The troubled history of the Kohinoor diamond – a jewel controversially owned by the British monarchy
Following Queen Elizabeth II’s death last week, critics have renewed calls for the British government to return artifacts looted by the British Empire, among them the Kohinoor diamond – one of the world’s most famous, controversial gems.
Housed today in the Tower of London as part of the Crown Jewels collection, the diamond is subject to claims of ownership from multiple countries. It is rumored that it will be worn by Camilla, now Queen Consort, at the coronation of King Charles III.
Originally about 186 carats uncut, the Kohinoor, or “Mountain of Light,” was likely mined in South India in the 13th century. Some Hindus believe it to be the Syamantaka gem from the Bhagavad Purana tales of the god Krishna.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, the stone first appears in the written record in 1628, when it formed the glistening head of the so-called “Peacock Throne” of the Mughal Shah Jahan. Despite its impressive size, the Kohinoor played second fiddle to the Timur Ruby, as Mughal culture preferred colored stones.
After a century in Mughal hands, the diamond was subsequently captured by the Persian and then Afghan empires. It was finally returned to India in 1813 by the Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh. In the book “Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond,” historians Anita Anand and William Dalrymple note Ranjit Singh’s acquisition as a major turning point in the gem’s history.
“It was not just that Ranjit Singh liked diamonds and respected the stone’s vast monetary value; the gem seems to have held a far greater symbolism for him,” they write. For him, it represented the conquest of the Sikh Empire against the Afghan Durrani dynasty.
The diamond’s almost mythical potency appealed to Britain’s East India Company, which began its plunder of the Asian subcontinent in the early 19th century. Even so, the diamond remained in India until 1849, when Ranjit Singh’s son Maharaja Duleep Singh signed the Treaty of Lahore. Only a child at the time, Duleep was forced to acknowledge the British annexation of Punjab – and turn over the diamond.
Lord Dalhousie, the Scottish governor-general of India, oversaw the stone’s export to England, where it was unveiled at the 1851 Great Exhibition. Viewers were originally scandalized by the Kohinoor’s dull appearance; to avoid more public outcry, Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert had it recut and polished.
Around this time, rumors also started spreading that the famous gem was cursed. Whispers circulating that any man who wore the diamond would experience great misfortune, or that it spiritually saturated with the bloodshed of historical conquests.
Perhaps in part because of the rumors, the Kohinoor never became a star of the royal collection. Worn occasionally as a brooch by Queen Victoria, it was eventually set in the crown of Queen Alexandra and then in that of Queen Mary. In 1937, it was refashioned as the central diamond on the crown of Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother.
The Kohinoor crown last appeared in public in 2002, when it was placed on top of The Queen Mother’s casket at her lying-in and funeral.
Meanwhile, the Indian government has been demanding the diamond’s return almost the entire time the stone has been in British hands. The country entered a formal complaint upon gaining independence in 1947; it was followed up upon Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953. The governments of Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan have lodged similar claims.
The British government has historically rejected the idea of returning the Kohinoor. In 2013, then-Prime Minister David Cameron said “They’re not getting it back.” Three years later, the Indian Culture Ministry insisted that it would make “all possible efforts” to see the diamond back in India.
Now, as the death of Queen Elizabeth brings renewed criticism of the dark history of the British imperial project in Asia and beyond, social media users are rallying to put the Kohinoor issue in the spotlight.
“If the King is not going to wear Kohinoor, give it back,” wrote one Twitter user.
Speaking to NBC, Danielle Kinsey, a professor of history at Carleton University, says it is only a matter of time before the diamond is returned.
“At some point the monarchy will understand that keeping the diamond is more of a public relations liability for them than an asset,” she said.
“I think the same is true for many, many looted artifacts in Britain today and the institutions that house them.”
Indeed, the Kohinoor is far from the only foreign treasure lingering on British soil. Not only does the Crown Jewels include several other controversial gems – including the Timur Ruby, the same stone that formed part of the Peacock Throne with the Kohinoor in the 17th century– but the country’s museums are overflowing with looted goods.
While the British Museum remains locked in a famous feud with Greece over the Elgin marbles, other institutions are becoming more willing to return what was never theirs. In August, the Horniman Museum and Gardens vowed to return 72 Benin bronzes to the Nigerian government.
Despite the small progress being made, British-Indian author Sauruv Dutt, told TIME that he doubts the Kohinoor or its peers will be back in their origin countries anytime soon.
Describing how the monarchy is “married to this romantic version of empire, even though it is long dead, and has lost its power,” Dutt said the diamond would be impossible for them to surrender. “[The Royals] would essentially be eviscerating themselves.”
