Empire: World History - Should The Koh-I-Noor Be Returned? Mamdani vs King Charles III EXPLAINED

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

Who does the Koh-I-Noor diamond truly belong to? Why is it considered cursed? And should it be returned? The Koh-I-Noor diamond has been in the headlines this week with Mayor Zohran Mamdani stating that he would tell King Charles III to return it to India. As William and Anita wrote the definitive book on the cursed jewel, they provide a round-up of its long history and how it made its way into the British crown still on display in the Tower of London.  For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer and Editor: Imogen Marriott Social Producer: Charlie Johnson Producer: Anouska Lewis Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Well, hello and welcome to Empire, a special emergency empire from me, Anita Arnden. And me, William Drupal. We don't often get to do emergency pods, unlike our colleagues in current affairs, but suddenly colonialism is all the range. Comes a knocking at our door.

It certainly does. And boy, does it. I mean, it's in the headlines. Let me tell you why we've suddenly pressed the plunger and exploded this particular emergency podcast. Headlines like this, Mamdani gives King Charles a royal brush back

over a crown jewel swight from India. There's another headline over here. Mamdani's advice to royals give the prices diamond back to India, New York Times. We've got another one here. New York City mayor.

Zoran Mandani says he will ask King Charles to return Konoa diamond to India, the Independent and the telegraph and the BBC. Look, it's back. The bloody diamond It's back. Suddenly

so empire has turned into a current affairs program. This is an opportunity for us to give you a little bit of the background of this diamond and why. I think it's fair to say, Willie, that the king and queen would really rather this

hadn't come up again. Because they have done their best to pour sand, water and foam over the inferno this diamond creation. We have been led to believe that they may or someone close to them may have read this book. Sources close to the palace might have suggested that the work that you have done has meant that nobody wanted to wear it during the coronation. And sure enough, this is the first time.

A copy did find his way to the palace and was read. Well, I mean, sources close to the palace would suggest that is indeed. That is the case Look, the point is The curse in a nutshell No man is ever going to be worthy To wear this diamond It destroys all who come into contact

Only a woman can wear this And so through the British royal family Anyway, from the time of Queen Victoria It has been basically chucked at the Queen Consort Because if there's a curse you can deal with it Until Queen Camilla Who said, I'm not doing that, I'm not wearing it And so it wasn't worn during the latest coronation.

But why is there a curse? Now, that's what we need to remind you in this emergency podcast, Willie. Well, one element of the story begins. The story of the curse begins, I think, with something called the Siamantica gem, which is the mythical gem in the Bhagavad Puran, part of the Hindu scriptures, which causes havoc in its wake. It kind of frames Krishna. Krishna at one point is blamed for various killings and thefts associated with this gem.

And he eventually has to go into the desert. He has to not to the desert, he has to go into the jungle to clear his name. And there is this old tradition in Indian gemology that diamonds are cursed. That there are gems which are lucky. But diamonds are not among them. And diamonds, in fact, can be, if flawed and if not completely perfect, they can bring incredible bad luck to people. So there's an ancient Indian belief system behind this story.

But it has to be said that this particular gem has left in reality, in history, an astonishing sort of torrent of blood in this way. I mean, there are piles of bodies. Wherever this rock is rolled, it has rolled over the dead and the grief-stricken. So, you know, from that moment where it's conflated with the gem of the sun god, the mythical Siamantica. Willie, when does it, it first pops up as part of the peacock throne, doesn't it? Exactly.

Tell us why somebody writes about it. In a sense, there's two different versions of the story. There is the legend of the Kohinor, which a lot of which was put together by one man. and I actually ended up finding the document, the very first document written in English, by a colonial official called Theo Metcalfe, who was interested in gems and, in fact, got in trouble later for purloining them

during the aftermath of 1857. During the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny, he got in trouble for pocketing gems of various Hindu dignitaries and things and getting sent back to England. Can we also add the fact that he was also pretty much a liar, liar pants on fire? I mean, when he didn't know a thing,

he made up shit. Exactly. And passed it up the chain. And prior to 1857, he was commissioned when this diamond first went into British Hand to go to the Red Fort, which was then in the 1840s still operational with Baha'uadishan Zaffa, the last mogul still in place, and go and talk to the old women in the harem. So he put together this document, which is the source of many of the legends. And the legendary history of the colonel goes that it was originally part of,

