Lord Elgin was passionate about ancient Greek art and transported the sculptures back to Britain by sea. Where are they housed?
The objects were purchased by the British Parliament from Lord Elgin in 1816, following a Parliamentary Select Committee inquiry which fully investigated and approved the legality of Lord Elgin’s actions. They were presented by Parliament to the British Museum, where they have remained on display ever since. Why the controversy?
The sculptures are the subject of one of the longest cultural rows in Europe.
The Greeks have demanded that they be returned to their homeland. Greece maintains they were taken illegally during the country's Turkish occupation and should be returned for display in Athens. The Greek government has disputed the British Museum Trustees’ legal title to the sculptures. Some suggest that Lord Elgin bribed Turkish officials and effectively stole the marbles.
But the British say that Lord Elgin legally purchased the statues from the Ottoman Empire before Greece won its independence and that it would set a disturbing precedent for major museums if they were returned. Many British historians consider them relics of an Athenian civilisation rather than the modern Greek state. When did the row begin?
The first serious discussion about returning the Elgin Marbles is said to have been initiated in an exchange of correspondence in a newspaper in 1925, with Courtenay Pollock arguing that the time was right to make the gesture towards Greece.
Since then the issue has been raised by the Greek authorities with almost every British ambassador to Athens. The British Museum says that the Acropolis Museum in Athens allows the remaining Parthenon sculptures to be appreciated against the backdrop of ancient Greek and Athenian history.
It says the Parthenon sculptures in London are "an important representation of ancient Athenian civilisation in the context of world history".
The Koh-i-Noor was handed over to the Queen of England as per a legal agreement. See Treaty of Lahore. On what basis do you expect the Queen to return the diamond? On the basis that it was a "theft"? Or as a symbolic gesture? Or on the basis that all things should be returned to the place they originated?
Pakistan also claims the diamond on the basis that it was taken from the Sikh Empire of Lahore, not from the present-day Republic of India.
Several people claiming to the descendants of Ranjit Singh have also claimed the diamonds, including Jaswinder Singh Sandhanwalia of Amsterdam and William D. Forbes of Canada.
The Afghans want it too, since Ranjit Singh forced the Durranis to surrender it. In 2000, the Taliban asked the Queen to return Koh-i-Noor to Afghanistan.
Maybe the Iranians will also claim it, saying that it was their king Nader Shah who gave the diamond its name and possessed it before Ranjit Singh or Abdali.
Unfortunately, that's not how it works. Otherwise, the United Kingdom will have to return a lot more stuff to India. And the Government of India will have to return a lot of stuff to the descendants of the former princes. And they will have to return a lot of stuff to other people. That makes things pretty complex.
The world works on a simpler principle:
Victors Keepers, Losers Weepers.
Even if the Queen does return the diamond only to India, we will have a huge ruckus over what the Government should do with this piece of condensed carbon.
The priests of Puri will demand that the diamond be handed over to them as per the will of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
The Dalit activists would oppose it vehemently: they have long alleged that the diamond was given to the British by the treacherous Brahmins of Puri.
The Sikh radicals have another conspiracy theory which disputes Ranjit Singh's "last-minute testament" which bequeathed the diamond to a Hindu temple. They say that no actual, formal will states this: only a letter written by the British political agent says that "he directed the well-known Kohinoor diamond to be sent to the temple of Jagannath."
The Muslims of Hyderabad will demand that the diamond be returned to Golconda, where it originated. The Telugu Hindus will claim that the diamond was looted by the Muslims from the Kakatiya royals, and therefore, should be placed in a Hindu temple of Warangal. The priests of Dwarka have their own theory that Koh-i-Noor originally belonged to Krishna, and has been mentioned in the Sanskrit writings as Syamantaka.
The Government will probably decide to display it in a museum or the Rashtrapati Bhavan. And it will get stolen just like the Nobel Prize medal of Tagore. Or we will end up spending millions of taxpayers' money on impregnable security at a cost that cannot be recovered with an entrance fee to the museum.
Why would you want to waste the taxpayers' money on misplaced national pride when we have greater issues to worry about? The Government is also in the possession of the Jewels of the Nizams (including the famous Jacob Diamond), which are not on regular public display because of similar reasons.
There is little point in arguing about ownership of things that are hundreds of years old, and have changed hands several times.
Maybe not the most relevant place to post a quote from the Gita Saar, but:
What belongs to you today, belonged to someone else yesterday, and will be someone else's tomorrow Change is the law of the universe.
Koh-i-Noor wasn't even ever owned by the present-day Republic of India,
Yes it is a science these days as much as orthodox science, illnesses can be diagnosed and treated , usually the people who make assertians against psychiatry are in denial themselves,
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