One of the world’s largest diamonds found its way from the coffers of Indian royalty to the crown of a British queen. Whether the Koh-i-Noor diamond was stolen or gifted to Queen Victoria is the question at the heart of an ongoing case in the Indian Supreme Court.
“The Koh-i-Noor is not a stolen object,” Ranjit Kumar, a government attorney, told justices on Monday. “[It] was given by the successors of Maharaja Ranjit Singh to East India Company in 1849 as compensation for helping them in the Sikh wars.”
Named “mountain of light,” the 108-carat stone was written into a treaty after British forces conquered the state of Punjab, a state that is divided between modern-day India and Pakistan.
“The gem called Kohinoor which was taken from Shah Shuja-ul-Malik by Maharaja Ranjit Singh shall be surrendered by the Maharajah of Lahore to the Queen of England,” the treaty read.
But Singh had willed the diamond to a temple. His successor Dilip Singh, who was a minor, presented the diamond to Queen Victoria in 1851 with the aid of a colonial magistrate, Lord Dalhousie. It’s remained in British possession ever since.
The case was brought by the All India Human Rights & Social Justice Front, a Delhi-based advocacy organization which is calling for the diamond’s return. The organization isn’t the first to question British royalty’s ownership of the Koh-i-Noor.
The United Kingdom refused requests from India to return the diamond in 1976. The Koh-i-Noor, which traded hands several times before it got to Queen Victoria, has been claimed by at least four countries, including Pakistan, which filed its own case calling for the stone’s return as a cultural treasure.
British Prime Minister David Cameron reiterated his country’s right to the diamond during a trip to India in 2013.
“I think I am afraid to say, to disappoint all your viewers, it is going to have to stay put,” he told reporters with the Indian news channel NDTV.
Claims for the diamond were reignited after a powerful debate in 2013 at Britain’s Oxford University over whether former colonial powers should pay reparations to the countries the ruled.
“We literally paid for our own oppression,” the Indian Parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor said in his argument for reparations.
He added that India became “Britain’s largest cash cow” after its local industries were crippled to better serve the colonial regime in the debate that has since been streamed millions of times on YouTube.
The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi backed the appeal for the diamond, as did British MP Keith Vaz, who is himself of Indian origin.
“Pursuing monetary reparations is complex, time consuming and potentially fruitless, but there is no excuse for not returning precious items such as the Koh-i-Noor diamond, a campaign I have backed for many years,” said Vaz.