England Must Return the Kohinoor Diamond

“The transition is startling when the diamond becomes a symbol of potency rather than beauty,” said Anita Anand,who alongside historian William Dalrymple, wrote the book Koh-i-noor: the history of the world’s most infamous diamond.¹ The Kohinoor diamond is one of the world’s most well-known jewels as it symbolizes its owner’s prestige and power, which has also led to the diamond’s tumultuous history.²

Currently, the 105-carat glistening jewel rests in the Tower of London in the United Kingdom. The diamond has been a stain on the dark past of the royal family due its colonial past. This has led to a debate on if the diamond should be returned and if so, to which country as the diamond’s history is rooted in many Asian countries.

The diamond was first mined in Andhra Pradesh, India by the Kakatiya dynasty and was then stolen by the Delhi Sultan, Alaudin Khillji.³ The diamond remained in the Mughal dynasty until 1739, when Persian Invader, Nadir Shah, stole the peacock throne, which the Kohinoor was on, during his conquest of Delhi and took them to Iran.⁴ After the Shah died in 1747, the diamond fell into the hands of his general, Ahmad Shah Durrani, who became the Emir of Afghanistan.⁵ In 1813, his grandson, Shah Shuja al-Mulk, gave the diamond to Ranjit Singh, a maharaja of the Sikh empire.⁶ The Sikhs could not hold onto the diamond for very long, and the British colonial East Indian Company ended up taking the diamond from Ranjit Singh’s son, Dalip Singh – a 10 or 11-year-old sikh emperor in the 1840s, by forcing him to sign the 1849 Treaty of Lahore.⁷

As the reign of King Charles the 3rd begins, the royal family has a unique opportunity to change its passiveness towards its colonial past.⁸ A change in how the royal family deals with its colonial legacy would disrupt its status quo of ignoring its shameful colonial history.⁹ The royals can do so by returning the many artifacts that it stole from its former colonies. The Kohinoor Diamond has been one of the most sought-after jewel by Indians and remains a representation of England’s shameful colonialistic past on the Indian subcontinent. The royal family’s passiveness towards dealing with the controversy surrounding its ownership of the diamond has resulted in the royals reducing the jewel’s presence in royal traditions. For example, the diamond did not appear at the new King’s coronation like it normally would.¹⁰

If King Charles the 3rd decides to return the Kohinoor Diamond, it would prove to be beneficial to Anglo-Indian relations. In a statement released by the Indian government, it clarified that it wants the royal family to return the diamond worth $591 million.¹¹ Meaning that if Britain were to return the diamond, it will not only improve Britian’s relationship with India, but will also show that the royal family is willing to acknowledge its colonial past and signify how the royal’s colonialistic history can impact the United Kingdom’s foreign policy for the benefit of both the UK and its former colonial holdings.

A prominent challenge of returning the Kohinoor is figuring out which nation has the strongest claim of ownership over the diamond. Iranians believe that since Nadir Shah, an Iranian emperor, stole the diamond, they deserve it back. The Pakistani government has asserted a somewhat weak argument that since the capital of the Sikh empire was in Lahore, Pakistan, they deserve the diamond. However, the Pakistani government ignores the fact that there is, currently, a very low Sikh population there.¹² In 2015, Even the Taliban, an Afghani terrorist organization, said they believe the diamond is the “legitimate property” of Afghanistan, probably because the diamond remained there during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries after being taken from Nadir Shah. Though ever since US troops exited the nationand and the Taliban has gained power over the country, the stability of the nation has been put into question, and can be considered relatively unstable compared to India. Furthermore, the museum in Kabul that the Taliban wants the diamond to be returned to is already “bombed out.”¹³ On a larger scale, the diamond’s core origins in the state of Andhra Pradesh, trump these respective nations’ claims that the diamond should be returned to them due to some part of its history being in one of the three countries.

The royal family has a unique opportunity to redefine how it addresses its colonial background. In a time where there is social unrest against an authority across the globe – be it through protests against Police Brutality in the United States or the Mahsa Amini Protests in Iran, it is even more important that historically powerful oppressors like the British Empire recognize their history of stealing from the colonized and take steps to make amends with its former colonies by returning their artifacts.

Cover Image: “Queen Mary’s Crown” is in the Public Domain

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