- The Koh-i-Noor isn’t coming here any time soon
Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry has demanded that Britain should apologise for the 1919 Jalianwala Bagh massacre, and the 1943 Bengal famine. Oh, and as an addendum he has also demanded that it return to Pakistan the Kohinoor Diamond taken in 1849.
It is not certain where the Koh-i-Noor diamond first came from. It was probably mined in Golconda, present day Andhra Pradesh.
Babar wrote about it in the Babar Nama, saying it was acquired by Alauddin Khalji of Delhi from the Kakatiya Dynasty of Southern India at the beginning of the 14th century. Babar himself acquired it as tribute in 1526 following the Battle of Panipat.
The Koh-i-Noor was taken from the Mughals by Nadir Shah of Persia when he invaded Delhi in 1739. he might have been the first person to call it ‘Koh-i-Noor’, or ‘Mountain of Light’ in Persian. When he died in 1747 and his empire collapsed, the gem went to his grandson who gave it to Ahmad Shah Durrani of Afghanistan. One of Ahmad Shah’s descendants Shuja Shah, the self-proclaimed King of Afghanistan, fled to the Punjab in 1813, and lost the diamond to his host Ranjit Singh.
You wish members of the Pakistan government would stop embarrassing its people each time they open their mouths. You wish too that one’s leaders would do what they are supposed to do and stop fishing for popular ra-rah by means of such asides which have nothing to do with what they were elected for
In 1849 the Kingdom of Punjab was taken over by the British. Article III of the Treaty of Lahore signed then ceded the diamond to Queen Victoria, not as a personal gift to her, as the Governor General Dalhousie had it presented by Ranjit Singh’s son to the East India Company, which presented it to the Queen as a spoil of war. It– or rather its segments, since it has since been cut into several pieces– can now be found in the various crowns belonging to the Queens of England.
There are therefore many claimants. India first demanded the British return it at the time of Independence in 1947, and then again in 1953 and 2000. In 1976 Pakistan asked for its return, and in 2000 the Taliban claimed it as Afghanistan’s legitimate property.
The British Government rejected all these claims, saying that the diamond was legally obtained by the British under the terms of the last Treaty of Lahore. Which is what they will say again in response to Fawad Chaudhry’s demands, if they bother to respond.
Yes, the British government ought to have apologised for that shameful part of its history that is Jallianwala. That they have not, will forever stand against them.
To ask for an apology for the famine of Bengal though is nothing less than gross cheek and gall when the demand comes from Pakistan, and if I were a citizen of Bangladesh, I would say so. As a member of the human race, I do say so.
The famine of Bengal took the lives of between two to three million Bengalis, due to starvation, malaria and other diseases.
When the Japanese occupied Burma, modern day Myanmar, the British were afraid that they would advance into India via Bengal. To prevent this, the British ordered the stocks of paddy (unmilled rice) and other food products to be destroyed along the coastal areas of the Bengal. The British Army also confiscated or destroyed all boats large enough for ten or more persons, belonging to the local people who relied on these boats for fishing, and transport of commercial goods, seeds and other equipment. Rice and fish are the staple diet of the people of Bengal who lost both at this time. No recompense was provided and no food rations, and a famine set in.
Pakistan was formed after that in 1948. The people of Bengal had a majority over the people in the Western wing, yet the capital and the government was always in the hands of the West. Various such things led to the separation of East Pakistan from the West and the birth of Bangladesh, but not before what has been gross excesses committed by the West against its eastern wing, although both sides suffered fatalities at the hands of each other and neither is willing to accept the figures presented by the other. The death of civilians killed in Bangladesh as a result of the war has been called genocide, because they lie anywhere between 300,000 and 3,000,000. Between 200,000 and 400,000 Bangladeshi women are said to have been raped.
According to the Pakistani journalist Anthony Mascarenhas writing in 1971 for the British Sunday Times (Mascarenhas was once the editor of Karachi’s Morning News): “I saw Hindus hunted from village to village and door to door, shot off-hand. I have heard the screams of men bludgeoned to death in the compound of the Circuit House in Comilla. I have seen truckloads of other human targets and those who had the humanity to try to help them hauled off ‘for disposal’ under the cover of darkness and curfew.”
For this Pakistan is responsible. Can Pakistan in all conscience point fingers at someone else for doing similar things?
You wonder if the gentleman making demands for an apology from Britain is aware of the history behind the events he speaks of, and the events that took place afterwards? You wish members of the Pakistan government would stop embarrassing its people each time they open their mouths. You wish too that one’s leaders would do what they are supposed to do and stop fishing for popular ra-rah by means of such asides which have nothing to do with what they were elected for. There is the small issue of increasing Press censorship that the Chaudhry is probably trying to muffle under such rhetoric. His tactics might work since the public is easily diverted by such macho calls for justice, but the events that took place in Pakistan’s eastern wing will always be remembered by anyone with half a conscience.