Opinion | Who does the Kohinoor belong to?

Why are the Great Pyramids in Egypt? Simply because they were too large and too heavy for the British to have carried them back home! This is a joke, that is often used to describe the many proud possessions which the British acquired during the hey days of their Empire. 

With the grand coronation ceremony of King Charles III, the focus is again on the artefacts that the British Empire acquired through fair and foul means. And the world's most famous diamond, 'Kohinoor' is a major talking point. Fought over for centuries, and plundered by one ruler after another, there is no other diamond, whose history is as troubled as that of Kohinoor.

Kohinoor is currently a part of the Crown of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. As a matter of tradition, Queen Consort Camilla, wife of King Charles III is the next to wear the Jewel. But the Kohinoor will be conspicuous by its absence at the coronation ceremony. Instead, Queen Consort Camilla will wear a different crown, set with 2,200 smaller diamonds for the coronation. A conscious decision to not spark any 'diplomatic sensitivities' with India.

But who really owns the Kohinoor? The British Royal family has been in possession of the Kohinoor since 1849 CE, ever since a 10-year-old boy King, Maharaja Duleep Singh was forced to sign the Treaty of Lahore in 1849. Queen Victoria wore the Kohinoor as a brooch. For generations, history books in Britain spouted that the Kohinoor was a gift for Britain from India. But a diamond taken from a boy king, when his mother was a prisoner of the British, can hardly be termed as a gift!

The government of India demanded that Kohinoor should be returned, as soon as India became independent in 1947. The demand was renewed in 1953, in the year of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

In 2000, several Indian Parliamentarians signed a letter demanding that Kohinoor be returned to India, as it was taken illegally by the British. In 2010, during his trip to India, the then British Prime Minister David Cameroon was candid in his admission: 'If you say yes to one, you will find that the British Museum would soon be empty! ... I am afraid to say that it is going to stay put.' In 2016, India's Cultural Ministry went on record to state that it would make 'all possible efforts' to arrange for the return of the Kohinoor to India. 

In 2022, the Horniman Museum in London agreed that the Benin Bronzes had been 'acquired by the use of force by British colonial troops, and that returning them back to Nigeria was the right thing to do'. On the other hand, the Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles continue to stay put at the British Museum, with the British Museum having described their removal from the Parthenon as a 'creative act'.

From the middle of the 16th till the 20th Century, when the British empire reigned supreme, millions of artefacts from around the world were taken to Britain. Often as a direct consequence of loot and plunder. 

The 'Jewel in the Crown', Kohinoor is a symbol of Britain's colonial conquest. Britain is yet to fully come to terms to face up to the depredations that accompanied the British empire. The Coronation, with its pomp and regal extravagance, is a scene straight out of the Empire from its hey days. It reminds the British Royalists of their greatest moment. The moment when the sun never set on Britain. And therein lies the problem. To return the Kohinoor means to give up the symbol of British conquest. But the least, the British must do is to acknowledge the truth about how Britain acquired the Kohinoor, the most famous and the most expensive diamond in the world.

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