India’s ruling party has warned that crowning the British Queen Consort using the controversial Koh-i-Noor diamond would bring back “painful memories of the colonial past”.
Buckingham Palace is said to be reconsidering whether Camilla should wear the thousand-year-old jewel when she is crowned alongside King Charles, after India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said it would “transport” some “back to the days of the British Empire in India”, reported The Telegraph.
What is the diamond’s history?
The Koh-i-Noor, which has been on public display in the Jewel House at the Tower of London since 2002, is one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, weighing 105.6 carats.
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The diamond, which was once placed on Mughal king Shah Jahan’s throne in the 17th century, was taken away from India following the invasions of Iranian ruler Nadir Shah, said Hindustan Times.
It was obtained by the East India Company and presented to Queen Victoria in 1849. “A campaign has sprung up in India urging Britain to return it,” noted The Times, but the diamond is also claimed by Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.
The crown that now contains the diamond was made for Queen Elizabeth – later the Queen Mother – in 1937, but the diamond had previously been mounted in the crowns of other royals, including Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII.
Why is it so controversial?
“The Indian gem has a bloody history of colonial conquest,” said Smithsonian magazine in 2017, and it raises the question of how modern nations should “deal with a colonial legacy of looting”.
Speaking to the magazine, the historian William Dalrymple, who has co-written a book about the diamond, said: “If you ask anybody what should happen to Jewish art stolen by the Nazis, everyone would say of course they’ve got to be given back to their owners.
“And yet we’ve come to not say the same thing about Indian loot taken hundreds of years earlier, also at the point of a gun,” he said, adding in The Telegraph that the stone has become a “massive diplomatic grenade”.
Indeed, a resurgence of interest from India in reclaiming the diamond is now “very visible” among a new generation on social media, Jyoti Atwal, associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told The Telegraph.
The spokesman for the BJP said that “the coronation of Camilla and the use of the crown jewel Koh-i-Noor brings back painful memories of the colonial past”.
Royal sources said no decision on whether the Koh-i-Noor diamond crown will be used in the coronation has yet been made. But they added that the King and his team were “acutely aware” of the need to consider current sensitivities.
The British government insists the gem was acquired legally under the terms of the Last Treaty of Lahore of 1849 and has rejected any claims to it.
