Coronation caught in Kohinoor controversy
‘POLITICAL SENSITIVITIES’ IN CROWN’S USE
PLANS to use the crown with the Kohinoor diamond during Camilla’s coronation as Queen Consort on May 6 next year have been dropped, apparently because of the Indian government’s “sensitivities”.
The idea was to bring out the Kohinoor for the occasion when her husband is anointed King Charles III. However, Eastern Eye can reveal the truth. The Indian government expressed no opinion whatsoever on the subject because it was not consulted and, in fact, had no idea there was a plan to use it for the coronation.
Had it been consulted, chances are it would not expressed an opinion on a decision taken by Buckingham Palace. It would have gone along with whatever the King wanted.
Camilla may not be superstitious but perhaps wouldn’t want to tempt fate by putting on a crown with the Kohinoor. According to legend, the diamond, steeped in blood, carries a curse.
The Kohinoor was “gifted” to Queen Victoria in 1849-50 by 15-year-old Maharajah Duleep Singh after the British annexation of the Punjab. Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, had the diamond recut in 1852 to lend it more sparkle and set in the Imperial Crown. But it was now reduced from 186.1 carats to 106 carats.
The link between Victoria and India is directly established with the Kohinoor diamond, which the Queen is shown wearing as a brooch in an 1856 painting by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, probably her favourite court artist.
In 1911, it was worn by Queen Mary, and then, set in a new crown, in 1937 by the late Queen Mother at the coronation of her husband, George VI. It was also worn in 1953 by the Queen Mother at the coronation of her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, and was displayed on a cushion at the Queen Mother’s funeral in 2002.
It remains one of the highlights of the crown jewels displayed in the Tower of London, where it is seen by millions of tourists.
Both the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail were among newspapers which went with the Kohinoor story on their front pages last Thursday (13).
The Daily Telegraph, with the headline, “Coronation row looms over crown for Queen,” quoted an unnamed source in Narendra Modi’s administration who told the paper “a choice for Queen Camilla to continue the tradition of consorts wearing a crown containing the Kohinoor would hark back to the days of Empire”.
He said: “The coronation of Camilla and the use of the crown jewel Kohinoor brings back painful memories of the colonial past.”
The Daily Mail, with its headline, “Could Camilla have to swap her crown?”, suggested: “Plans for the new Queen Consort to wear 105-carat Kohinoor diamond may be shelved because of ‘political sensitivities’.”
It quoted Robert Tombs, Professor Emeritus of French History and fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, who argued that the history of the Kohinoor was complex, and expressed unhappiness that the king may reconsider his decision to use the diamond in Camilla’s coronation.
He blamed “the agitation of a motley crew of woke obsessives” and thundered: “We must resist this pernicious nonsense. The Palace’s likely decision to remove the diamond from the coronation is, in my opinion, deeply worrying. Because, once we concede that one artefact is a symbol of national guilt, we’ll soon be rushing down a slippery slope.”
A new organisation, headed by Lord Vaizey, a former Tory culture minister, is looking at whether the Elgin Marbles, taken from the Parthenon, should be returned to Greece. It is currently housed in the British Museum.
There is no chance the Kohinoor will ever be returned to India but Tombs launched a preemptive strike by insisting that “giving away this priceless jewel to Delhi would do no practical good to the billion or more inhabitants of India.
“It would, however, mark a hammering humiliation for Britain – and it would endanger innumerable other national treasures. Hand over the Kohinoor, and we would have no logical defence against campaigns to give the Elgin Marbles to Athens, the Benin Bronzes to West Africa, the Rosetta Stone to Egypt, and much more.”
But the first question is whether it will be used at all for the coronation. That would amount to “a massive diplomatic grenade”, according to William Dalrymple, who co-authored Kohinoor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond with BBC journalist Anita Anand.
“It is not a small sensitive issue in the eyes of India,” he reasoned.
“Colonialism is over, Britain wants to make friends with India, it is a major new rising power,” he said, adding, the Kohinoor “has come to take the whole weight of colonisation on its shoulder. It has become this very, very sensitive object and is a major issue now between the two countries.”
A source told the Daily Mail the original plan was for the Queen Consort to be crowned with the late Queen Mother’s crown.
“That was certainly the agreement a few years ago when the whole idea of the Duchess of Cornwall becoming Queen Consort was first mooted. But times have changed and the King is acutely sensitive to these issues, as are his advisors. There are serious political sensitivities and significant nervousness around them, particularly regarding India.”
There were some angry letters from Daily Telegraph readers.
One said: “In its colonial past,
Britain attempted to civilise India but failed.”
Another added: “I suspect it’s a negotiation tactic of sorts for the trade deal that the UK and India are negotiating. India wants be able to have their people move anywhere, and the UK unsurprisingly does not need that.”
A third said: “India buying Putin gas…millions live in abject poverty...while rulers live like the old Maharajas…send rockets into space.. have a social system tantamount to slavery…receive aid from UK……so tell ’em to sort their own mess out before pontificating.”
There have been many books about the diamond, which was found in the Golconda mines in in the present-day Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in the 13th century.
In 2001, Kevin Rushby, a British author who traced the diamond’s trail over the centuries in his book, Chasing the Mountain of Light, commented: “Ideally, somebody should steal it from the Tower of London – that would be very much in the spirit of the Kohinoor. The British basically pinched it off the Sikhs, who pinched it off the Afghans, who pinched it off the Persians, who pinched it off the Indians. Like the story of any big diamond, it’s one of human greed and brutality.”
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, as prime minister of Pakistan, wrote a letter to James Callaghan, his British counterpart, on August 13, 1976, pointing out that the diamond had been taken from Lahore to London in 1849, but continued to hold “immense sentimental value” in Pakistan.
“Its return to Pakistan would be a convincing demonstration of the spirit that moved Britain voluntarily to shed its imperial encumbrances and lead the process of decolonisation,” he said.
The Foreign Office advised Callaghan to play a tried and trusted card – divide and rule. He should hint that the Indians had a claim, too (which has been made by, among others, journalist Kuldip Nayar).
In his letter to Bhutto on September 20, 1976, Callaghan chose his words carefully: “I need not remind you of the various hands through which the stone has passed over the past two centuries, nor that explicit provision for its transfer to the British Crown was made in the peace treaty with the Maharajah of Lahore, which concluded the war of 1849.”
Bhutto released the letters to the Pakistani press and the matter was quickly forgotten.
The Indian government’s announcement in April 2016 that the Kohinoor diamond was a “gift” and not “theft” was big news in Britain but not its about-turn 24 hours later.
Meanwhile, the Cambridge historian Anil Seal warns against attaching too much importance to the Kohinoor. He has dismissed it as merely “a bauble in the annals of history”.