Queen faces fight to keep the Koh-i-Noor diamond
After a decade as a political pariah, India’s prime minister is due to arrive in Britain to a hero’s welcome
THE Queen is facing a legal challenge for the return of the Koh-i-Noor diamond.
The 105-carat stone, said to have been mined in India up to 800 years ago, is set in the crown of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and is on public display in the Tower of London.
However, a powerful cabal of Indian businessmen and Bollywood film stars want it back, claiming the gem was stolen by the British in 1849.
The legal action will be potentially embarrassing for the monarchy, as its launch has been deliberately timed to coincide with a lunch hosted by the Queen at Buckingham Palace later this week for Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister.
The Indian lobbying group has instructed British lawyers to begin proceedings in the High Court to force the Government to return the diamond.
Members of the group insist it is an important piece of Indian heritage.
The Koh-i-Noor, which means “mountain of light”, was once the largest cut diamond in the world and had been passed down from one ruling dynasty to another in India.
But after the British colonisation of the Punjab in 1849, the Marquess of Dalhousie, the British governor-gen- eral, arranged for it to be presented to Queen Victoria.
The last Sikh ruler, Duleep Singh, a 13-year-old boy, was made to travel more than 4,000 miles in 1850 to hand the gem to the Queen – a moment re- garded by Sikhs in India as a national humiliation.
The British law firm instructed by the campaigners, calling themselves the Mountain of Light group, said it would be seeking to mount its case on the back of the legal principles enshrined in British law that give institutions the power to return stolen art.
David de Souza, co-founder of the Indian leisure group Titos, who is helping to fund the legal action, said: “The Koh-i-Noor is one of the many artefacts taken from India under dubious circumstances. Colonisation did not only rob our people of wealth, it destroyed the country’s psyche itself.
“It brutalised society, traces of which linger on today in the form of mass poverty, lack of education and a host of other factors.”
Bhumika Singh, a Bollywood actress backing the campaign, said: “Koh-iNoor is not just a 105-carat piece of stone. It has a lot of history and culture attached to it, and undoubtedly should be returned to India.”
The campaign has gained momentum in recent months, winning support from – among others – Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the home affairs select committee.
Mr Modi is said to be sympathetic to the rights to the claim, but it is understood that the diamond is strictly off the agenda for this week’s visit.
The Government has rejected all demands for the return of Koh-i-Noor, and in 2013 David Cameron, visiting India, defended Britain’s right to keep it.
IT IS a long way from his roots as a tea-seller ’s son helping his father at a small Gujarat train station to lunch with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
And it is also a far cry from life as a political pariah shunned by Britain for a decade to the role of “rock star” world leader who will pack Wembley Stadium with adoring Indian expatriates and stay overnight at Chequers.
But Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, will have made that momentous journey by the time he arrives in London this week to be feted by Downing Street amid a packed three-day schedule of high-profile events.
For 10 years as chief minister of the western state of Gujarat, Mr Modi was persona non grata for Britain, subject to a travel ban and a boycott by British diplomats in the country.
The Hindu nationalist politician was fending off accusations that he failed to rein in anti-Muslim rioters during a bout of communal violence in 2002 that claimed more than 1,000 lives, including three British citizens of Gujarati origin.
As Mr Modi emerged from provincial politician to likely leader of the world’s largest democracy, Britain ended the boycott in 2012 in the face of growing business and realpolitik pressures.
The turnaround has been dramatic. This week he will stay at Mr Cameron’s country residence, address both chambers of Parliament, visit Indian-owned businesses and sites of Indian cultural importance.
British multinationals reportedly hope to announce deals of up to $15 billion (£10 billion) during the visit, including the sale to India by BAE Systems of 20 more Hawk trainer aircraft assembled in Bangalore. In the wake of the deals unveiled during last month’s visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, it is another boost for Mr Cameron’s “look East” push for Asian markets for British companies.
But as striking as the financial bottom line is the symbolism of lunch with the Queen and the Wembley rally. In the largest gathering Britain has witnessed for a foreign leader, he will address more than 60,000 British-Indians.
A fan of social media, it is a safe bet that Mr Modi will share key moments with his 16 million followers on Twit- ter, where he is the world’s second most popular politician after Barack Obama.
Among those sharing the excitement in his old power base of Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s main city, was his younger brother Prahlad who runs a tyre shop on an industrial artery in the suburbs.
It’s a fair bet he will share key moments with his 16 million followers on Twitter, where he is the world’s most popular politician after Obama’
The younger Modi reached for a handkerchief and dabbed his eyes dramatically as he spoke of the family honour.
“It is a matter of immense pride that someone who rose from our humble roots as a tea-seller on the trains would be invited to visit the Queen whose family once ruled half the world,” he said of his brother.
He described the visit as a “a vindication for Modi” after the decade-long British boycott. “We are not bitter, but we are very pleased,” he said.
Mr Modi’s visit will not be without controversy. Protests are being organised by groups over the 2002 killings, sexual violence against women and the alleged culture of religious intolerance under his administration.
Greenpeace said its registration to operate in India was revoked on Friday in the latest stage of a major crackdown on international charities launched after Mr Modi came to power in 2014.
Elsewhere, the novelist Arundhati Roy is the latest in a wave of artists and scientists who have returned national awards in protest at violence and murders of minorities and intellectuals.
Prahlad Modi was dismissive of the “gesture politics”. “Father felt that Narendra would otherwise become a wage-earner and so should not have done what he was intending to do,” he said. “But Narendra was very determined and he convinced his father that he should work for the cause. The rest is history.”
Can you imagine what would happen to a British politician who announced that he would give a speech in a football stadium, not on match day but on a Friday night, expecting the masses to flock to hear his words? Such a politician would be lucky to get away with ridicule.
Which makes what will happen at Wembley this coming Friday all the more striking. More than 60,000 people, including families with their young children, will crowd into the stadium to hear a politician speak. Not a British politician, but Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India. Mr Modi will enjoy the sort of reception that supposedly popular British politicians can only dream of.
He will be in Britain as part of a visit that, while it will not quite have the same ceremonial fanfare as Xi Jinping’s stately progress last month, is arguably as significant, and almost as controversial.
The controversy is a personal one. Mr Modi is the leader of the BJP, a party long associated with more aggressive forms of Hindu nationalism. In 2002, when he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, rioting broke out that eventually left more than 1,000 Muslims dead.
Mr Modi’s precise responsibility in those events remains angrily disputed, but for a decade after the riots, Britain refused any official contact with him. British officials concluded that his administration had supported the violence.
The ban was lifted in 2012 as Mr Modi’s ascent to the premiership of a future economic superpower looked inevitable. This week, he will meet the Queen, address Parliament and visit David Cameron at Chequers – a remarkable reception for a man Britain effectively accused of having blood on his hands.
Disputes about the decision to embrace Mr Modi (a shameful climbdown that puts money above principle? Or the sensible pursuit of British national interest?) will be familiar from Mr Xi’s visit, another part of a wider debate about British foreign policy in a century where economic and strategic power will increasingly belong to countries that do not subscribe to Western norms.
Welcoming Mr Modi marks, at the very least, a new chapter in Britain’s post-imperial history. Victoria was Queen-Empress of India. This week, the Government of Queen Elizabeth II confirms that Britain cannot even pretend to dictate terms to independent India and must deal with whomever its 814 million voters chose to lead them.
Mr Modi is a fascinating man, worthy of more attention and scrutiny than he often receives in Britain. But for all that, he should not be the main focus of our national attention at that Wembley gathering. Far more worthy of note – and admiration – are the people who will turn up to hear him, and the hundreds of thousands of other Britons of Indian descent, of all political persuasions.
There is a very good case to be made that British Indians are not just the most successful immigrant group in this country’s recent history, but the most successful group of people full stop. Their story is cheering, inspiring, and surely holds lessons for a country gripped by worry over immigration and the population flows that should be recognised as an inevitable feature of life in this century.
The 1961 Census recorded 166,000 Indian-born Britons, but that figure probably included more than 100,000 white Britons, the children and grandchildren of Empire who, after India’s independence (and bloody partition), came “home” to a country they barely knew. What the Office for National Statistics describes as ethnic Indians were thus a tiny presence in this country.
The last census, in 2011, recorded 1.4 million British Indians, and some estimates put the figure today at 1.7 million. More extraordinary than the rise in numbers is how it has taken place so harmoniously and profitably for this country and those in it.
British Indians, quite simply, are among the most industrious, accomplished and creditable among us – the best of British, if you like.
This starts at school. More than 75 per cent of British Indian students in England get five or more “good” GCSEs, compared to 61 per cent of white British students. Later, 14 per cent of British Indian students obtain three A* or A grades or better at A-level. It’s 10 per cent for white British students.
Then 26 per cent of British Indian students in England go on to a topflight university, compared with 15 per cent of their white British classmates. And more of them go into professions such as medicine. British Indians are barely 2 per cent of the population, but 12 per cent of all doctors.
For such reasons, some Conservatives see British Indians as natural Tories; the party’s successful campaign to win over non-white voters at the general election focused much effort on them – Samantha Cameron’s wardrobe contains more than one sari as a result.
Yet comparisons with white Britons can tell us only so much, and the success here of British Indians is also a comment on the underperformance (still not properly addressed by any politician) of white working-class children, particularly boys.
Perhaps a more useful – but potentially inflammatory – comparison is with British Pakistanis, whose educational and economic results lag sadly behind their British Indian compatriots. Barely 6 per cent of British Pakistani students get three A grades at A-level; among British Pakistanis as a whole, only half are classed as economically active.
This comparison is almost painful when it comes to indicators of social integration: British Indians are twice as likely to marry outside their ethnic group as British Pakistanis are; 70 per cent of British Indian women work, which is close to the national average. And according to the think tank Demos, they are far more likely to live in multi-ethnic neighbourhoods, instead of the homogeneous areas where many British Pakistanis reside.
This throws up questions that can be difficult to discuss without arousing strong emotions, including questions about the role religion plays: do the Hindus and Sikhs who make up most of the British Indian population fare better than Muslims of Pakistani origin because of their faith?
Given his history, the week of Mr Modi’s visit is not the time for a dispassionate discussion of that issue, but the differing situations of the two groups are something any politician interested in social cohesion should be studying – not least because of our current levels of immigration. Establishing what it is that has made British Indians such a roaring success might help others follow their fine example.