of the, it was mined in Golkonda, which is near Hyderabad, that it was a part of the regalia of the Hindu kings called the Kakatias, who were from that part of the world, that it was looted by the sultans of Delhi, who lost it eventually to Babur, the first mogul, who then lost it to the Persians, it then came back again, was reunited with the mogul court. This is this kind of long saga. In reality, there is no completely certain verified mention of this stone. And certainly none under the name Koinur before it is stolen in 1739 by Nadeeshire. And again, we found the first extant reference in a previously untranslated Persian biography of Nardashar telling the story of the looting of Delhi. And that uses the word for the first time, Coenor.

So it's actually quite late. It's 1750, the first completely veiled. verifiable reference to this. But it obviously did have a history before then. But it was conflated with other things. So some people thought, you know, they might have been describing the all-off diamond and calling it the Kohenor or some other chairman calling it the Kohenor. But this one is actually called Kohenor.

Now, just to remind you, Kohinur means mountain of light. That is the translation of the word in Persian. And so that first time where it's written down by Marvie as Kohinur, and he describes it as being on top of the peacock throne. Now, the peacock throne is not, as you might imagine it, a large chair replete with gems and diamonds, is more an ice cream kiosk of an edifice. It is the most blingy thing you've ever seen.

It's encrusted in all of the best jewels. It is replete with the very best gems that the moguls have. And Marvie talks about these peacocks at the top of the kiosk. got the top of the throne. And one of its heads is the mountain of light. The eye of one of the peacocks. But it wasn't, Willie, the diamonds that, you know, we put in rings these days. It looked very different then.

Can you sort of describe what it would have looked like in that era? First of all, before the discovery of the New World Mines in Brazil, first of all, then ultimately South Africa, where the biggest diamonds today come from, India was the source of all the diamonds in the world. It had a monopoly, and it was one of India's great exports. I mean, we think that the pyramids were probably cut using Indian diamond-tipped tools. And there was this rich tradition of knowledge about gems in India, but there were also a large number of very big diamonds floating around in India.

We know, for example, that the great Hindu kingdom of Vijianagara had an extraordinary collection of enormous diamonds. And these must be diamonds that in all likelihood exist today and have names like the Hope Diamond or the Orloff Diamond, you mentioned, or the Coenor. But it's very difficult in retrospect to work out which of these diamonds is which and which one went in which direction. This diamond in the mogul tradition was not cut,

like a modern Ratna's ring, you know, with a very sort of symmetrical cut. It was left as our medieval ancestors, like their diamonds, as a Kabushaw. And the Coenor has this weird shape. It looks a bit like Arthur's seat, with an enormous lump on the top and the tail. And in this form, it was used as the eye of the peacock in the Coenor, and it was taken off by Nadia Shah from the moguls to Herat, where Nadia Shah kept all his winnings from Delhi,

enormous crates full of diamonds and all the greatest riches that the moguls themselves are plundered from all over India. But when he got his hands on the Coenol Diamond, Willie, did it make him happy? Was he a happy man having claimed this? Almost no one in the story is happy at any point after they've got the Coenor. And Najeshire was eventually hacked to death by all his cousins and brothers and family after he went a bit mad in the aftermath of catching the Coen-Nor. So Nairashar gets hacked apart. His harim promised this diamond to his bodyguard if they will keep them alive during the night of this chaos and bloodshed.

And the bodyguard, one of whom is called Amishaw Durrani, then run off with it. And eventually Amishar Duran, who becomes the first king of Afghanistan, basically uses the koh-inoras-co-lateral to found the modern state of Afghanistan. It is his central investment with which he then goes to war. And he leads a life of plunder and mayhem. But he does not die happy either because his face gets eaten up by a kind of dripping malignant tumour. And people describe him coating half his face like robocop in metal. But the separation continues below the metal and bits of maggots drop out even as they eat

up his face. It's a horrible, horrible story. God, it's so bad. So, Rayra, he eventually dies. Well, he might have given them maggots and gnawing away at him for years. And it passes down through his son and grandson, Sharsha Tzuja. Ulmulk gets it. His brother has it first and is blinded.

