Queen Camilla’s Crown and the Koh-i-Noor Debate

Saturday 6th May 2023 is the day that Charles III and his wife, Camilla, will be crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom.

Departing from tradition, the Queen Consort will not wear the Koh-i-Noor (also spelled Kohinoor and Koh-i-Nur) diamond on her crown so as not to offend “political sensibilities”, a royal source told British media. .

The diamond, which is supposed to bring bad luck to men, has always been worn by women. It was first used by Queen Victoria in the form of a brooch and diadem, then by Queens Consorts Mary and Alexandra, and finally by Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.

Camilla’s gesture of not wearing the diamond for the coronation is a big one. But why? What makes the diamond such an important historical artifact?

The Story of Koh-i-Noor

The 105-carat diamond, which was a 190-carat piece before reaching the British, has a long history of achievement. The Koh-i-Noor was an oddly shaped gem. “It looked like a large hill or perhaps a huge iceberg rising steeply to a high, domed peak,” wrote William Dalrymple and Anita Anand in their 2017 book “Koh-i-Noor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond.”

The diamond was first mentioned by the Persian historian Muhammad Kazim Marvi, who documented the invasion of India by the warrior Nader Shah in the mid-18th century.

Scholars are not sure where the gemstone originated, but it is believed to have been sifted from the alluvial sands of Golconda in southern India. It fell into the hands of marauding Turks in the early Middle Ages and then into the hands of various Islamic dynasties in India, before falling into the hands of the Mongols.

They, in turn, lost it to the Persian warlord Nader Shah, who named it Koh-i-noor, or the mountain of light. Nader Shah passed it on to his Afghan bodyguard, Ahmad Shah Abdali, and it remained in Afghan hands for a hundred years before Ranjit Singh, the King of Punjab, extracted it from a fleeing Afghan in 1813.

After Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839, Punjab fell into disarray, allowing the East India Company to conquer the kingdom. Ranjit Singh’s 10-year-old son Duleep Singh has been taken into British custody. In 1855, Koh-i-noor was handed over by Duleep Singh’s keeper, Sir John Spencer Login, to Dalhousie, Governor-General of India.

Wanting to document the gemstone’s history before presenting it to the Queen, Dalhousie commissioned a young officer, Theo Metcalfe, to research and write a history of the diamond.

From then on, the diamond gained fame, reaching its peak after Queen Victoria displayed it in England. “It was a symbol of Victorian Britain’s imperial domination of the world and its ability to […] taking the most desirable objects from around the world and displaying them in triumph,” write Anand and Dalrymple in their book.

In addition to India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran also claim the diamond.

Symbol of British imperialism

Even today, the Koh-i-noor retains its fame and reputation as a symbol of British conquest, which goes a long way toward explaining why Indians are demanding its return.

“There have been numerous calls for the return of the diamond to India from policymakers, activists and cultural heritage experts,” said Anuraag Saxena, a Singaporean activist and founder of the India Pride Project, which campaigns for the restitution of Indian cultural heritage artifacts. “We argue that the diamond and other looted heirlooms should be returned as a symbol of historical injustice.”

There were also demands from other Indian activists for the diamond to be brought back from India. “When Queen Elizabeth died, in one of the processions, I saw the crown with the Koh-i-Noor on it,” said Venktesh Shukla, a San Francisco-based venture capitalist of Indian descent, adding that he was so irritated by the show that he launched a petition on Change.org for the diamond’s restitution.

“They should be ashamed of what they’ve done, how they got the Koh-i-Noor. And instead of being ashamed, they’re showing off,” he continued, adding that it was arrogant of the UK to show off the jewel.

More recently, in October 2022, Arindam Bagchi, spokesman for the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that the government would “continue to explore ways and means to achieve a satisfactory resolution of the matter”.

This came after the Indian government said in 2016 that the diamond was a gift to the British.

However, Shukla said he feels this needs to be a grassroots movement focused on educating Britons about their colonial heritage. His petition gathered more than 9,600 signatures, but it remains to be seen whether his initiative and that of the Indian government will really bear fruit.

imperialist traditions

For the moment, Buckingham Palace’s decision to stay away from the diamond appears to be a compromise between “reflecting tradition” and “being sensitive to current issues”, according to an unnamed royal who spoke to the daily mail.

But the sensitivity of the palace seems to be limited to the Koh-i-Noor: the crown of the queen consort will be replaced by Cullinan diamonds, precious stones extracted from South Africa and another symbol of British imperialism.

This hardly suggests a genuine desire to change. Even in the past, British politicians have emphasized their reluctance to return cultural artifacts.

In 2013, David Cameron, the Prime Minister at the time, famously remarked that he was against “returnism” when it came to returning the colonial diamond.

Imperial institutions like the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum, which house thousands of artifacts looted from colonized countries, also resisted demands for the return of the loot.

“Returning our artifacts could be a simple act by the British to atone for the sins of their morbid colonial past,” argued activist Saxena, adding that the US, Germany, France, Canada and Australia were doing the same.

“Isn’t it time,” he asked, “for the UK to catch up with the rest of the world?”

Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier