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Risking jibes about ‘Indian givers’, the ethnic Indian Muslim socialist Zohran Mamdani is flogging yet another leftist dead horse by demanding the ‘return’ of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the jewel in the British monarchy’s crown. He specifically gibbered about pestering King Charles for the fabulous bit of bling, which begs the question of why he hasn’t similarly taken to nagging the mullahs of Iran to ‘give back’ the Peacock Throne.
But, for all the leftist hyperventilating gibsmedat, the Koh-i-Noor is not exactly on the same level as an artwork looted by the Nazis. Nor is it a case of, as Carl Benjamin puts it, ‘If we had to dig it up, you never really wanted it in the first place’. The simple fact is that the Koh-i-Noor was legally acquired by the British, under the Treaty of Lahore. Before that, the diamond’s history is one of dubious ‘history’ and repeated looting by non-European imperialists. To damn them with faint praise, the British at least acquired it by legal means, however dubious.
So, what’s got the Ugandan-born, American mayor suddenly coming over all Indian Nationalist? And is he just a gigantic hypocrite?
Mamdani was elected by mouthing platitudes about socialism. But this kind of request was triviality of the worst type: of all the great questions Mamdani might have raised with someone of such deep wisdom and experience, he wanted to focus on something as irrelevant as a diamond, set in the beautiful Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s Crown, which is a component of the Crown Jewels that reside in the Tower of London’s Treasury.
Is this why he was elected? Is this the full extent of the mayor’s political imagination?
When granted an audience with King Charles, a man who for all his faults has spent decades meeting the world’s most consequential figures, the mayor chose to bang on about a diamond. Not policy, not trade, not the actual concerns of New Yorkers. Just a shiny rock with a long and tangled back-story.
There is the striking ignorance of the request: where, exactly, does the mayor think the Koh-i-Noor diamond should be “returned”? It is claimed by India, to which Mr Mamdani has familial ties. However, the diamond is also claimed by Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.
Meaning “Mountain of Light”, the stone has passed through Hindu dynasties, Muslim sultans, the Mughal founder Babur, Iranian conqueror Nadir Shah, Afghan rulers and the Sikh empire of Ranjit Singh before landing with the East India Company under the 1849 Treaty of Lahore at the end of the First Anglo-Sikh War. Every previous owner either seized it by force or received it as war booty. The British took it the old-fashioned legal way: as part of a formal treaty.
So, where exactly does Mamdani propose to ‘return’ it? Delhi? Islamabad? Kabul? Tehran? Any choice would instantly inflame the others. The Indian government’s own record hardly inspires confidence. After acquiring the Nizam of Hyderabad’s jewels in 1995, they promptly locked them in bank vaults where the public cannot see them.
Surely the test to be applied in all these cases of disputed possession is whether or not the object or treasure is accessible to the public? The Koh-i-Noor diamond meets that test as part of the Crown Jewels display, visited by thousands from all over the world each week.
The hypocrisy is thicker than the layer of excrement on a Delhi street. Mamdani is mayor of New York, a city whose museums groan with artefacts from every continent. The Metropolitan Museum displays the Sphinx of Hatshepsut and the 17th-century Crown of the Andes without the slightest suggestion that they should be packed off tomorrow. Yet the same man who presides over this cultural treasure-house suddenly discovers the sacred principle of restitution the moment he meets a British king.
This is not principled history. It is selective anti-Western score-settling dressed up as moral concern.
