India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and the UK based on the stone’s historical journey in past centuries across what are today’s geographic borders. Persian invader Nader Shah is believed to have carried away the diamond from Delhi after defeating the Mughals. But it soon passed into the hands of his Afghan allies and was gifted to Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab, whose capital was at Lahore. However, his 11-year-old son Duleep Singh surrendered the Kohinoor to the British after the Second Anglo-Sikh War in 1849 as part of war reparations.
For those demanding the Kohinoor’s return, its possession in British hands is a repugnant reminder of India’s subjugation. Their contention for demanding the stone back is that the child king was “cheated” into surrendering a “national” treasure. Assuming that this claim is true, where does one begin when accounting for the wrongs committed by the British Raj. Does one begin from the fortunes amassed by British peers like Robert Clive through imposing a huge revenue burden on Bengal after the Battle of Plassey? Or does one wind the clock forward to Independence and Partition? Most post-colonial societies carry with them the burden, ignominy and angst of having been subjected to economic exploitation and militaristic and political subjugation. India is no different but it can be argued that the country’s successful democratic and multicultural experiment has helped to paper over many of the cracks in the collective consciousness. The nationalistic fervour of the freedom struggle was greatly aided by pioneering economic studies on the “Drain of Wealth” from India. But over a century later, it is not this great transfer of wealth from the Indian sub-continent to European shores which lasted for 190 years, that is at the centre of the latest controversy. The discourse, instead, has been reduced to an object of singular, sensational and symbolic value: a mere diamond.
As Shashi Tharoor did so eloquently at the Oxford Union Debate in July 2015, it is important to remind Britain of how it contributed to the pauperisation of India. However, it is unlikely that the 21st century nationalists who moved the public interest litigation in the Supreme Court of India for the return of the Kohinoor are aware of such nuances. It is for the British government to voluntarily decide upon reparations for the colonial loot and the return of the Kohinoor and such other sub-continental treasures. The central government has recognised this factum and told the Supreme Court that the Kohinoor was gifted away and not stolen and hence cannot be reclaimed. The Kohinoor will remain a symbol of what India lost to foreign powers when its principalities began crumbling under internal feuds, economic stagnation and cultural isolation. The demand for its return on purported grounds like cheating and theft betrays the futile attempt to recreate history in sympathetic hues and mindless glorification of the past.