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Senator on Democrats’ Same-Sex Marriage Bill: ‘We Have to Fight Back on This’
Passing a bill enshrining same-sex marriage in national law would put the existence of religious nonprofit ministries at risk and send “a pretty strong message that religious beliefs don’t matter,” a Republican senator has said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., vowed Wednesday to bring a bill decreeing that all 50 states must recognize same-sex marriages to the floor “in the coming weeks.”
Schumer needs 10 Republican votes to overcome a filibuster—which he may find by tying the controversial redefinition of marriage bill to a measure to keep funding the government after Sept. 30.
Some Republicans “just want to get this thing behind us, and the faster we can do that, the better. And the best way to do that is to simply give them the votes they need to pass the bill,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” Wednesday.
“That would be a terrible mistake,” he said. “I don’t believe there are 10 Republicans that will fall for that.”
Feedback from Christian voters has already impacted Senate Republicans’ stance on the bill. “I’m hearing from North Dakotans, which matters most to me,” Cramer told Perkins. “Overwhelmingly, they oppose this legislation. People are reading it, they’re hearing about it, and they see it for what it is.”
The bill, which Democrats dubbed the Respect for Marriage Act, passed the House of Representatives last month with 47 Republican votes, including House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.
“Fortunately, the August recess came along in time for us to go home and hear from our constituents—hear from our priests and our pastors and the praying men and women of our churches,” said Cramer.
Regardless of the clerical or lay status, senators are hearing the same concern: “[T]he potential attack on religious liberties once a bill like this would pass,” Cramer stated. “In many respects, passing a bill like this really sends a pretty strong message that religious beliefs don’t matter.”
Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., agreed, writing in The Washington Stand that the bill “erodes their religious liberty by elevating the ‘right’ to same-sex marriage above the constitutionally-guaranteed right for people to live according to their faith.”
Lawsuits targeting Christians who will not participate in same-sex marriages have already cost elderly florist Barronelle Stutzman her business, hauled Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips to court twice, and subjected Christian adoption agencies to legal harassment for assuring their children’s adoptive homes have a mother and a father, among dozens of others.
“The Respect for Marriage Act will further usher in this new era of oppression” toward faithful Christians and observant Jews, the Conservative Action Project wrote to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
If the proposed bill passes, the IRS “will then come straight at every nonprofit that believes in traditional marriage,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told Perkins in July. LGBT activists, possibly with the help of the Biden administration, will threaten the tax-exempt status of religious nonprofits—including church food banks, soup kitchens, Christian adoption agencies, and other social ministries.
The Obama administration signaled the coming legal assault in 2015: The solicitor general who argued Obergefell v. Hodges told the Supreme Court, “It is going to be an issue.” The left plans to use the proposed law “as a weapon” to “crush anyone that opposes [their] belief in gay marriage,” Lankford said.
Grassroots Christian conservatives have gotten through even to the most vulnerable politicians. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who originally said, “I see no reason to oppose” the bill, now tells Axios, “I wouldn’t vote for it because of all the issues raised about religious liberty.”
A handful of Republicans have endorsed the legislation, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and retiring Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. But the vast majority have taken no opinion.
“A lot of them are making a political calculation” that Christian churches are “asleep,” Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., told Perkins in July. The massive response by Christian registered voters—and recent election results—suggest their strategy is misguided. Numerous candidates who support natural marriage prevailed over socially liberal candidates in this year’s Republican primaries.
Senate Democrats hope the bill will give them a political win and energize their voting base before the 2022 midterm elections. Some justify the bill by citing a concurrence by Justice Clarence Thomas asking the Supreme Court to revisit Obergefell and other opinions based on a controversial legal theory. But the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision specifically states that it does not impact Obergefell.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh separately wrote that Dobbs “does not threaten or cast doubt on” the 2015 decision inventing the right to same-sex marriage.
“A vote on the Respect for Marriage [Act] is necessary,” claimed Schumer this week. But since all 50 states have already changed their marriage laws, and granted those who identify as homosexual the benefits available to married couples, legal analysts say the bill is superfluous from a legislative standpoint.
“Absolutely nothing would change in terms of policies, benefits, and substantive rights for same-sex couples currently in civil marriages,” noted Roger Severino, director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ civil rights division under President Donald Trump.
While the legislation would have limited or had no effect on state laws, it would potentially hamper the ministries of religious groups that feed hungry people, and “do it in a way that’s compassionate, unlike the federal government,” Cramer told Perkins.
