Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
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…
Re: The Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won’t give it back (2017)
#71Well, 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).