He hides it in a crack in a prison cell where he's being incarcerated soon after being blinded with a red-hot needle. the diamond disappears for a while, but it turns up a local mullah finds it where it's been hidden and uses it as a paperweight on his desk. He doesn't know what it is. So for a while, the Kewenor, the most priceless jewel in the world is being used just as a provincial mullus paperweight, which is a very nice detail I found in an Afghan chronicle. Shah Shuja, his brother gets hold of it, and he is, according to the Afghan chronicles, tortured by the king of the Sikhs, Ranjit Singh, to release it to him.

This is a detail that proud patriotic Sikhs strongly reject. They don't like the story at all, but it's there very clearly in the Afghan accounts. And so I'm sticking to that story. So at this point, and there is, as Willie quite rightly says, a huge to-do about which is the true story, the Sikhs insist that Ranjit Singh was awarded the Kohenor for his help in freeing Shah Shudja, but the Afghans say, no. No, no, no. He tortured the son in front of the father and therefore tortured him and got him to give up this diamond that nobody wanted to part with. Why didn't they want to part with it? Because of the mythology around it. So the wife of Shashuja, the Wafa Begham, had said, if you throw a rock into the air and you throw one to the left and you throw one to the right and you fill it with all of the gold and jewels, that is what the Kohinor is worth. So that, you know, that is the kind of mythology around. this diamond. So it goes to Ranjit Singh. Now, so far, not so good for anybody who's owned it.

You know, they've died horribly and before their time. But what happens with Ranjit Singh is he wears it on his arm every day, not in any kind of like kiosk or throne. He's going to wear it as if he's kind of thumbing his nose at all powers temporal and supernatural. Come get me if you think you're hard enough. And he gets away with it until he has a catastrophic stroke as an old, gray wizened man and he's lying on his deathbed and then there's a bit of a confusion because he can't speak. This plays out to this day. Even today on my Twitter, rival parties have been claiming it says that the Sikhs have been saying it's theirs while people in ERISA have been saying it says why would the people in ERISA think they have a right to it, Anita? Well, Willey,

they think that because there was a story that he was surrounded by Hindu pundits and one of them said, wouldn't you like this to go to a statue of a god in ERISA, that would be very good for your karma? And Ranjit Singh, who couldn't speak at that time, signalled, yes, that is what I want. Whereas others in his court said, what are you talking about? He couldn't speak, let alone indicate that he wanted this gem to go to a temple in ERISA. So that's one level of irritation. So this is the treasurer who's called Belim Salam. So, Mr. Beli Ram, who is...

Yeah, so Mr. Belli Ram is the man, he's a lowly guy, but all he has to do is look after the treasury. And he hides it after Anderson dies, to stop it going to ERISA. See, I'm not a Sikh or a Punjabi. So I think I'm more neutral about this than you. And I'd say that the actual claim of ERISA is actually quite a good one. and that he did give it to Jagannat Temple. Just a minute. I mean, I am a Punjabi, but also I understand about catastrophic strokes.

So if you have a catastrophic stroke, Mr. I am with the ERISSids. How on earth are you going to signal that this is what you want to happen? Because it's written in your will before you had a stroke. That's not what happened at all. That's what the chronicles say. Anyway, look, so this is why there's a big row even to this day. Even on this pod, exactly. Even on this podcast.

Okay. But what happens on his deathbed is his treasurer hides it so that no one can go and pinch it and give it to a god in ERISA or a member of the family can just hawk it off because there are also rival claims among the family. You know, this is a man. Missa Belly Ram thinks it belongs not to Ranjit Singh, but to the state. And so he thinks he hasn't got the right to give it off. That's what I think the story is. That's my version that he hides it. It's not your version.

It's the version. Well, that's what I was saying. It is what Mr. Beli Ramb decided because the Hindu priest was saying... You've come over to my side in the story now. No, I haven't. The Hindu priest is saying it belongs to us. It seems to say, how do you know?

He has had a catastrophic stroke. And Mr. Beli Ramb says, shut up the lot of you. Poof, you can't find it anymore. I've got it. Anyway, moving on. So what happens is, then there is a huge power vacuum

in the Sikh kingdom after Ranjut Singh dies. and I won't go into it because it takes a very long time, but we have covered this in the past. You called it the kind of roulette wheel of death or something. Death. When you can't have a lecture about this, you go through about 20 casualties and the 20 fatalities in about 10 minutes. Poison, gouge, drop buildings on each other. I mean, they just throttle each other, literally all those things. Shoot each other by accident.

