‘Return Kohinoor to India’: Indian-origin Journalist’s heated debate on UK TV show goes viral

Mangalore Today News Network / News18

New Delhi, Feb 22, 2023: A video of an Indian-origin journalist Narinder Kaur and GB News journalist Emma Webb discussing if the UK should return the Kohinoor diamond to India has gone viral.

The two journalists got into a heated debate - which according to social media site users turned into a shouting match – with Kaur defending India’s right to the diamond which was taken by the British during India’s struggle for independence.

 

The Kohinoor is one of most disputed jewels in the world and it has been a subject of a diplomatic spat between the UK and India.

Queen consort Camilla, keeping in mind diplomatic sensitivities will not wear the 105-carat oval jewel, during King Charles coronation ceremony.

 

’This is a contested object.’ @Emma_A_Webb argues we should not be returning the Crown Jewels back to their geographical origins as ownership can be disputed in heated debate. pic.twitter.com/HCvMCqYFNi

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) February 16, 2023

After the decision by the royal became public, demands for return of the jewel to India has grown.

“You do not know history. It represents colonisation and bloodshed. Give it back to India. I don’t see why an Indian child from India has to travel all the way to the UK to look at it and pay for it,” Narinder said during the heated argument, after fellow panellist Webb said the jewel was a “contested object”.

“The ruler was also the ruler of Lahore so is Pakistan going get a claim on it? They stole it from the Persian empire. The Persian empire invaded the Mughal empire so this is a contested object,” Webb said.

Narinder later in a tweet maintained that the Kohinoor diamond was found and crafted in India and should be returned to the Indian government.

Kohinoor diamond is one of the largest diamonds and the UK claims the diamond was “gifted” to Queen Victoria in 1849 by the 11-year-old Sikh emperor Maharaja Duleep Singh but the accounts ignore the fact that Duleep Singh’s mother Jind Kaur was a prisoner of the East India Company and Governor-General of India James Andrew Broun-Ramsay aka Lord Dalhousie treated the jewel as a spoil of war.

The Kohinoor diamond was presented to Queen Victoria and displayed in 1851 and now remains embedded on the Maltese Cross in the crown of the British emperor.

The Kohinoor, also known as mountain of light, was mined during the Kakatiya dynasty reign at the Kollur Mine, on the southern bank of the Krishna River in present-day Andhra Pradesh.

It was said to have been fixed as the left eye of the murti of the Hindu goddess Bhadrakali in a temple in Warangal by the Kakatiya dynasty.

It was looted by Muslim invaders and then passed through the hands of various leaders of the Mughal Empire in the 16th century and later Persian and Afghan invaders.