Earlier quoted context omitted.
Possession is 9/10 of the law.
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.
The Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won’t give it back (2017)
201–210 of 327 posts
Re: The Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won’t give it back (2017)
#202They 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-...
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.
What do you think inflation is?
Re: The Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won’t give it back (2017)
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Bak…
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-…
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.
Re: The Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won’t give it back (2017)
#204Re: The Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won’t give it back (2017)
#205I wish we are powerful enough to sack U.K and take it back.
India definitely is, just not with big daddy US around.
Re: The Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won’t give it back (2017)
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Re: The Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won’t give it back (2017)
#207Not 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…
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. Britai…
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.
Re: The Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won’t give it back (2017)
#208Vae 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.
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.
Re: The Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won’t give it back (2017)
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Re: The Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won’t give it back (2017)
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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...