The seeds for Kohinoor were sown at the JLF event in London’s South Bank where William Dalrymple invited journalist Anita Anand and senior diplomat and author Navtej Sarna to speak about Koh-i-Noor. Dalrymple has just completed “Return of a King” and Anita had penned “ Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary” about the granddaughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh. “There was a silvery thread running through our work which was Koh-i-Noor. It didn’t have a starring role in our books but it was there.” Something very odd happened that evening. “While I was speaking they were on the edge of the seat and while they were speaking I was on the edge. We didn’t know each other’s chapters about Koh-i-Noor’s history.” relates Anand over phone. “That evening we discovered the life story of diamond and that’s how the journey started.” She had done five years of research on Ranjit Singh’s family while Dalrymple had done work on Afghanistan. “It seemed like a relay race and we were in correct running position. As a journalist and a historian both of us believe in sources, going back to the scene of crime if you like. We have tried to make it factual rather than fanciful.”
Talking about the characters in her half of the story, Anand holds Lord Dalhousie instrumental in taking the diamond to England. She says, the way in which he made a young boy (Duleep Singh) sign a treaty, he didn’t cover himself with glory. “With his mother locked in a tower, there was nobody to advise him. Dalhousie’s personal ambition and desire to make his name was pivotal in getting the diamond to Great Britain.” Rani Jindan, Duleep Singh’s mother, is one character that Anand admires. “I don’t deal in conjecture but I wonder if she were left in the kingdom, how things would have been because she was the only one to say: ‘Don’t let the British in, don’t trust them. She is one of my favourite characters, not just in the book but also in history.”
Reflecting on the noble and ignoble ways of achieving goals, Anand says Queen Victoria was uncomfortable about the way Koh-i-Noor was annexed. “If she had been comfortable, she would have worn it long before Duleep Singh was made to do that ridiculous handover of diamond which didn’t belong to him any more. It is a fact that the contemporary writing of the time tells us that she waited till she had that moral green light such that it was.”
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Anand, who has described the Koh-i-Noor a diplomatic grenade, says whoever feels about the diamond, feels strongly about it. “I recently attended Lahore Literary Festival and there people feel it should be in Lahore. In Britain, Sikhs feel its should be in the Golden Temple. There is no lukewarm feeling about it.”
On how the British perceive this colonial loot now, Anand says it represents less than it did. “But still if you ask somebody to name a diamond, they would say Koh-i Noor. Even though there is another diamond in the same showcase and it is much bigger but nobody knows Cullinan diamond.” History has played it part and because of the history, Anand says, lot of people have named things after Koh-i-Noor. From restaurants and race courses to pencils, it has become a byword for anything that is sensationally valuable. It is a word kids are familiar with, though most of the colonial history has been forgotten. They still go to the Tower of London. They still stand in front of the diamond, like I did, when I was a child. People still pause for the longest time in front of that case when they are told this is the great diamond from India.”