The Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won’t give it back (2017) | Hacker News Reader

The Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won’t give it back (2017)

smithsonianmag.com

191 pointstomcam298 comments

Not a fan of the British crown (why are they exempt from taxes during record high inflation) but who should they return the diamond to - Afghanistan (it was the Durranis that looted it from Nader Shah after he looted it from the Mughals), India (Maharaja Ranjit Singh took it as tribute from Shah Shuja after conquering Kashmir from the Durranis), or Pakistan (the Sikh Empire capital was Lahore and the Durrani Empire capital was Peshawar until the last Sikh-Afghan War, thus any claim India or Afghanistan has on either Empire's legacy is also owned by Pakistan, even inspite of Partition or the Durrand Line).

On top of that, if it goes to India - should it be owned by the Central/Federal government, the Punjab government (the state that is the core of the former Sikh Empire), Jammu Kashmir's Government (because of Shah Shuja and Raja Gulab Singh), Delhi Government (the Mughal capital), or Andhra Pradesh Government (the mine is located there). And is it worth putting a logjam into the Free Trade Agreement India and the UK are currently negotating?

If they give it to Pakistan, should it go to the Pakistan Federal Government, Punjab Government (the state that is the core of the former Sikh Empire), AJK Government (because of Shah Shuja and Raja Gulab Singh), or Khyber Pakhtunkwa Government (the state that is the core of the former Sikh Empire and former Durrani Empire)? Is it worth putting British Humanitarian and Military Aid at risk?

If they give it to Afghanistan, is it to the Taliban led government, or the government in exile? Is it worth putting British Aid and potential recognition at risk?

It's a conundrum and an complicated legal question that honestly isn't worth it for any of the countries, all of whom have bigger issues to deal with, also it can be argued that the Sikh Empire handed it to the UK fairly.

Also would the world be a better place if they gave it back to some third party, so it can be sold to a private collection and be locked in a vault somewhere?

Where it is now has a lot of historical and cultural significance. It is currently being admired publicly by thousands of people, sitting on the coffin of Queen Elisabeth.

the Imperial State Crown is the one sitting on HMQs coffin and has the Cullinan II diamond (among many others)

the one in the article (containg the Koh-I-Noor) is the Queen Mother's Crown

> It is currently being admired publicly by thousands of people, sitting on the coffin of Queen Elisabeth. [sic]

I think you mistook that photograph in the article or misread the caption - that was Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother's coffin; not Elizabeth II's.

The crown 'currently being admired publicly [...]' does not contain the Kohinoor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_State_Crown

> It's a conundrum and an complicated legal question that honestly isn't worth it for any of the countries, all of whom have bigger issues to deal with.

Sure, but the crown shouldn't keep it. Give it to a neutral 3rd party until an agreement is in place.

Who would the neutral 3rd party be? It would still cause the same argument as above. The United States (Afghanistan would say no), China (India would say no), the Commonwealth (Afghanistan isn't a member), the UN (which Afghan government?), etc.

Sri Lanka, they could use the help right now.

Sri Lanka hasn't recognized the Taliban government and India would also say no due to the China factor.

No one has yet recognized the Taliban government.

Give it to Bangladesh then.

Pakistan would say no due to strained relations, and state level Indian governments would pressure the federal government to say no due to anti-Bangladeshi sentiment in India (sort of similar to anti-Central American sentiment in the US with an added Islamophobic element or Ethnic element depending on the region) - appearing to vacillate to Bangladesh over what is basically a dumb symbolic issue would piss off voters in very narrow Indian elections.

I see that the Iranian government has also demanded the diamond in the past. Forestalling the diplomatic difficulty of giving it to Tehran, give it to the current Pahlavi claimant in exile, satisfying no one in power and thus the truly neutral solution.

There are pending water issues with Bangladesh like Teesta river, this could be a way to buy them off.

No Indian politician would want to appear to be appeasing Bangladesh would be slammed as anti-Hindu, anti-Assamese, anti-Tripuri, etc depending on the election, especially over an unneccesary symbolic issue like the Kohinoor diamond. And fundamentally, no one actually cares about the Kohinoor diamond conundrum other than a couple chattering class types like Tharoor. The Kohinoor diamond question is basically a microcosm of the larger issues in North India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan that all those central goverment politicians exacerbated or directly caused during Partition, the 1980s Punjab Militancy, the Kashmir exodus, the KPK insurgency, the Afghan Civil War, the ongoing issues in Kashmir, the various Indo-Pak wars, etc.

Release Kashmir as a buffer state and give them the diamond, resolving two international dilemmas with one stone.

Neither will do it as the other nation would try to make it a client country, and it would anyhow fall back into an ethnoreligious civil war like back in the 1990s. Also, it's not just Kashmir - it's Kashmir AND Jammu AND Ladakh AND Gilgit AND Baltistan. There are dividing lines across religion (Sunni vs Shia vs Hindu/Sikh), ethnicity (Pahari vs Koshur vs Migrant vs Balti vs Ladakhi), and caste (Dogra vs Gaddi vs Bakkarwal). If I was negotiating, the only solution would be a full normalization of India-Pakistan relations with cross-border travel restarted like back before the 1971 war, and potentially a SAARC based free trade corridor (free transfer of goods and people from Mazar-i-Sharif to Moreh, from Gilgit to Galle, from Chittagong to Colombo, from Kathmandu to Karachi), but that ain't happening in my lifetime.

There are a lot of complexities involved (you didn't mention the Buddhists, and China has border claims too), but it seems like the locals are pretty fed up with the status quo and have a real "a plague on both your houses" sentiment now. Unfortunately their opinion doesn't seem to matter to the actual powers involved.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/world/asia/pakistan-kashm...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kashmir-poll-idUSDEL29179...

Yep! Everyone hates the status quo all over JK/HP/PN/HR, but any other option will inveitabely bring a return of the bloody days in the 1990s and 2000s, when people were being shot on the streets daily, bombs were going off, and every family have one member who died in the larger bloodshed.

My family and the clan is from that region as well, and just about every family friend has a relative that has died. Jammu, Himachal, and Northern Punjab also have some of the highest per capita rates of per capita Armed Service volunteers in India, so every village or town or family will have a Shaheed/Martyr, which only exacerbates the bad blood. For example, when I go to my dad's village, immediately after crossing the Punjab border into our state you start seeing statues and banners in memory of Shaheeds who died in 1999, 1971, 1965, Uri, Pathankhot, etc. Add to that illegal rifles are very common in the region so there is always the potential for bloodshed to occur. There are generations of bad blood in the area and no one will budge an inch (and who can blame anyone on either side to be honest - when family members die it becomes personal).

Buddhists tend to Ladakhi (a Western Tibetan group). They are closely related to the Baltis (a Shia Western Tibetan group), but there is some bad blood between the two groups, but Ladakh has tended to remain relatively conflict free religion wise (Indian Armed Services and the PLA fight there instead, just like the Sikh Empire did against the Qing Dynasty there in the 1840s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogra%E2%80%93Tibetan_War)).

