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

smithsonianmag.com

41–50 of 327 posts

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

#41
post #27

[flagged]

India should focus on getting their own shit together. They can be content in the knowledge that Britain is a shadow of its former self, without the resources to pay back a fraction of what they took.

Oh the reparations are not happening. But world needs to be aware of the level of apathy the British government had towards its colonies (even in the 20th century)

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

#42

[flagged]

Except the British didn't genocide during the partition of India - the internal clash of Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims going to war was it's own doing... You're framing it like British soldiers went in there and massacred India during that time. Wrong.

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

#44
post #8
post #2

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.

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.

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

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not on the scale as afterwards, no.

Are you sure? I couldn't find any good sources on British genocide, but Wikipedia has a list of massacres in India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_India In sum, the number of casualties from Colonial India is orders of magnitude lower than both pre-colonial and independent India

No post body was provided.

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

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not on the scale as afterwards, no.

Are you sure? I couldn't find any good sources on British genocide, but Wikipedia has a list of massacres in India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_India In sum, the number of casualties from Colonial India is orders of magnitude lower than both pre-colonial and independent India

None of the pre-colonial massacres exceed 500k; the Bengal famine alone killed over 2 million: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

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

#47

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 c…

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.

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

#48

[flagged]

Except the British didn't genocide during the partition of India - the internal clash of Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims going to war was it's own doing... You're framing it like British soldiers went in there and massacred India during that time. Wrong.

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

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

#49

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 c…

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.

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

#50
post #13

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 c…

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

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