The death of Queen Elizabeth II made Twitter explode. A flood of messages paying homage to him streamed across the web. But amid the tears, a few vengeful tweets also emerged. The tweet from Asia, India to be more precise, refers to the Kohinoor diamond that adorns the royal crown.
Precious stone of Kohinoor -also spelled Koh-i-Noor- is one of the largest, but also one of the most controversial in the world, The Independent’s notes. A diamond over 105 carats was set on the British Crown in 1937 for Queen Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, wife of King George VI, and is now featured with British Crown Jewels in the Tower of London. But his troubled past raises tensions over who actually owns the diamonds, and each succession of empires brings these issues to the table in India.
From India to London
The exact origin of the Koh-I Nor –estimated at $400 million (about 393 million euros)- unknown. For the British Royal Palace, there’s no doubt about it: the diamond was discovered in the Golconda mine, in the state of Telangana, India, in the south-central of the country, before being handed over, smoothly, to the British monarchy in the 1850s. A gift to Queen Victoria as part of “Lahore Treaty”marked the end of the First Anglo-Sikh War.
In India, the discourse is very different. After passing through the hands of Rajputs, Mughal princes, then Iranian and Afghan warriors and Maharajas of Punjab, the diamond would then be stolen by London. Today, #Kohinoor, owned by tens of thousands of Indians, is demanding the return of precious stones to its land, as a legacy from ancient times. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran are also involved.
The world’s most controversial diamond, the Kohinoor is about to change hands.
The diamond, which was currently in the Imperial State Crown, would be inherited by the Queen’s daughter-in-law, Camilla.
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— ETimes Lifestyle (@ETimesLifestyle) 10 September 2022
This complaint is nothing new. In 2016, a legal battle has even broken out to force the Indian government to return the diamond. For the latter, the precious stone is indeed “present” created for the East India Company by the ancient rulers of Punjab. He hasn’t “not stolen or taken by force“, explained the British media. Her discord crown and diamond could even soon appear on screen, mounted on the head of the future consort Camilla, wife of the new king Charles III. What revived the debate, once again.
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