There is generations of bad blood, and a lot of people with small arms and light arms training. Shit gets real very fast.

PS - I am talking about the Indian side as I have first hand experience there. The Pakistani side is actually Jammu, so a different ethnic group from Koshur. Also a lot of army recruiting from that side into the Pakistani Army. The entire Punjab, Pakhtunkwa, and Jammu Kashmir region has always had a very active martial tradition - think of a Cotton Hill type mentality from King of the Hill.

UN?

Why not? Almost everyone that had it before won it through conquest, but only Britain is being held to a standard where that is forbidden.

How about because it is the Year of our Lord 2022, the last monarch of the British Empire is dead, and humanity generally agrees now that theft through conquest is a bad idea, and Britain realizes that decolonization has to cost it something to mean something, and giving back a shiny rock on the Queen's hat which literally serves no purpose besides being a gaudy symbol of a shameful, spiteful legacy, really isn't much to ask, all things considered?

And also the other jewels stolen from South Africa. Or at the very least, don't keep them on the regalia.

> decolonization has to cost it something to mean something

Didn't they, you know, give up their empire? And invite their former colonies to colonize them, to the point that they are now a minority in their own capital?

If anything this should have taught them that, not only will it never be enough, but every act of atonement will count for nothing and be immediately forgotten and discredited.

The idea that the British left their colonies because they just gave them up is hilariously naive

Anything bad they did they did with full malicious desire and intent, and anything good they did is either ignored or, as I said, discredited ("they only did it because they were forced!")

If they give up the Koh-I-Noor to whomever plundered it before them, ten years later someone like you will be claiming that it is hilariously naive to believe they just gave it up.

It's like the argument that California should be given back to Mexico, when Mexico itself was a Spanish colonial construct.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/01/25/california-redwood-fo...

Update: To clarify, Turing_Machine likened the suggestion that California be given to Mexico to alephnerd's description of the complex and unclear proper ownership of the Koh-I-Noor. I claim that the situation in California is simpler, at least in some places, because there are native Californians to give stuff back to and multiple tribes are willing to cooperatively take custody and stewardship of the land, as the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council has. This is in many ways the opposite of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan having competing / mutually incompatible claims.

Tribal Soverignity is a different story than nation state soverignity. The Federal government has supremacy over Tribal and State Government. Worcester v. Georgia still holds

edit: the OP is actually a good example now that he explained it.

"Give it back to local indigenous groups" is an entirely different thing from "Give it back to Mexico".

What is now California was never controlled by what is now Mexico until the Spanish colonizers showed up. The Aztecs (who were themselves brutal colonizers, as it happens) weren't running the show there or anything like that.

How far back does one go for indigenous groups? Kennewick Man, in the case of Washington State? How do we figure out which Indian tribe gets how much, of the dozens we know about in California history? Do we discount for those tribes that owned slaves?

No matter what, whenever we need to go back in history, some segment of the population feels harmed

Aztecs supposedly came from the north, hence the moniker of the Aztlán movement

Which begs the question. Most Mexicans now are descended from both Mestizo Indians and Europeans. Once we give Mexico back to the indigenous peoples... do we send the Euro-descendants back to Spain? Also what about the Clovis peoples of California. Do we track down their heirs?

Ideally it should be “bought” from the 3 countries and they should receive a sort of donation.

AFAIK they need money a lot more than Britain, and tangible food and resources are a lot more useful than a pretty diamond.

Though I kind of doubt this will happen…

> they need money a lot more than Britain, and tangible food and resources are a lot more useful than a pretty diamond

This is the comment’s point. The benefits of a trade deal might measure up to the worth of this diamond in minutes.

The diamond is worth only $10-12 billion (edit: at most), which is a decent chunk of money, but only 0.25% of the Indian Federal Government's YEARLY budget or only 10% of the Pakistani Federal Government's YEARLY budget.

EDIT: apparently the diamond is worth even less - google fu has failed me yet again

There's no way it's worth that much.

Articles kicking around estimate at 140 - 400 million, with some "over a billion".

Makes sense! Looks like google fu failed me again!

Powder it. Problem solved.

Here's a solution: regard the diamond as the property and legacy of the people, with the royals holding it as mere stewards. Rather than basing the center of the nation at the location of the royal court, consider a population weighted centroid as the center of the legal holding. So for example, while the former Sikh empire was based at Lahore, much of the western Punjab was sparsely populated till the early 20th century, with the bulk of the empire's population in Eastern Punjab and the non-punjabi segments of present Northern India. As the diamond moved hands, perhaps we can also weigh how long it rested in each region, so a nation (i.e., its people) that held it for a brief while has a commensurate level of claim to its ownership.

I think the issue of federal government vs state government - federal government holds it as stewards of the people.

But the owner before the Sikh Empire was the Durrani Empire before which was the Afsharids before which was the Mughals. So is it India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, or Turkmenistan if using the broadest definition of a successor state. And "federal government holds it as stewards of the people" would piss off a subset of voters in both Punjabs, JK, Himachal, Haryana, Delhi, Chandigarh, and KPK - all states that have mixed feelings with their federal government. Elections tend to be very close in multi-party parliamentary systems (both for federal elections and local elections).

We know the boundaries of each empire, and can make guesstimates of each population. Weigh each claim by how long they held it, and the population of each historic state at the time, not the modern successor state. So the centroid of "ownership" would move across South Asia over time (I doubt a weighed centroid would ever leave South Asia). Advance the clock, and the centroid would advance from Southeast India to the north over time. Once the clock reaches the point at which the British ransomed it from Duleep Singh, award it the successor state of wherever the centroid is.

Well, it was defacto owned by Gulab Singh at that point (who was basically his own automous and honestly pretty evil warlord - fun fact, my mom's side of the family is directly descended from his top general and my dad's side of the family emigrated to British India because in the 1800s they were mere Pahari peasants who were required to partake in forced labor for Raja Gulab Singh's family, and resettled on a portion of land that was part of a massive land tract given to a major Zamindar/Feudal Lord who supported Duleep Singh and thus lost it after the war). And the key question then is, who is the successor state? The Sikh Empire's successor state was the British Raj and the Princely State of Kashmir and Jammu's successor state is - oh wait, 4 wars, ethnic cleansing, and a 40 year insurgency occured over this question).

> defacto owned by Gulab Singh at that point

Sure, not in dispute. The point of the exercise is to recontextualize ownership of colonial spoils as the heritage of the colonized people, rather than the personal property of the monarchs involved, or the successor states of an empire. Indeed, I would broaden that to include all wealth plundered from the people, including by their own nobility. If the goal is to restore the diamond to the people who have had the greatest claim to it, it's not an impossible task to determine where their descendants currently live. If we seek to consider to simply restore the diamond to the last royal claimant (and their successor entity) before British hands entered the long relay of property ownership, I'm not sure much is accomplished.

