LONDON: Nearly three decades after India was partitioned and the British Raj crumbled, Pakistan sneakily waged a diplomatic war like no other in the Kohinoor diamond's blood-soaked 750-year-old history with a populist, finely-pitched request from Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to London controversially asking for the gem's return.
The demand for the Kohinoor's restoration - to Pakistan, not India because it was on Pakistani soil that the gem was surrendered - came in a letter from the then Prime Minister Bhutto to his British counterpart, James Callaghan on the even of Pakistan's independence day ceremonies in August 1976.
Using a high-degree of symbolism and emotional rhetoric, Bhutto wrote to Callaghan to remind Britain of the significance of "our annual Independence Day. This occasion never fails to bring to mind Pakistan's historic grievances about the disposition of territories and assets to which we were entitled upon the termination of British rule."
Evoking the "immense sentimental value" of the diamond to Pakistan, Bhutto said "Its return to Pakistan would be a convincing demonstration of the spirit that moved Britain voluntarily to shed its imperial encumbrances and lead the process of decolonisation."
A consummate diplomat, Bhutto bewailed to Callaghan that "little is left in our land from what was bequeathed to us by the centuries of pre-colonial history" and decried the disappearance of "the unique treasures which are the flesh and blood of Pakistan's heritage". He said the diamond's return to Pakistan "would be symbolic of a new international equity strikingly different from the grasping, usurping temper of a former age," he said.
But despite all Bhutto's linguistic artistry and psychological tactics, the British stayed resolute about never returning the 186-carat gem, once the world's largest diamond, to any of the Asian countries that have historically laid claim to it.
Secret British government papers, regularly declassified under the 30-year rule for public disclosure, detail how officials and politicians in London firmly rebutted Pakistan's forceful claim to a stone that has literally become a jewel of the British Crown and remains an enduring symbol of the glory of the once-mighty Raj Bahadur. The Kohinoor was set in a crown on being formally presented to Queen Victoria in 1852. Now, it remains in the Tower of London as part of the British crown jewels collection.
Officials at the National Archive, the UK government's official archive, containing records of 900 years of history with records ranging from parchment and paper scrolls through to recently created digital files and archived websites, told TOI on Friday the newly-declassified Kohinoor documents had sparked considerable interest.
In a nod to India, Iran and Afghanistan's competing claims to the Kohinoor, Britain's Callaghan bluntly reminded Bhutto "of the various hands through which the stone has passed over the past two centuries". He recalled that "explicit provision" had been made for the Kohinoor's "transfer to the British Crown ... in the peace treaty with the Maharajah of Lahore which concluded the war of 1849."
He ended by flatly refusing Bhutto's request: "I could not advise Her Majesty the Queen that it should be surrendered."
Observers said news of Bhutto's secret request for the Kohinoor, employing a mixture of high emotion and hubris underlined the more lethargic attitude of the New Delhi establishment to the jewel, despite India's more powerful claim to it.
Even so, just four years ago, India made a half-hearted jibe at British colonialism's magpie policies with reference to the Kohinoor when it made a public appearance once again on the British stage. The diamond was a glittering feature of the 2002 funeral of Queen Elizabeth, last empress of India, when it was carried atop her coffin in her 1937 coronation crown.
At the time, Indian officials here accused Britain of "flaunting" the riches of empire and soon after New Delhi renewed a long-standing request for its restoration to India citing "a legitimate claim".
But historians insist that neither India nor Pakistan can never have a hope of seeing the diamond's return, despite "all the letter-writing campaigns in the world" because Britain considers possession to be nine-tenths of the law.
Senior British civil servants have always advised successive governments to stonewall any request for the Kohinoor's repatriation with the following logic: "1. We have the Kohinoor diamond, whether or not our possession of it is legally justified. 2. We have made it clear that we are keeping the diamond, adducing the best arguments to support our contention."
Britain has always played up the gem's disputed ownership, with the reminder that its passage over the centuries through owners from the Delhi sultanate to the Persian shah means there is no consensus on entitlement.
Using more diplomatic language and considerably more logic, British diplomats are said to have long committed to memory parts of the 1849 Treaty of Lahore, drawn up by Lord Dalhousie to formalise British rule in Punjab, which is said to contain a clause formally surrendering the Kohinoor to "the Queen of England".
