AHead to the coronation of King Charles at Buckingham Palace on 6 May 2023 has announced That Camilla, Queen Consort, will wear a modified version of the crown made for Queen Mary, wife of George V. It is the first time since the 1700s that the crown of the Queen consort is being reused. Even more specifically, the Koh-i-Noor diamond will not be used In Taj.
The most expensive of the United Kingdom’s crown jewels, it is also the most controversial. A piece of colonial heritage, it has long been the subject demand for damages by the Government of India.
Koh-i-Noor is not an ordinary diamond. It has been a symbol of the rise, climax and fall of mighty empires. Never sold or bought, it has instead been a jewel of winemakers in India, Persia, Afghanistan and the UK since the mid-19th century.
how did the british take the diamond
The origin of the Koh-i-Noor (Persian for “mountain of light”) is debated, largely in India. some said it was mined Kollur Mines in Golconda, close to the Krishna River, in what is now Andhra Pradesh. others have Figured out It is on the lower course of the Godavari River in the center of the country.
The diamond is more accurately accounted for in medieval records and its political relevance is clarified Mughal rulers Which remained for more than a century till the Persian invasion of India in 1738-39. From the Persian ruler Nadir Shah, it passed into the hands of the Afghan Durrani dynasty in 1749, and into the hands of the Sikhs in 1813.
By the late 18th century, the British East India Company had become a major political player in the Indian subcontinent. Its officials were aware of the glory of the Koh-i-Noor as Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the founding ruler of the northwestern Sikh Empire, displayed it as the most prized possession of his territory.
After the death of Ranjit Singh, the Sikh Empire began to decline. During the Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848–1849), the army of the British East India Company was ousted
10 year old king, Maharaja Duleep Singh. They placed him under British guardianship appointed by the Company, then annexed his territories and state properties, including the jewels of the Koh-i-Noor and Darya-i-Noor along with all the treasure goods kept in the capital city of Lahore. also confiscated. The British estimated the value of these confiscated goods – excluding the Koh-i-Noor – to be at least 37,15,303 rupees (equivalent to about £745 million at current rates).
According to submission agreement Which was signed by the Company on March 29, 1849 with Duleep Singh:
All property of the State, of whatever description and wherever found, shall be confiscated to the Honorable East India Company, in part payment of the debt owed by the State of Lahore to the British Government and the expenses of the war. The jewel called Koh-i-Noor, which was taken from Shah Shuja-ul-Mulak by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, will be handed over to the Queen of England by the Maharaja of Lahore.
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award of victory
In April 1849, the Koh-i-Noor was handed over by the British Crown lord dalhousieWho was the Governor-General of India from 1848 to 1856 under the command of the British East India Company.
Dalhousie chose the Koh-i-Noor as “the one”.historical monument of victory, But, unconventionally, he reserved it for the British monarch, Queen Victoria, and not his company “Court of Directors”, as were all the other confiscated properties.
The British East India Company was established by royal charter in 1600 as a joint stock trading company Subordinate By a Companies Court of Directors of London. In 1784, the British government also began to oversee the Company’s affairs in India through the Board of Control.
The company was formed from the middle of the 18th century. a real situation, Boasting of an army and forts, it acquired territories. And it shared dual sovereignty from the British crown and the Mughal Empire. Both granted the Company certain rights and laws: the right to collect taxes, to defend its borders, to have diplomatic relations, to wage war. Marking this change from a trading company to a company state, it came to be known as Company Bahadur (meaning, “brave, honorable company”) throughout South Asia.
When the Ratna was not delivered to the Company Court of Directors, he took offense. “Court, you say,” Dalhousie wrote to his close friend Sir George Cooper August 16 1849“The Maharaja is troubled by my handing over the Koh-i-Noor to the Queen.”
The former President of the Board of Control, Lord Ellenborough, meanwhile, was angry that Dalhousie had not given everything to the Emperor. He wrote:
“What’s the use of this [Governor General] Company to seize anything? It belongs to the Queen, and the army has a right to demand it, and I tell you it is dangerous to refuse it.
Caught in a power struggle between the Court of Directors and the Board of Control, Dalhousie wrote that he felt like “a bundle of hay between two donkeys”. In his written defense against Ellenborough, he said, “Acknowledging the empress’s intangible right over all property in a conquered country,” this has not been the practice in India.
Dalhousie defended his circumvention of the Court of Directors’ authority, saying that he had acted as much in his own interests as in the interests of the Crown:
It was more to the honor of the queen that the Koh-i-Noor should be handed directly from the hands of the conquered prince to the sovereign who was its conqueror, rather than presented to her as a gift – which always There is a favor – by a joint stock company between its subjects.
On 30 March 1849, he wrote to Cooper from the Punjab:
Whatever I have done, I have done on my own responsibility. I know it is just, political and necessary. […] It is not every day that an official of his government adds four million subjects to the British Empire, and places the historical jewel of the Mughal emperors in his own emperor’s crown. I have done this. Do not think that I am unduly happy.
Dalhousie, as a loyal British subject of Her Majesty, went out of his way to secure the Koh-i-Noor for the British crown, as a symbol of imperial pride. For Duleep Singh and the Sikh Empire, it was such a treasure that East India Company officials forced them to surrender in defeat in 1849.
Arun KumarAssistant Professor in Imperial and Colonial History, University of Nottingham
This article is republished from Conversation Under Creative Commons Licence. read the original article,
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