The issue is colonial people in South and Central Asian history is weird because just about every South and Central Asian state (the Durranis, the Sikh Confedracy, the Sikh Empire, the Mughals, the British Raj, the Maratha Empire, the Delhi Sultanate, etc) was a federal system with castes, clans, and ethnic groups being given varying levels of self governance [0][1][2]. So when you say colonial people, does it belong the people of N state of the no longer existing country called X or M state of no longer existing country called Y. Successor States are an actual legal concept which remains a grey area to this day.

On top of that, both Pakistan and India made themselves successor states of princely states in the 1970s but it's still a murky gray area from a jurisprudence standpoint as cases are still being litigated, as the associated federal-local level deliniation is still lacking. Welcome to the legal world.

[0] - https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/constitution-to-sc...

[1] - http://14.139.211.59/bitstream/123456789/194/6/06_CHAPTER_02...

[2] - https://www.jstor.org/stable/20078850

What does the legal self governance of any single historic state have to do with the question at hand? We have a fairly reasonable model for the people who constitute modern states, and how they were associated in historic empires. So even if the Persian Empire subjugated parts of modern day Armenia and the Persian Empire held the diamond for a while, do we seriously think the Armenian people have a serious transitive claim to the entirety of the diamond? A lot of the contenders you've raised can certainly be wilted down.

South Asian colonial history is no more complicated than anywhere else in the world. Nor at any point have I deferred to the legal inheritance of successor states.

Consider for example the Elgin marbles, claimed by the British from a section of the erstwhile Ottoman Empire. Do we seriously believe any of the successor states of the Ottoman Empire other than Greece should claim them? If the goal is to restore the marbles to their "home", the answer to where they should go is easy. Yes, the diamond's history is more complicated, but not impossible to figure out where it's "home" should be. I've offered just one possible model, based on a collective ownership model, and weighing it by the factors such as how long it rested in each place.

After determining the point on the earth where the time-population-weighted center of ownership lies, let’s seize that land from whoever lives there now so an appropriate secure facility can be built to house the diamond in perpetuity.

David Frum's new Atlantic article shows a similar situation in Nigeria: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/10/benin-b...

Basically the Nigerian federal government, the state government of Benin, and the descendants of the kings of Benin who originally owned the stolen Benin bronzes all think they should be the ones to whom the bronzes should be returned -- and in the case of the current king, he asserts they are his family's private property.

On top of that, there is a long track record of art being stolen from modern-day Nigerian museums and sold to other museums or collectors, and returning the bronzes just for them to be re-stolen does not benefit any of the parties involved.

Okay. But that's surely not a reason why the Brits get to keep it. "This is too hard, let's give up and keep bringing in tourist money to our museums through these artifacts" feels like an awfully convenient excuse.

Possession is 9/10 of the law.

This is along the lines of the other, equally glorious line:

"Property is theft, therefore theft is property."

You won't mind if my gang and I steal your TV at gunpoint then?

I would mind, because possession is nine tenths of the law.

Especially possession of guns and weapon systems.

Or the money from it being on display in the museum could be split as a charitable donation to all the countries involved. Seems like a win-win-win-win-win.

People screech in terror and hide their wallets anytime the word "reparations" is said. I don't think colonial empires are going to be sending a considerable amount of plundered money back any time soon.

Quite true, not sure why you're down-voted. Colonial empires managed to get away extremely lightly, with respect to putting right their wrongs.

Compare that to Nazi Germany, where reparations were paid in significant quantities, and kids in schools are still taught to be embarrassed by that section of their country's history. Whereas you get the sense that Britain is still, in some ways, proud of its rather ruthless and barbaric empire.

Well, it was a long time ago, so why bring up the atrocities now, eh? Thanks for the wealth, and here are a few meaningless pennies in aid. You can consider us your heroes now. /s

Should Mali also pay reparations to Ghana over the atrocities they committed during 13th century wars of conquest?

Your comment is somewhat meaningless in the context. But yes, in general, I believe that if you commit or benefit from atrocities, you should be held accountable. Even if it was your grandfather that murdered people and you inherit the wealth he looted, you should at the very least give that wealth back once you realise that it was wrong, especially if the people you looted from are dying from lack of resources.

Also, just in terms of numbers, the British empire was pretty insane in terms of the quantity of people it murdered, both directly and indirectly. The number is much higher than those murdered by the Nazis, even if it happened over a longer period. They should certainly be held accountable, at the very least.

So are the Italians going to pay reparations to the British for the Roman occupation?

When you say "the British should be held accountable" all those individuals are dead and gone. It's a bit Catholic to hold the children accountable for the sins of the father. Its unlikely my forefathers even had the vote at that time. So please explain how I'm accountable again?

And Hindus should demand reparations from Muslims for the 800 years of colonization before the British. That’ll go over great.

You mean West Germany paid a fraction of what they received under the Marshall plan to Israel, and Israel alone. Doesn't really seem to put right the slaughtering they did all across Europe including the slaughtering they did to their own who weren't considered good enough.

There were more reparations paid by West Germany, mostly by losing territory and by dismantling of surviving industry, taking industrial products, intellectual property and rail lines.

There also were payments to Poland, Greece and Yugoslavia.

Many people don't think states are first class entities and what matters are individual people. So why should Alice give tribute (probably via taxes given to the central gov) to Bob for crimes done by someone she's never even heard of that were done to someone with only the most tenuous relationship with Bob? Particularly when Alice may not even be related to the criminal and has not benefited from the crime (heck, her parents probably immigrated from another state) and when Bob's ancestors did the exact same thing and are paying no reparations.

Historic reparations (beyond 100 years or so) fundamentally requires you to ignore the individual and treat people as being part of homogenous groups categorized according to some probably highly subjective traits. Its fundamentally evil.

Arguably it is morally good as it renders fighting over possession by the region's countries a futile effort.

I was under the impression that most museums around the world are a cost to governments rather than a boon, there's probably a few exceptions.

People who are travel to see the crown jewels are going whether or not this one is there with it.

Especially when most museums and galleries in London (all of the UK?) are free to enter. It’s usually only touring/limited display special features that have a modest fee to see them.

A ticket to the Tower costs 30 pounds: https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/visit/tickets-and-pri...

Apparently, the Tower is not government property, but belongs to the Crown Estate.

(I suspect the British cannot return the Koh-i-Noor diamond because it's not government property, either.)

exactly. if you can’t determine a ‘true’ owner, even throwing the diamond into the ocean is a more fair solution than the british monarchy just keeping it while no inkling of plans to ever rectify the situation.

Surely "it brings joy in this museum and isnt causing violence in Niger" is a good reason to keep it?

For what it's worth, the Benin Bronzes are in the British Museum, which is free to visit. (Though special exhibitions usually cost extra.)

Of course, there's still monetary benefit to the museum, London and Britain from people visiting to see them.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/...

Seems like he needs to write a 419 email to retrieve it.

https://www.419eater.com/

Decree that it be split equally among all invested parties, Judgment of Solomon style.

(Though in this case, they may end up having to follow through, i.e. cutting their baby into equal parts.)

But which Afghanistan - the Taliban or the basically nonexistent Government in Exile?

The obvious partial answer is to stop parading it around while that questions considered.