Shoot each other on purpose. Shoot each other's children. I mean, it's hideous, okay? the whole thing is hideous until the last man standing is not a man at all but he's this tiny little boy the youngest the man who is never meant to be king doleep sing a little boy who is the last child of ranjid sing and his mother jind kore who is a lowly woman in comparison to the rest of the kennel keeper's daughter yes that's right so look she is alive he is alive he on his tiny little chubby arm has got this huge diamond which we should say

is the size and heft of a hens egg. That's how big this diamond is. But as soon as Ranjit Singh dies and everyone else and his family has murdered each other, who notices the British notice? Because they've had their eye on the north for a very long time. It's a strategic gem in itself because, you know, here it is, between Afghanistan, the Great Game, the Russians. The location of it is tantalizing.

And while Ranjit Singh was alive, because his army was so strong and he was so much in control, they could not get their hands on it. Now there is an absolute power vacuum. A mother, a woman, is in charge in the form of little Maharaja Diliip Singh's mother as the regent. And a tiny boy, they then decide to attack. There are two Anglo-Sikh wars. Now, again, too much to go into right now. but it is absolutely the contention of the Sikhs that the Sikh Empire is defeated because of skullduggery

because you know these these Brits who came as friends who promised to be friends and came and signed treaties weren't back all the time and take this little boy they take we'll take the little boy and take the mother away from the boy and lock her in a tower and surround the little boy with men in shiny epaulets who don't even speak the same language bizarrely, last summer, I was staying with my brother in Scotland.

And it turned out that the receipt for the Coenor was in the next door, fancy house, 10 minutes walk or about half an hour's. John Logan's receipt. I have seen a copy of it, but you've seen the actual day. And then over to Dalhousie. And it's sitting still in a country house in East Lothian. You can't actually say Dalhousie without saying boo. A huge villain of this piece. Boo.

Anyway, so look, the diamond is then transferred. This little boy is forced to sign this document, which he will spend the rest of his life challenging, saying, you know what, I was not in the age of majority. How can this be a legal document? You promised that you were my friend, but you've taken everything, this is to Queen Victoria, you've taken everything from me. This isn't right.

This isn't justice, and I'll sue you in the courts. And he tries. Doesn't get him very far. But anyway, the diamond is then rushed out of the country. to Queen Victoria by this man Dalhousie who thinks, what a coup it will be for me to lay the great mythical mountain of light at the feet of the Empress of India. It is no easy thing to get it out of the country.

Then there's a whole new story. I mean, you have to read the book or listen to our full four-part podcast that we did at the beginning. I mean, it basically almost sinks a ship and causes cholera and despair from the voyage over. And then as soon as it gets in, people are being. beaten up. The queen, when she receives it. Well, she's not the only one. P.L. gets crushed.

The former Prime Minister gets crushed under his horse. And the Queen, Queen Victoria, is handed the diamond with a massive shiner of a black eye because she's been attacked just the day before. The day to rise in the country. As soon as it enters British territorial waters. Exactly right. But look, this is the last bit of the story because we are galloping, galloping through this to tell you why this is so contentious and why Mandani says, give it back. And then we'll come to who do you give it back to? So Queen Victoria is worried about the diamond.

She's worried about the curse. She's also worried about the legality of how this diamond has come to her. Albert's got a brilliant idea. He's going to recut it. So it's going to be the same diamond, look different, born anew, in British sunlight. It's going to shine like the diamonds that we have in Europe. But it is catastrophic. After its dismal appearance at the Great Exhibition,

even though Albert is told again and again, do not try. try and do this to the diamond. Don't recut this diamond. It has a floor at its heart. It will go up in smoke. Don't do it. He insists on doing it. And two thirds of the mass of this diamond disappears. Now, not disappears as in you've got two sizable diamonds. Just disintegrates. We don't know what's happened to the rest of the diamond. But then what you're left with is what Queen Victoria wore in her crown. And Queen Victoria, she had two very clever things designed for it. And I was so delighted to find the designs for these things. A clasp that you could use it as a brooch and another that will then sort of grip it in a crown and a coronet. And what happens is she does wear it, but she is the last monarch to wear it because of this idea of the curse. And so after her, no male monarch ever wore the diamond. It only goes to the queen consorts to wear. The last time I think it was seen in public was in the crown of the Queen Mother during her funeral when it was placed on top of the coffin and people filed past.