The North Dakota senator feared that may be part of the Democrats’ design.
“If you didn’t have faith-based organizations doing all of these things, the alternative is the government. And that’s really what liberals want: They want the government to replace the church, to replace the body of Christ, to replace your compassionate faith-based services,” Cramer stated.
Unfortunately, some in the church welcome their replacement by the welfare state. Some clergy “liked the idea that the government would feed hungry people, that they would clothe the poor, that they would visit the sick. And I always like to tell my colleagues: The Sermon on the Mount wasn’t delivered to the democracy or to the Congress. It was delivered to the disciples in the church and the congregation. And I just don’t want us to lose either that responsibility or that obligation as faithful people.”
Many argue that revoking the tax-exempt status of religious nonprofits, which often operate hand-to-mouth, or even suing them would greatly reduce their ministry and their ability to share their goods with the needy in the name of Jesus Christ.
“We have to fight back on this,” Cramer concluded.
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‘Woke’ Department of Defense equity chief Kelisa Wing has history of anti-white Twitter posts: report
The self-described “woke” chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer in the Department of Defense’s education branch has a history of calling out white people on social media, according to a report.
The tweets by Kelisa Wing, an Army veteran and the current DEI chief at the DoD’s Education Activity, were first reported by Fox News. When the outlet contacted her for comment, her Twitter account was made private and she declined to respond.
“I’m exhausted with these white folx in these [professional development] sessions,” Wing, who oversees curriculum at DoDEA, tweeted in June 2020, according to Fox.
“[T]his lady actually had the CAUdacity to say that black people can be racist too… I had to stop the session and give Karen the BUSINESS… [W]e are not the majority, we don’t have power,” the diversity chief continued.
“Caudacity” is a portmanteau referencing audacity expressed by white people.
“[B]eing antiracist means being active against racism… you will NEVER arrive… stop centering this on whiteness,” Wing said.
In another post, Wing responded to another user who criticized an article she had written that claimed “racism is ingrained in the very fabric of our country,” and called on teachers to dismantle “racial oppression,” Fox reported.
“Bye Karen,” Wing wrote, dismissively.
She’s additionally called former President Donald Trump the “whole boy version of a Karen” and his former secretary of education Betsy DeVos as “the queen of Karens.”
The DoDEA and DoD did not immediately respond to Fox’s requests for comment regarding Wing’s tweets.
Wing has additionally co-authored several children’s books concerning race. In 2021, she wrote along with Leigh Ann Dickerson as part of the Racial Justice in America Series “What is White Privilege?”
The book says that “White privilege hurts a lot of people. If you are White you might feel bad about hurting others or you might feel afraid to lose this privilege.”
“Overcoming White privilege is a job that must start with the White community,” the book says.
The book was one of many removed for review by a Florida school district, a nonprofit group that monitors banned books reported, according to Fox.
“Honored to be involved with work that causes good trouble,” Wing said on Twitter in response to the report.
https://nypost.com/2022/09/13/dod-equity-chief-kelisa-wing-has-history-of-ant-white-posts/
*****************************************************Social Justice and the end of civility
The recent outpouring of rancour and bilious accusation at the death of Queen Elizabeth II has brought out predictable justifications for incivility in the name of social justice: ‘It’s okay when we do it; if you criticise us, you’re an oppressor too.’
Last Thursday, a Nigerian-born university professor at Carnegie Mellon tweeted her hope that Queen Elizabeth’s pain on her deathbed would be ‘excruciating’, excusing her crudity by referring to the Queen as the ‘chief monarch [sic] of a thieving, raping, and genocidal empire’.
Professor Uju Anya is not a historian – she has a PhD in the academically unserious discipline of second-language theory while also exploring ‘applied linguistics as a practice of social justice and translanguaging in world language pedagogy’. It is highly unlikely that she could go toe-to-toe with a genuine historian on the facts of the British Empire’s alleged atrocities.
Throw-away denunciations (not of the Mongol and Ottoman empires, only the British) are common currency on Twitter, and within most university classrooms today. Nobody would have cared if Anya had denounced the British Empire; what raised eyebrows was the gratuitous nastiness of her wish for the Queen to die an agonising death.
When her tweet provoked criticism and was ultimately deleted by Twitter, Anya argued that the Queen had ‘supervised a government that sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family’ (in reference to Britain’s alleged role in supplying arms to the Nigerian government during the country’s three-year civil war in the late 1960s) and engaged in oft-obscene exchanges with her detractors.