Tbh I don't care where the rock is or who owns it. Regarding the crown I just wish investments were transparent on par with sovereign wealth funds (Norway's Global Pension Fund is gold standard imo).

Where are they investing, is it ESG? Whats the structure for tax purposes. Etc.

That’s a common misconception. Salomon never intended to actually split anything. He could have said “if you don’t reach an agreement I’ll keep the baby myself” and it’d have worked alright since the mother would have cried (loudest).

According to which source? I think the people quoting the "split the baby" story are quoting a bible story which is unambiguous. Most old testament stories are parables that got written down and edited to support the religion, so I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of Judaic parable (or a parable from another culture) said that Solomon had a less violent solution.

Not according to the Bible's (translated) telling:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings%203%3...

>They argued back and forth in front of Solomon, 23 until finally he said, “Both of you say this live baby is yours. 24 Someone bring me a sword.”

>A sword was brought, and Solomon ordered, 25 “Cut the baby in half! That way each of you can have part of him.”

>26 “Please don't kill my son,” the baby's mother screamed. “Your Majesty, I love him very much, but give him to her. Just don't kill him.”

> The other woman shouted, “Go ahead and cut him in half. Then neither of us will have the baby.”

> 27 Solomon said, “Don't kill the baby.” Then he pointed to the first woman, “She is his real mother. Give the baby to her.”

Maybe it was a ploy to see who cared more.

That's how I understand it. All I was saying was, state that the diamond is to be split, and whoever refuses and bows out first gets to keep the entire thing, as they would have demonstrated genuine concern for its welfare.

The scenario is obviously not the same - that's the joke. (Which apparently did not land.) The critical difference is: It's better to get part of the diamond than nothing at all. Thus, when any party is presented with the option to take part of it, their only sensible action is to take it. Either it's going to be split anyway, and no one would want to give away their share to the other scoundrels, or all parties are going to come together and refuse to allow it to be split - which leaves us back at the beginning.

The same cannot be said for babies. Who wants part of a baby? Not me

Right. It was a game of chicken. With a diamond, the actual owner would never say “don’t split it just give it to him”. He’d settle for a half.

Put it in a museum in India.

Yes, it might piss some off, but this idea of keeping the status quo (keeping it with the British) because it is complicated is ridiculous.

Why not Pakistan? Why not Afghanistan?

If it needs to be given away, maybe to a museum belonging to the United Nations? I'm not sure if there are truly extraterritorial museums, though.

No, the United Nations does not own museums.

Also, I don't think the Taliban government has been recognized in the UN yet, which makes stuff murkier soverignity wise.

whats this? https://www.ungeneva.org/en/knowledge/museum

A UN museum of escrow might be neat. Here’s all the awesome stuff people are too pigheaded to come to an agreement on, complete with explanations of why.

What made you pick India, and not Pakistan or Afghanistan?

> (why are they exempt from taxes during record high inflation)

(Because we pay taxes to the crown, doesn't really make sense for the king to pay tax to his majesty's own revenue and customs, HMRC. That said, there was something in the accension council about continuing to volunteer tax on something or another, and as the Duke of Cornwall he volunteered tax on duchy income. My understanding is that the royal family is a net contributor to state coffers even without (how would you even begin) accounting for all the tourism income.)

What about revenue generated from Waitrose Duchy Organic and other Crown owned but Private enterprises[0]? Not combative but actually curious, but I'd prefer an actual legal opinion on this, not some online commentator to be honest.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waitrose_Duchy_Organic

Well I'm not qualified to give 'an actual legal opinion', so this is the best I can do: https://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/what-duchy-originals-it-any...

To stray back into 'some online commentator' though, I believe that may be outdated: I think it's now wholly Waitrose, just a brand. (Notice there's no Essentials/Cooks Ingredients organic brand/products - if it's organic it's Duchy Organic.)

Interesting. I've also been trying to find if royals other than the now deceased Queen have volunteered to income tax and capital gains tax, but I cannot find clear information on this (which is unsurprisng).

The claim of income from tourism is wrong: https://www.republic.org.uk/tourism

(At least if you believe the figures from Visit Britain, the government organization for tourism.)

I said ignoring that, largely because I didn't want to cause an argument about the value of it.

That said, it seems silly to argue it brings no tourism whatsoever, and indeed the page you linked doesn't - it claims £500M, which it (fairly enough) goes on to say is negligible in the scheme of UK total tourism revenue and economy.

But that's not the point is it - when people make the claim it says is wrong, or certainly for the point I was making (again which I think tourism can be ignored for anyway) it's about expense vs. revenue from the royal family, i.e. whether there's net income - because if there is then it seems a futile argument for republicans to say they 'cost too much' - not whether or not that income is large enough to put a meaningful dent in GDP.

The linked page says Visit Britain claimed £500M, but couldn't justify those figures, and has internal documents showing tourism reduced for previous large royal events.

I don't much care about the costs, but it is a good demonstration of how opaque this part of government is.

Does it have to go to any country? Duleep Singh was the owner, when the British took it. Who is his legal heir?

The British crown is the legal owner now, so bringing the law into it doesn't help you. It's not a legal matter it's a moral one, and OP made a very good point about why that's more difficult than you might think.

He had eight children (in exile in England), but none of them had heirs.

So we do it British style, go up the family tree and find the nearest cousin or whatever.

You die without an heir, your property reverts to the state. Looks like the diamond is already with its true owner.

The Crown pays taxes: https://www.royal.uk/royal-finances-0?ch=5#bio-section-4

Queen did which is good! I'm curious whether King Charles will though as he seems to own a fair number of private enterprises, as well as the other royals (I think Prince Harry and Megan Markle announced raising a Series B for their company earlier today for example)

Yes, King Charles III will pay the same taxes as Queen Elizabeth II did - he agreed to it during the Accession Council meeting. Only the Monarch and income from the Duchy of Cornwall (paid to the Prince of Wales) are exempt from income, capital gains, and inheritance tax.

Every other member of the Royal Family are liable to tax, the same as us. They can offset the cost of their official duties against their taxes though.

There's confusion between Queen, Royal family, and the Crown.

The Crown is effectively the state. It's different from the private income and possessions of the Monarch and Royal family.

Not a fan of the British crown (why are they exempt from taxes during record high inflation)

The rest of your comment scans, but this bit seems weird to me.

What does the rate of inflation have to do, with taxation?

Some points:

- we are no where near record inflation, at least not in the US and Canada, and I presume the UK too. I recall 18% being thrown around in the 80s.

- changing tax policy due to inflation seems a weird idea to me. Inflation causes cost of living changes, but also, as a result, wage increases are fought for and won.

If anything, inflation needs to see taxation brackets moving upward to be fair! Not more taxation...

- look at all consumption tax. Inflation goes up, pricing goes up, so sales tax, gas tax, etc collected increases as a result.

I guess I don't get the inflation angle.

> I recall 18% being thrown around in the 80s.

I was there. And I got hit by the 18% they threw

By record high I meant in recent memory - good catch, should have clarified.

