In the last session of Parliament, Rajya Sabha MP, Kuldip Nayar, along with a group of 25 parliamentarians raised the demand for the return of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, which is part of the crown jewels of the British Queen (Flair, Indian Express, June 11).The request generated a controversy, nationally and internationally. Central to the controversy is our historical past and its relationship to contemporary concerns.The Koh-i-Noor has had several keepers, ranging from the raja of Malwa, the Mughals, the Persian invader Nadir Shah, and the maharaja of Punjab, Ranjit Singh, whose son Daleep Singh finally handed it over to the British at the time of the annexation of Punjab (1840). Given this list of claimants, the diamond's return to India has opened up a Pandora's Box regarding its ``rightful'' owners. Even if the last Indian owner, the royal family of Punjab, is accepted as the owner there are more than a few descendants ready to stake their claim.More than the issue of ``ownership'', Nayar's request reflects a larger concern about interpretations of our historical past. What is the Government of India's view of our history? What memory of the past does it wish to inculcate? Can we at all have a linear, monolithic history of our country?These issues can no longer be confined to the historian's domain, given the fact that successive governments have attempted to shape history writing as per their politics. The history of the Koh-i-Noor in India symbolises the heterogeneous nature of our historical past. If we regard this diamond as a ``national'' treasury we also affirm to a culturally multilayered profile of the ``nation''. It is in this sense that the government's response to Nayar's letter is worthy of note.The varied claimants of the Koh-i-Noor including its present owners, the British, represent different strands of our historical past: the Afghans, Mughals, Rajputs, Sikhs and the English. It is true that every wave of conquest and ethnic expansion introduced new concepts of power. Each ruling class also left its cultural imprint on India's map. The Afghans, Rajputs, Mughals, Persian and even the Europeans, in particular the English, contributed to the development of Indian political culture. How then do we compartmentalise Indian tradition into ``indigenous'' and ``foreign''?Historians are increasingly of the view that if successful conquest followed by redistribution of India's resources within the country is any indicator then the Aryans were as much ``foreigners'' as the Turko-Afghan Mughals. Both made India their home. By this criterion, British rule stands out as a defining disjunction. It marked an unprecedented drain on India's resources and revenue. This drained wealth, whether in the form of artifacts, jewels and oriental manuscripts housed in British and European museums today, is a living testimony to India's variegated cultural tradition. It reflects the country's spirit of accommodativeness in the face of each cultural encounter it experienced.Nayar's request for the return of the Koh-i-Noor is thus also a reassertion of our belief in the plurality of our past. What the Government of India defines as its historical legacy and what it excludes is a reflection of how it views the past. The raising of the Koh-i-Noor issue in Parliament has ensured that this exercise does not remain exclusively an official one. The NDA government's positive response to Nayar's request would have amounted to a recognition of our multifaceted past. Its lethargic attitude to the issue is therefore alarming.