She told NBC News in interview:
‘I take deep offence at the notion that the oppressed and survivors of violence have to somehow be deferential or respectful when their oppressors die.’
No one ever said that Anya had to be deferential… But a reasonable person might have expected some restraint considering Nigerians, both during the civil war and generally in the more than 60 years since the country was granted independence, have done a good job of massacring, displacing, and reducing the life possibilities of other Nigerians.
As a result, there has been a mass exodus from Nigeria by individuals like Anya, many of whom have fled to Great Britain as well as to other English-speaking countries where they have been able to live in security and plenty unimaginable to the vast majority of their former countrymen.
If the English-speaking empire is so evil, why choose to continue living in it?
The professor was not without support. MSNBC opinion columnist Zeeshan Aleem defended her statements as ‘undeniably stemming from a place of personal hurt and political opposition to the imperial history and legacy of the British monarchy’.
Oni Blackstock, whose Twitter bio identifies her as an MD, tweeted:
‘“Speak no ill of the dead” is a weapon that’s levelled against the oppressed to silence them, to lionise oppressors, and to sanitise their history.’
She went on to call Anya ‘a truth-teller’ then added, ‘And we know what happens when people speak truth to power.’
Contrary to their stated fears, nothing is happening in retribution for Anya’s claimed ‘truth-telling’. Quite the opposite. Mellon has come under fire from progressive journalists for distancing itself from her vulgar statement.
Moreover, no one is preventing criticism of the dead or the living. No one is suggesting that a postcolonial critic cannot make arguments about the alleged harm done by the British Empire. Anya is perfectly free to analyse the perfidy of the British in Nigeria’s past or to critically evaluate Queen Elizabeth’s role in Nigerian decolonisation.
Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American radical feminist, alleged that rudeness is a political strategy by which formerly colonised and oppressed peoples resist the ‘white, Christian values’ that have allegedly been violently imposed in order to pacify them. Practising ‘radical rudeness’, according to Eltahawy, is a liberatory strategy of anti-imperialism.
Pursuing the same theme, Valeska Griswold tweeted:
‘The notion of radical rudeness is an excellent framework to analyse the complaints of alt-right movements against POC and “the libs”. It helps to have a name for the things that form organically in subaltern and oppressed communities to deal with their marginalisation.’
Such puerile theorising has a long and depressing history in academic thought, but anyone interested in a concise statement of one of its points of origin should read political theorist Herbert Marcuse’s 1965 essay Repressive Tolerance.
In his exposition in favour of intolerance and aggression by the oppressed, Marcuse, pre-eminent intellectual and godfather of the New Left, alleges that the oppressed can and must live by rules different from those that bind others. In fact, he asserted it was inhumane to remain calm when confronting the actions and discourse of alleged oppressors.
Tolerant speech, according to Marcuse, ‘offends against humanity and truth by being calm where one should be enraged, by refraining from accusation where accusation is in the facts themselves’.
The statement is on its face nonsensical. If ‘accusation is in the facts themselves’ then why would more accusation be necessary? Is it not more useful to be calm in one’s rage, if rage is called for, than to be uncontrolled and frenzied?
Marcuse believed that to maintain self-control was in some way to allow oppressors to get away with their evil and to enforce cognitive and psycho-social bondage on the oppressed: ‘The tolerance expressed in such impartiality serves to minimise or even absolve prevailing intolerance and suppression.’
As the inheritor of a long tradition that celebrated righteous rage, Marcuse suggested that a calm, fact-based approach to civic engagement was itself a form of capitulation to one’s enemy and a betrayal of victims. A true champion of the oppressed, Marcuse suggested, would not hesitate to dehumanise the oppressor.
There are striking parallels between Marcuse’s claims and those of Anya and her supporters who advocate ‘radical rudeness’.
In Repressive Tolerance, Marcuse appeared to condone violence in principle, distinguishing between what he called ‘revolutionary violence’, which he cautiously approved as a necessary measure by the oppressed to end injustice, and ‘reactionary violence’, which he condemned as a means to maintain oppression.
English-speaking countries have been relatively good places to live for a long time precisely because, amongst other reasons, of its ‘white, Christian culture’ which emphasised non-violence and placed a high value on civility, self-restraint, and calm rationality. It did so not only out of Christian conviction, but also in the recognition that visionary violence always exceeds its aim, harming the innocent and the powerless.
People schooled in little other than post-colonial resentment and lavishly rewarded for toxic ranting, evidently do not care about the civil order they threaten. Their glib, destructive posturing exposes the rot at the heart of academic social justice ideology.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/social-justice-and-the-end-of-civility/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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