To your second point, CoL in London is basically LA level. London rents+council tax make rental prices SF level (around $1-2k/month in rent and around $1-2k/month in local property tax, which rentors apparently pay as well) while London median incomes are below poverty line LA or SF levels (around $40,000/year) [0], and inflation around 8-9%, the optics of a high net worth family exempt from Income Tax and Capital Gains tax unless they choose to incure it voluntariliy is very jarring.

[0] - https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/average-uk-salary

That makes it sound like a small miracle that 80% of the people there can afford to live there at all.

Kinda seems like it! I was back there for an industry conference a couple days ago actually and a number of the service staff who were around my age (20s-early 30s) actually asked me about how to immigrate to the US and Canada. Tbf this is anecdotal and I'm sure there are other Brits on this forum who can probably give more information.

> That makes it sound like a small miracle that 80% of the people there can afford to live there at all.

Oh it absolutely is! People in London pay a lot of money just to be there, and over the last couple of decades I've watched friends move further and further out, some still in flat-share arrangements into their 40s, as the idea of owning property anywhere in anything resembling an inner zone moved from "expensive" to "surely nobody can afford that?" to completely out of the question. And my friends tend to be at least vaguely professional workers, which of course means they are part of waves of gentrification pushing the people with less resources even further away.

How the whole thing sustains itself is something of a mystery to me. The city still needs cleaners.

(FWIW the whole of the UK is pretty much used to quite small living accomodation now, compared to the average American or Australian home)

Technically speaking, we don't really know who owns it. But what we do know is that the British definitely doesn't own it.

If somebody stole this from the British today, they have no right to complain!

Britain definitely has the best claim. They were given it in a treaty almost 200 years ago, and are currently in possession of it.

Imagine a thief comes to your house with a gun & a treaty paper. He gives you two options -

1) sign the treaty paper where I leave you harmless but take away all your wealth 2) kill you and your family and take away all your wealth

Which option would you choose?

Your heir 200 years later would stop their claim on it ? Fair deal?

You've just described thousands of years of history.

Maybe it should be returned to mother earth, that way there would be no violence in the chain of ownership.

unironically. yes. we should throw it into the ocean.

it’s more fair than the current situation and there seem to be no other plans to rectify the situation in the near future either.

Almost every treaty in history was signed with an implicit or explicit threat of violence (some economic, many physical).

Every piece of land that every country owns was taken at the point of the sword at one point or another.

And to answer your question no I don't think I have any right to the wealth of the great great great great grandchild of the thief. Courts would also share my view.

Yes, nobody has the claim including Britain. There's no such thing as better claim. This discussion started because people could not reach a consensus on who has the best claim. Saying that Britain has the best claim is going around in circles.

I think we are on the same page. Instead of pointing out to Britain that you must return it, one should grab it.

The question of "what exactly is ownership?" is an interesting one... every single patch of land has a long and bloody history, and if land ownership includes mining rights? Then this carries over to all objects.

Who would they pay taxes to? Themselves?

The part of the government that provides services to the people.

There is an approach to decide the ownership. When India got independence and the Republic of Indian union was formed, the Indian central government got ownership of all the assets of the princely states. There are instruments of ascession signed by each Maharaja stating the transfer of rights for properties and assets. I doubt if anyone has even seen these documents in a while but it could technically be traced and the rights could be deduced.

It's not that cut and dry. First, does it belong to the Sikh Empire or Jammu Kashmir.

If it belongs to the Sikh Empire, which Punjab does it belong to? If it belonged to Jammu Kashmir does it belong to AJK or JK?

On top of that, if it belonged to JK, did it belong to Kashmir w/ Gulab Singh or Kashmir during the Durrani occupation? If the Durrani Occupation, then which successor of the Durrani state - Afghanistan or Pakistan.

The British Raj provinces in the North (Punjab[0], Sindh[1], Pakhtunkwa[2]) was treated differently than the rest of India. We voted for the Unionist Party [3][4] - not Congress or the PML.

And if I'm being honest (and much more annoyed at this point) you guys left us for slaughter during Partition - Congress, Jan Sangh, the PML, Jamaat-e-Islami, Akali Dal, etc. While Gandhi was in Bengal, where were the rest of the Indian independence leaders when my Mom's side were forced to leave Jhelum? Where were you guys when the Muslims in my dad's village were forced to leave by the sword and bullet (both Zia-ul-Haq's and Imran Khan's biradari/clan were from villages within 40-50 miles from my dad's ancestral village before they were forced to leave)? Why did we try to assasinate Nehru in the refugee camps? Why did we try to assasinate Jinnah in Karachi? Why didn't you guys arrest demagouges like Tara Singh who helped flame this shitshow? The rest of India left us to rot, and then did the same thing in the 1980s and the 1990s.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjab_Province_(British_India...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sind_Province_(1936%E2%80%9319...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North-West_Frontier_Province

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionist_Party_(Punjab)

[4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sind_United_Party

It is very cut and dry and simpler than you are making it seem. Return the stolen items to the Indian government and let the domestic courts decide based on cases claimants put forth.

According to the article it's not that simple. The governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan also claim ownership. Why should the Indian domestic courts decide whether it stays in India or goes to one of those other countries?

Indian courts are better than the people that stole it deciding, the alternative is giving the Brits an excuse to keep it for a 100 years.

Why would Indian courts be appropriate if (as /u/alephnerd write here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32860918 ) Pakistan and Afghanistan are potential claimants as well? Why not send it to Pakistan or Afghanistan and let one of their court systems decide?

It's all an act.

Time to return stolen goods and the Brits all of a sudden have a learning disability surrounding the topic of who custodies assets on behalf of independent states like India.

Hilarious.

spot on

I used to think it was stolen but then it seems like it was gifted to the British.

Is that not accurate?

Those diamonds were mined in Kollur in modern day south India. It should go back to them.

And yes, before you harp on it, the land we call America should go back to the Native Americans, the aboriginals of Australia and New Zealand should also get their lands back. Or whoever else has been the subject of conquest.

Ultimately, slavery, caste, and colonization are institutions of brutality.

Reparations are owed.

Britain can never repay the damage colonization caused to India. But it can return the diamond as an admission of guilt. And sure, it’s owed to a bunch of countries. I’m pretty sure India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka can figure out a shared ownership model for the diamond. They seem to get along fine sharing cricket trophies when there’s a draw.

How do we know which Native Americans to give it back to? The land I sit on has been taken by conquest by many different tribes.

Civilizations clash. Some win, some lose. Should Gaul go back to the Romans?

You would have the Earth remain completely static, and wherever your ancestors happened to evolve into humans that’s where you and your descendants live forever until the end of time?

It’s ridiculous. Things change. Move on.

That’s a dangerous precedent to set. You’re essentially egging on today’s generation to “clash back”.

Colonialism isn’t the same as ancestral predator prey mechanics. Or, that we should reverse every unjust war waged in the world.

Some are just blatantly brutal. Simple. We owe it to our species to recognize mistake, apologize and make repairs.