It is in the Tower of London. You can see it if you want to see it there. Quickly tell the story. I love the story about your first sight of it. Oh, well, I learned all my best swear words at the Tower of London because when you used to go, when anyone used to go over to visit, you'd take them because they'd want to see the Cohen all. and the swearing that would occur in front of the glass from your Indians, your Pakistanis, your Afghats, and many, many more saying, thieves, thieves, this is ours.

You know, how dare they, those thieves. And then having arguments with each other. So what they did eventually was they set up a conveyor belt next to the glass case. The only thing that achieved was it taught many brown people how to moonwalk. That is literally all that was achieved. The idea was they were only allowed to see it for a second and they'd be sort of sped past it. They did not understand that uncles and aunties are very good at moonwalking and swearing at the same time. So that is what happened.

Anyway, so what happens now is that you've got this diamond that should have been recast in Queen Camilla's crown or coronet for the coronation, but she broke with tradition, a tradition that stretches as far back as the colonel of history in Britain. reading a certain book. Sources close to the palace leaders to believe. Anywho, so that's where we are now. So, let's talk about what's happening today. So Mamdani saying, look, give it back to India. Now, it is not necessarily as straightforward as he's suggesting.

It isn't. And you only have to actually look online. I posted about an hour ago the New York Times article, which quotes both of us about the Kohi North. And already, there are about 40 different people fighting over who owns it. There's some from ERISA, some for the Punjab, but not just Indians. Bangladesh's, Pakistanis, who put in the first legal claim after independence. 1976, that was that the first claim.

Afghans, the Taliban and Iran. And that's just for starters. So it's going to be no easy thing. It's rather like so Solomon's baby or something, you know, the lady's baby and Solomon saying he's going to divide the child. You can't cut this thing again. I mean, it's gone through enough. That's not it's suffered enough. But the thing is that's interesting is that it opens up once again.

And this is why it's such an important thing. And when Darni's riding, you know, this huge tidal wave of ink and newspaper copy, is it opens up the whole aspect of, you know, who does colonial loot belong to? Was it taken fairly? Because there's a whole lot of nonsense that came up about the diamond was given as a grateful gift by the Indians. No, no, there was. It was given by Ranjee's saying he was long. dead. That's not possible.

Honestly, did it by Ouija board. That was something that actually was an official documentation. Can't be. Even the Indians were confused about how it ended up in Britain for a while. And you had the attorney general at one time talking a load of nonsense about Ranjian saying when he never did. He never did. So, look, it opens up that conversation, Willie, again. And is it going to, I mean, is it ever going to go anywhere, do you think?

I mean, what's your feeling about this? It's interesting in two ways. This small diamond now, it used to be. the size of a hen's egg. It's now, you know, not even that. It's the size of a, I don't know, kind of what is it the size of these days? A sort of a quail's egg. Quails egg. Oh, you're such a man of the people. A large, large quails egg. Well done you. I was thinking on a Christmas chocolate coins, but no, a quail's egg. Sure, why not? Let's do it. So it's not, it's not that big. But this little diamond has within it,

the power of bringing up all the pain of colonialism. And people in India and South Asia associate this one object with everything that was taken from them. And so it's a hugely emotional question. Trouble is that not only the different peoples of South Asia, but also quite a lot of people from Central Asia and Iran and the Middle East, also claim it. So I think it effectively allows the British to probably do their old divide and rule one last time. You know, and they do say it. They say, who do we give it back to, even if we wanted to? I mean, the one definitive comment was from David Cameron, who said, no, I'm sorry, we can't.

I'm afraid to say it's going to have to stay put because if you say yes to one, you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty. Which is quite true, because the museum is full of other colonial loot. So this was the story which first brought us together, began this book and then began the Empire podcast, because it does represent so much more than itself. So anyway, that's what we thought it was worth doing. Our first ever emergency pod. Is that lovely? It's like our anniversary. Some people get flowers.

We get an emergency pod. We get a story of bloodshed, gore, division and disorder. I think it's absolutely as it should be. Anyway, till the next time we meet, it's good. Bye from me, Anita Arnand. And goodbye from me, William Durember. Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets?

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