Why do we hanker after lost treasures? A decade ago we hyperventilated on the sword of Tipu Sultan, now it is the Kohinoor. The flamboyant industrialist Vijay Mallya retrieved a lost sword of Tipu Sultan in 2003 when he bid 1.57 crore (rupees) in a London auction. Tipu had 13 such swords and rumour has it that he lost one to the Nairs of Travancore during an encounter at Alwaye. But none of the swords did the people of India any good. Mallya himself had to flee to London and God knows when he’s getting back.
The treasures of the Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram have been jealously guarded by the Kerala government for over five years now – thousands of kilos of gold, diamonds, gems and artefacts said to be worth $22 billion in 2011. Wonder how much of the taxpayer’s money was spent on protecting this dead capital. Of what use is treasure that can’t be touched?
While the treasures in hand lie unutilized we continue to learn for lost ones.
The biggest of India’s losses was perhaps the Peacock Throne of Shah Jahan. When the Mughal emperor sat on it for the first time in 1635 its value was estimated at one crore rupees. The cushion on which he sat had a ruby worth one lakh rupees - a gift to his father Jahangir from Shah Abbas of Persia. When Nasiruddin Muhammad Shah was defeated by Nadir Shah of Persia in 1739 at the Battle of Karnal he surrendered, pleaded for restoration of his kingdom, and bartered away the Peacock throne, the Kohinoor and the Darya-i- Noor. In 1747 Nadir Shah was assassinated by Kurdish rebels at Khorasan and the peacock throne was never seen again. It was said that when his camp was looted, the throne was dismantled and divided on the spot.
The 242 carat Great Table Diamond, a large pink diamond mined at Golconda and set in the throne of Shah Jahan was mentioned by the French jeweller and traveller Tavernier in 1642. In 1965, a Canadian research team opined that the Darya-i- Noor and the Noor ul Ain may have been part of the same stone. The 182 carat Darya-i-Noor or ‘sea of light’, the largest pink diamond in the world, and the 60 carat Noor-ul-Ain now forms part of the Iranian crown jewels. In 1958 when the Shah of Iran wed Empress Farah, the Noor-ul-Ain was mounted in a tiara designed for her.
The Kohinoor or ‘mountain of light’ is presently in England in the Queen Mother’s Crown. There are indications that it came from a mine in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. Its Indian origin is undisputed. However, the state of Andhra is not staking any claim. When did the producer every own anything, anyway? The Rajahs of Malwa and Gwalior, Alauddin Khilji and Ibrahim Lodi are possible past owners. Babur and his descendants surely had it in their possession.
Shah Jahan had it embedded in the peacock throne. While in Aurangzeb’s possession the Kohinoor shrank from 793 carats to 186 carats at the hand of an incompetent Venetian jeweler. Today it is only 105 carats, yet it is one of the most desirable baubles in the world. After Nadir’s Shah’s assassination the Kohinoor went to Afghanistan with Ahmad Shah Durrani, and later passed into the hands of Shah Shuja Durrani. In 1813 Maharaja Ranjit Singh acquired it from Shah Shuja in return for offering him refuge as he fled Kabul.
In 1839 Ranjit Singh on his deathbed willed the diamond to the Jagannath temple at Puri in Odisha but his will was not executed. In 1849 the Punjab was annexed by the British, the 11 year old ruler Duleep Singh, son of Ranjit Singh was deposed, and the East India Company shipped the stone to England to be gifted to Queen Victoria. This gifting process is now under the scanner as Indians wants the gem returned. But the diamond was taken from Lahore in Pakistan, so isn’t that where it should be sent back?
In the history of world the spoils of war have always belonged to the victor. Whether they were obtained by looting, barter, negotiation or coercion is quite irrelevant. In the final analysis the last grabber has the predominant right. If the Kohinoor must return to its rightful owner then by extension of the same logic all the objects in the Louvre Museum in Paris and the British Museum in London must be returned to the places from which they were ‘collected’. And if the Brits should return the Kohinoor, shouldn’t the Iranians return the Dariya-i- Noor and the Noor-ul- Ain?
Chasing lost treasures will only serve to mess up our foreign affairs. We must learn to forget and move on. Let’s not forget Mallya’s 9,000 crore debt though! We’re fortunate that India did not lose everything. The last Maharaja of Travancore did outwit the British, didn’t he? Imagine what would have happened if they had got wind of the treasures buried in the temple vaults? Let’s think positive.
With the blessings of Sree Padmanabha we can make another peacock throne and Comrade Achuthanandan can sit on it once a month just for a few minutes – what say you, my dear comrades? And anytime we decide we don’t need it any more we can place it in the well of the Kerala Assembly, so the legislators can take it to pieces when they are in an ebullient mood – just like the soldiers of Nadir Shah did once upon a time.
(Pushpa Kurup is an IT professional and a writer)