Would Britain really say “it’s ridiculous. Things change. Move on” for forcefully castrating Turing simply because he was gay? Oh wait. No. They didn’t actually do that.

Some atrocities are just that bad. Things don’t change. It’s ridiculous. Grow a spine!

> Would Britain really say “it’s ridiculous. Things change. Move on” for forcefully castrating Turing simply because he was gay? Oh wait. No. They didn’t actually do that.

And what did that do for Turing? He's still castrated. He's still dead. Were the people who apologized even the ones responsible? They must be mostly dead now too. Was there any serious concern in 2009 when the apology was issued that the UK was going to continue castrating gay people?

That had far more to do with present day politics and empty gestures to appease people like yourself than with making any repairs or apologies to anyone, not that such gestures mean anything to dead people anyway.

The people who used to own the diamond and could theoretically have any rightful claim to it are likewise dead, as are the people who stole it. It is where it is now and moving it somewhere else won't change the past. India's economy just eclipsed the UK's and is on the rise, while the UK is declining, so they'll have the last laugh anyway. Maybe they can buy it back at a yard sale when King George needs to pawn it to pay the rent on Buckingham Palace.

It is literally the precedent that has already been set. Colonialism is exactly the same as ancestral predator prey dynamics (whatever you mean by that).

We do recognize, apologize and make repairs. This is why Africa, India and southeast Asia are all free, sovereign nations now. Repairs were made.

I always find it funny that Indians venerate the moghuls and vilify the British. They were both foreign invaders that conquered people. At least the British led directly to a much more unified India as it stands today, the concept of a single Indian state is a new one (that was created by the British), India is as much one people as Europe, do you think the Indian government owes reparations to the princely states for forcibly annexing them?

Oh while we’re at it, yeah, those Iranian Crown Jewels should also be returned to Kollur.

More info: I think what you’re missing is atrocities have been committed and forgotten.

Let’s stick to the topic at hand: we’ll unravel the stack reverse chronological order.

The point here is not to somehow e redistribute all the wealth all over the world. The point is to make reparations. The kingdom of Britain squatting over India for 309 years and then leaving is not morally the right thing to do.

I think leaving it was the morally right thing to do, and in light of the way the world was before and the way it changed for the better away from colonialism, it was the only right thing to do.

Bangladesh has aboriginal people too. There is zero chance in hell we ever give back the land. Why should we view the British any differently?

The problem with your line of thinking is that it’s never applied equally. It always ends up with only white people being assigned moral agency.

Why the downvotes, this is as equal as an argument as the others I brought up, which only shows how complex of a conundrum this is.

Land is land. People are people. Nation states are neither. Just because gemstones were mined in a geographic area doesn't mean that they morally belong to whoever currently resides/rules in that area.

Once the *people* involved in a specific historical event are long gone it's tenuous to imply that the descendants of those parties have a moral obligation to each other. Inheritance is going to be inequitable regardless--it's questionable to assume that anyone deserves to inherit even justly acquired property. So trying to unravel history and decide who deserves what inheritance is ridiculous, even more so when nation states are involved.

We have statutes of limitations for good reasons.

Nice excuses to not return it back to the last known owners.

The last known owners aren't sovereigns of a nation anymore. And if they wouldn't give it to the ones before them this entire discussion is a sham.

>>The last known owners aren't sovereigns of a nation anymore.

India is a democracy, people's government. So your argument doesn't stand.

How does that statement address my point at all?

It is not very hard, it can go to a museum and can go around the country. After all in a democracy the people are the kings.

Personally I would not want it back, because it is just the tip of the iceberg. The church of England (now csi and cni) hold on to 1000s of acres of colonial land across the country.

The kohinoor is just a drop in the ocean.

I guess that means if somebody stole the diamond from the crown today, they would get to keep it?

Why not? Especially if they kept it safe in a museum or gave it to one of the other parties that has a claim.

If they were powerful enough to prevent the government of the UK from taking it back, they certainly could.

Of they have bigger muscles than the British then yes.

That's how it's always worked.

>why are they exempt from taxes during record high inflation

Because they literally own all (or at least most) of the tourist attractions in the UK. It looks funny how the royal family is paid bunch of money for just existing until you realize they own the land and they have deal with the government where government handles the properties and whatever and pays the royal family for it, but the amount revenue is much much larger

The monarch doesn't own it. It's not well defined, but if anything, the state owns it, with some of the profits from the estate being used to fund the monarch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Estate

(And the monarch is still exempt from inheritance tax on their private property, e.g. Balmoral.)

This is why I'm not a fan of "correcting" history. What happened, happened. You cannot really correct it without breaking something elsewhere.

Returning this diamond isn't going to magically erase 200 years of colonial rule.

But it's going to give back a sense of pride and belonging to people to see their possession back in their hands

Fomenting nationalism seems like a bad idea.

So you have the George Soros mentality

https://youtu.be/__ouwLEMaTM?t=212

It’s origin was in India so it should go back to India. Which authority or organization within India takes care of it is their business.

Lol a typical british divide and rule statement, who is going to take it? Forget that, just give it back to someone neutral then?

Punjab is part of India, so India will do. It was taken from a Maharaja whos citizens and their descendants wanted to be part of India

I think the rule should be: if the entity claiming the item obtained it through conquest originally, they don't get it back. If the item was created or purchased by the entity, they should get it back.

Wikipedia’s account of Koh-i-Noor’s history contains this curious tidbit not mentioned in OP.

Although Victoria wore it often, she became uneasy about the way in which the diamond had been acquired. In a letter to her eldest daughter, Victoria, Princess Royal, she wrote in the 1870s: "No one feels more strongly than I do about India or how much I opposed our taking those countries and I think no more will be taken, for it is very wrong and no advantage to us. You know also how I dislike wearing the Koh-i-Noor".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koh-i-Noor

This is the real reason the British would want to give it back to India. Whether it belongs to India is highly contestable. But the British holding on to it will continue to remind them of their dark days, the manner in which they acquired this and the consequences they created around the world. The Koh-i-Noor today, is the perfect symbol of colonial exploitation. Like an Elder Wand, it induces a lust for possession and attracts undue attention to itself. It has never turned out good for any of its owners.

James Acaster does a great job highlighting the absurdity of the British refusing to repatriate stuff taken from the empire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x73PkUvArJY

It's only absurd if you think that countries ought to behave like people in a society. All the laws and rules of societies serve one purpose, to keep themselves stable. The abstraction of Justice doesn't apply outside of society, unfortunately.

Let's not mistake laws for ethics.

At bottom, there are people. A group of them will sometimes call themselves a government. The ethical understanding of the actions undertaken by people ("ought to behave") doesn't need to change based on whether they claim to be a government or not, or claim to be operating within the law.

Trail of Tears? Japanese American internment? Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo Bay detention camp? The fact that these were actions of a country does not stop us from saying that they were wrong, and yes, absurd given the self-righteous pomposity of my and other western governments who pretend to be special defenders of liberty.

The actions countries take are beyond ethics? How exactly does a country take an action?

