HUGE! PM Modi plans to retrieve Kohinoor, thousands of colonial artefacts from UK

New Delhi, May 14: In a significant development, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has decided to start a diplomatic campaign to retrieve the Kohinoor diamond and thousands of colonial artefacts from United Kingdom stolen during their centuries-long colonial exploits in the country.

 

Reports suggest that this diplomatic campaign is being dubbed as "reckoning with the past" and is set to be the largest repatriation claim faced by the United Kingdom. "It is of huge importance to the government. The thrust of this effort to repatriate India's artifacts comes from the personal commitment of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has made it a major priority," Govind Mohan, secretary for India's culture ministry, was quoted as saying by The Telegraph.

Diplomats in London will make formal requests to institutions holding artefacts taken in unfair manner during their colonial rule in India by the Queen family. The process is due to begin this year, The Telegraph report added.

Notably, the main focus of the central government's goal is to reclaim the Koh-i-Noor diamond which is one of the Crown Jewels currently held by the recently crowned King Charles III.

The British Royal family has been in possession of the Kohinoor since 1849 CE after they took forcefully it from a 10-year-old boy King, Maharaja Duleep Singh, and had to sign the Treaty of Lahore in 1849 when his mother was a prisoner of the British.. At that time, Queen Victoria wore the Kohinoor as a brooch.

 

Moreover, to this date, sections of British media just like Britain's history books state that the Kohinoor was a gift for Britain from India or that "it was handed over to the East India Company". India's historians have unanimously pointed out with documentary evidence that Kohinoor went to the British from India under "colonial coercion".

While Kohinoor is widely perceived as a symbol of British colonial conquest in the Indian subcontinent, it is just the tip of the iceberg of the total wealth drained from the region by the Raj. In terms of monetary value, Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion worth of wealth from India during the period 1765 to 1938, according to economist Utsa Patnaik’s 2018 research.