Koh-i-Noor ours, won’t be returned: Cameron

Agencies/Amritsar

British Prime Minister David Cameron says a giant diamond his country forced India to hand over in the colonial era that was set in a royal crown will not be returned.

Speaking on the third and final day of a visit to India aimed at drumming up trade and investment, Cameron ruled out handing back the 105-carat Koh-i-Noor diamond, now on display in the Tower of London. The diamond had been set in the crown of the current Queen Elizabeth’s late mother.

One of the world’s largest diamonds, some Indians - including Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson - have demanded its return to atone for Britain’s colonial past.

“I don’t think that’s the right approach,” Cameron told reporters on Wednesday after becoming the first serving British prime minister to voice regret about one of the bloodiest episodes in colonial India, a massacre of unarmed civilians at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in 1919.

“It is the same question with the Elgin Marbles,” he said, referring to the classical Greek marble sculptures that Athens has long demanded be given back. 

“The right answer is for the British Museum and other cultural institutions to do exactly what they do, which is to link up with other institutions around the world to make sure that the things which we have and look after so well are properly shared with people around the world.

“I certainly don’t believe in ‘returnism’, as it were. I don’t think that’s sensible.”

Britain’s then colonial governor-general of India arranged for the huge diamond to be presented to Queen Victoria in 1850.

If Kate Middleton, the wife of Prince William, who is second in line to the throne, eventually becomes queen consort she will don the crown holding the diamond on official occasions.

When Elizabeth II made a state visit to India to mark the 50th anniversary of India’s independence from Britain in 1997, many Indians demanded the return of the diamond.

Cameron is keen to tap into India’s economic rise, but says he is anxious to focus on the present and future rather than “reach back” into the past.

Meanwhile, not everyone is satisfied with Cameron’s visit to the Jallianwala Bagh ground and his description of the massacre as “shameful.”

While Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal called the trip a “historic day,” Cameron is being targeted by relatives of those killed by the British Indian Army for not offering a clear apology.

Badal welcomed Cameron’s expression of regret over the April 13, 1919 massacre.

Badal said: “The country, especially Punjab, had been waiting for such an apology. The visit ... to Jallianwala Bagh itself (said) a lot.”

But families of the victims of the massacre said Cameron should have formally apologised.

“What he has said is his personal statement. There is no official apology from the British government,” said Sunil Kapoor, president of the Jallianwala Bagh Freedom Fighters Foundation whose great grandfather Vasu Lal Kapoor was among those killed in 1919.

He and others complained that the authorities did not let them meet Cameron.

“Since morning police were deployed outside our homes,” said Jallianwala Bagh Shaheed Samiti president Bhushan Behl, whose grandfather Shadi Lal too was killed in 1919.

“It is routine for people to call it a shameful act. The British government must apologise officially.”

Hundreds of innocent and unarmed men, women and children were massacred at the Jallianwala Bagh by British forces led by Brigadier General Reginald Dyer.

The victims had no place to escape as the only narrow entrance was blocked by troops.

Colonial era records had put the death toll at around 400 while leaders of the country’s freedom movement placed it at over 1,000.