Brit (well Scot) here. Can only say: yes and it's insane

The idea of talking about the ridiculous modern abstraction of the state and claiming it has moral relevance is far more absurd.

The Smithsonian ignoring the elephant in the room:

"The United States of America, and Why the Americans Won't Give It Back"

Vae victis, and to the victor go the spoils. (This is not an endorsement.)

> "When the powerful take things from the less powerful, the powerless don't have much to do except curse the powerful," Kurin says.

Indeed.

Also, any efforts by the powerless to redress the balance are generally labeled terrorism.

No, not really. Just those efforts that aim to terrorize.

No; attacks on US service members and bases in war zones are often called terrorism. The term has absolutely become overly broad.

[citation needed]

Sure; as an example, the attack on the USS Cole. Clear military target, widely described as a terrorist attack, including by the FBI (https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/uss-cole-bombing).

>war zones

Were we at war with Yemen when this happened?

We weren’t at war with the Japanese on December 7, 1941. Still wasn’t a terrorist attack.

We can, and should, make a significant distinction between attacks on civilians and attacks on military targets.

I think the main distinction is who’s doing the attacking. If it’s a state-level attack, then it’s an act of war. If it’s just a random group of dudes, it’s terrorism. It doesn’t become not terrorism just because the target is military in nature.

Which would you consider the Taliban?

Is the Islamic State a state-level organization? How big and well organized does the state need to be?

So all rebels are terrorists, and therefore invalid. Very convenient for dictators.

Ideally yes, but we all know the word has expanded into a political battering ram, far beyond it's original meaning.

Not really

Hard disagree. Indiscriminately killing civilians is labelled terrorism, and rightly so.

Yes, but so are an awful lot of other things. Animal rights and environmental activists have been frequently tagged with that term, even when engaged in nonviolent protest.

https://digitalcommons.du.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10...

Or 'fist bumps':

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/terrorist_fist_jab

There is a difference between a news anchor saying “terrorist” and the president of the United States saying “terrorist.”

When a news anchor says it, it’s a talking point. When Obama said it, a U.S. citizen was assassinated without trial. Whenever you see the executive branch use the phrase “terrorist” to describe an American citizen you should worry.

When news anchors used it to describe protests it was a talking point. When Trump used it to describe protestors, that was cause for concern.

When news outlets used the word to describe the Jan 6th riots, it was a talking point. When Biden used it for the Jan 6 riots, that was cause for concern.

The executive branch assassinates terrorists. News anchors do not.

> Hard disagree. Indiscriminately killing civilians is labelled terrorism, and rightly so.

For a political cause, or at least a cause. Otherwise it’s just mass murder.

Would be helpful if you had a solid example.

Whether someone is a categorized as that or a freedom-fighter largely depends what side you are on during, and who wins after (and gets to write the books).

Once you win, everything you did to win gets written down as righteous and the other side vilified (they forced you to do it).

It doesn't take much imagination to guess what the US founding fathers would be called if they lost, by Britain.

They stole it fair and square. If somebody is mad about it they should steal it back.

Stealing it is just theft. To make it "legitimate" you have to claim it by conquest.

According to the article, they need to wait for a young king, kidnap his mother and use that leverage to force him to hand it over along with a 'legal' document saying they own it.

You also would have had to loot it before looting and pillaging became a war crime. If it's looted now and found, it usually goes back to the last owner or country of origin if it was from an archeological site.

Maybe the final curse of the Koh-i-noor is that it is a constant reminder to its possessor that they are the inheritor of crimes upon crimes, stretching back centuries.

Of course, everyone's life is built on millennia of injustices, but for a family to own such a basic symbol of this ... let them keep it, and own the curse it carries.

What a thought! There's another comment here about how Victoria felt about wearing it.

Now that near exact replica diamonds of this weight and hardness and brilliance can be made in a lab, make as many as they need. Problem solved.

They can keep the stupid rock provided they return the $45 trillion they stole from India over 200 years.

https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/british-took-45-...

sucks to lose but winners do what they want

Says the winner.

IIRC that is an absolutely bullshit number based on taking what the Brits actually did steal, giving it the most favorable conversion to USD, and then applying a few hundred years of compounding interest.

7% APR for 300 years is a 650,000,000x return.

>>and then applying a few hundred years of compounding interest.

Yeah that is unfortunately how money works. Why do you think countries like USA are so rich, they've been making investments for a few centuries now.

Robbers and looter should pay for opportunity costs, this is how it should work.

People can rob and loot. A notion of "country" that conflates things separated by hundreds of years is a polite fiction at best.

The problem with this logic is it means that the largest ever theft was some hunter-gatherer stealing a spear 100,000 years ago. That's worth almost 10^3000 dollars now, you know!

At some distance in time, returns on capital are no longer adequately approximated by "x%APR". I think this distance in time is at most around 150 years, and even then only in the USA. In most of the world, it's far less than that.

What do you think inflation is?

Depends on the basket, the location, and the time period!

Seeing what it would cost to replace the things directly extracted from India today would be extremely interesting, actually. Price of cotton * quantity, etc.

Oh so they only took 70k worth of stuff ... Sounds about right /s

Also yes I didn't compound, if we compound it's even less lol

By this logic, don't the Greeks owe the Israelis a nonillion USD for the Alexandrian conquests?

Ideally, I'd rotate it between the countries that have a historical tie. I think that is India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and the U.K.. That would allow all the communities with a connection to share in the benefit.

Btw, for anyone interested, `Koh-I-Noor` means `Mountain of Light`.

“Oh no, those colonial bastards looted my diamond (which my ancestors acquired from looting)!”

what about returning the Anglo Saxon Kingdom stolen by violence in 1066 and returning to Normandy and the Channel Islands while they are at it?

Then the Celts kick them out of Gaul and send them back to Scandinavia where they came from.

Actually the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came from Germany (IIRC). The Danes came from Scandinavia.

I really hope that science will be able to produce synthetic diamonds of any size, shape, form, and color soon, so people stop fancying them that much. In the end, they are just crystals with funny optical effects, their place is in the physics lessons in school and maybe in museums.

Meanwhile this one has less noise since it wasn’t taken by the British and no one is asking for it back AFAIK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daria-i-Noor

No one is asking for it back because Iran would laugh them out of the room, as anyone should. None of this nonsense should be taken seriously.

We are past conquest for the most part, thankfully. But conquest was the way of the world at one time. When the dust settles things stand as they stand, that's all there is to it.

A related question I sometimes wonder: wouldn't it be fair to return the cathedrals and the property of monasteries that were "stolen" during the reformation back to the Catholic church?

I think it's a interesting question and I suspect the answer is that this isn't about repatriation of artifacts, it's more about politics.

There was a lot of art taken during the Napoleonic Wars from the Catholic Church too. Napoleon took art from other European countries too but the Italian states were the least able to repatriate anything at the time. A lot of art that was looted still sits in the Louvre. I kind of wonder if repatriation only matters when the artifact came from non western countries to western ones.

What happens, when, for example, a church in Italy is the beneficiary let alone a European country? Does that make it less urgent? I haven't seen any calls for repatriations in this sense that make headlines.

> I kind of wonder if repatriation only matters when the artifact came from non western countries to western ones.

No. There's also been a lot of noise over the Elgin Marbles (stolen from Greece, mentioned in the article). The Koh-i-Noor has just been in the news lately because of the death of the queen and it being part of the crown jewels.

That effort and debate of repatriation of the Elgin Marbles has been going on for centuries and I think it's debatable if Greece (or the Ottomon Empire) is even part of the western nations. So, kindly, I disagree that there is any urgency or that repatriation of that artefact is even strictly non political. However, there is a movement to repatriate items taken from non-western nations during colonial times which many museums are dealing with presently[1] although this article is specific to the British Museum. The Louvre deals with similar requests, which is where the art looted by Napoleon sits. I don't think I have ever seen a call in headlines to return works to churches or other European countries. There isn't any urgency to do that. So I believe the reason for this imbalance is just that it's political and not really about the items themselves.

[1]:https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/18/uk-museums-f...

> debate of repatriation of the Elgin Marbles has been going on for centuries

> I think it's debatable if Greece (or the Ottomon Empire) is even part of the western nations.

The Parthenon marbles are over two millennia old. They were looted by Elgin just over two centuries ago.

Greece's history stretches back at least four millennia (since the Mycenaeans - considered the first Greek peoples). The Ottoman empire occupied Greece for a bit under four centuries.

You're likely to get a fairer hearing for your points if you don't pepper them with errors.

Nothing you said refutes either of those claims. The Ottoman Empire controlled Greece at the time the Elgin Marbles were taken and it's unclear that they granted permission to remove them. They probably didn't so they were likely stolen from the Ottomans at the time. Further, the Ottomans were decidedly not a Western nation. Greece's history does not imply they are part of the West either. In a literal sense they are not, being part of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Meanwhile, repatriation of artefacts taken from Asia/Africa is a more modern movement that has coincided with anti-colonialism. So although the debate about repatriating the Elgin Marbles has been going on for ~200 years, in my opinion, it is being lumped together with the anti-colonial movements and even fits into that pattern. If you don't believe there is a movement to repatriate artefacts taken during colonial times from non-western nations see the link above or do a search.

There is no movement to return loot or spoils of war to western beneficiaries. So it seems pretty clear to me that anti-colonalism motivates the current claims which is a political ideology. If it was strictly about the ethics of looting, you might see people advocating for a return of items to churches and western countries but no one does that.

“And just as with ethnology, which plays at extricating itself from its object to better secure itself in its pure form, demuseumification is nothing but another spiral in artificiality. Witness the cloister of Saint-Michel de Cuxa, which one will repatriate at great cost from the Cloisters in New York to reinstall it in "its original site." And everyone is supposed to applaud this restitution (as they did "the experimental campaign to take back the sidewalks" on the Champs Elysees!). Well, if the exportation of the cornices was in effect an arbitrary act, if the Cloisters in New York are an artificial mosaic of all cultures (following a logic of the capitalist centralization of value), their reimportation to the original site is even more artificial: it is a total simulacrum that links up with "reality" through a complete circumvolution.

The cloister should have stayed in New York in its simulated environment, which at least fooled no one. Repatriating it is nothing but a supplementary subterfuge, acting as if nothing had happened and indulging in retrospective hallucination.”

Baudrillard - Simulacra And Simulation

I don't think this repatriation actually happened. Is that because someone actually listened to Baudrillard? In any case, complaining about an event which didn't happen as "indulging in retrospective hallucination" adds another layer. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/470314

Disclaimer: haven't read the parent article. Apologies if the video below is repeat/ mis-information. But it is interesting.

Kohinoor: William Dalrymple https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJgZf9c6MTQ

Kohinoor: Release of the book followed by a discussion featuring William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, in conversation with Sagarika Ghose

Om a similar way to the way you didn't read the article, I haven't watched the video.

Any chance of a brief summary of the point it's making?

Relevant: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/koh...

“gift”

So, it legally was not taken forcibly or stolen, but we want it back anyway?

I believe the argument was that it was gifted under duress.

Then why did they say very recently that it was not taken or stolen? They aren’t under duress anymore. They could just have easily said that it was gifted under duress and asked for it back.

"gifted under duress" implies that it was taken forcibly

It's a nation of over a billion people. The "they" you speak of doesn't speak for everyone.

Which "they" asked for it back? Do they speak for everyone in doing so?

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/koh...

Yes, they all want it back.

So they speak for everyone only when they agree with you?

Says what I want to say: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x73PkUvArJY

Please keep it safe where it is as all it will cause is more bloodshed and infighting. It's just a freaking diamond and has never led to anything good. Maybe its the one cursing the Crown who knows what magic it creates.

> “The transition is startling when the diamond becomes a symbol of potency rather than beauty. It becomes this gemstone like the ring in Lord of the Rings, one ring to rule them all.”

A Silmaril would be a better analogy.

> “If you ask anybody what should happen to Jewish art stolen by the Nazis, everyone would say of course they’ve got to be given back to their owners,” Dalrymple says. “And yet we’ve come to not say the same thing about Indian loot taken hundreds of years earlier, also at the point of a gun. What is the moral distinction between stuff taken by force in colonial times?”

I'm not sure a state conquering another state and seizing the conquered artifacts is comparable to a state systematically imprisoning & murdering millions of civilians and seizing their valuable possessions.

After all, as others have pointed out, which state should it return to: Pakistan, Afghanistan or India? If the British "looted" it, should we also consider Afghanistan or Pakistan to have "looted" it first?

I wish we are powerful enough to sack U.K and take it back.

India definitely is, just not with big daddy US around.

What about the place of the earliest known owners?

I am so tired of people romanticizing the monarchy, especially one of the bloodiest colonizers on this planet - the British monarchy! The year is 2022! Can't we finally grow up and stop telling girls stories about princes on white horses and stop talking about monarchs like they are some kinds of saviors!? Instead of wasting billions less than 20 years from now to wipe our Charles' face and name, end this now and turn them into a British Disneyland!

> turn them into a British Disneyland!

That's been the case already for decades.

The Royals are largely a revenue-generating tourist attraction.

Still not there yet!

I see you are not British nor, according to your bio, do you live in Britain. I'm not sure how 'our' applies to you.

with modern synthetic diamond processes, couldn't enough Koh-O-Noor Diamonds be produced to keep everyone happy?

As the article notes: it became a symbol of potency an empire. A lab-made diamond just doesn't have enough blood on it to mean anything: it'd be a giant synthetic rock.

The jewellery value of it comes exactly from what you wrote.

Like you could buy a $15 Casio wrist watch and it will tell you time just fine, but if you buy a Rolex you aren't exactly paying for time keeping. The value here is not time or time keeping, it is meant to show the wages and expenses of people/resources taken to produce it up the chain.

It took X slaves to produce this.

My parents and I were just talking about this. We're all in agreement that the moment that diamond goes back to India (or any country in SEA), it will "disappear" and never seen again.

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