Bring Koh-i-noor back: Modi government has betrayed Indians
Just a day after the government of India said in the Supreme Court that the country should not try to reclaim the Koh-i-Noor as it was "neither stolen nor forcibly taken" it has made a dramatic U-turn saying it will make all efforts to bring back the diamond.
The factors which could have led to this U-turn might be the thrashing that the BJP-led government received on social media, some of it even coming from its diehard supporters. The BJP's parent outfit Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) too took a contradictory stand while ally Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) went after the government on the issue.
On April 19, a statement by the Central government put the blame for the Koh-i-Noor issue on the shoulders of the media, India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and all previous governments, while lauding Prime Minister Narendra Modi's efforts in bring back lost Indian heritage from distant lands.
The statement read, “Ever since he has taken over as PM, Narendra Modi’s efforts led to three significant pieces of India’s history coming back home.” It said Germany returned a tenth century statue of goddess Durga, Canada returned a sculpture known as the Parrot Lady and Australia returned antique statues of Hindu deities.
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| The Indian government had earlier said that the country should not try to reclaim the Koh-i-Noor. |
Blaming the media, the statement said, “The government of India wishes to put on record that certain news items appearing in the press regarding the Koh-i-Noor diamond are not based on facts.” But the fact is that most mainstream media reports were based verbatim on what the solicitor general of India, Ranjit Kumar, said in the apex court.
Kumar narrated a brief history of the Koh-i-Noor from the time it was found in the Kollur mines till now. While indicating the futility of past efforts, the solicitor general told the Supreme Court that seeking the return of the diamond was impractical as there could be similar demands from other countries. And that it was "neither stolen nor forcibly taken". It seems perplexing which part of the media reports the government felt was not based on facts.
Secondly, putting the onus on Nehru, the Modi government said that in 1956, Nehru "went on record saying that there is no ground to claim this art treasure back. He also added that efforts to get the Koh-i-Noor back would lead to difficulties”.
Interestingly, the solicitor general too quoted Nehru in the Supreme Court, saying that there was no ground to claim the Koh-i-Noor back. While blaming previous governments, the Modi government said that “the status report on which the preliminary submission was made by the solicitor general has references to the stand taken by governments earlier that the Koh-i-Noor was a gift and cannot be categorised as an object stolen”.
One may wonder if the past governments so blamed also included the one headed by BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee or the Janata government, in which the BJP's predecessor the Bharatiya Jana Sangh has merged. But in this entire controversy the government quite conveniently forgot to mention what it had said in the Parliament.
In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, the then minister of culture Shripad Naik said, "The cultural property taken out prior to India's independence cannot be claimed on the ground of violation of any law. The issue is not covered under the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970)".
Ironically, this statement came not from the Congress-lead Manmohan Singh government but from the BJP-led Modi government. This statement was made in Parliament on August 6, 2014, that is, about three months after Modi took over as the prime minister.
Changing or amending one's view is not an offence. The government could have said that it had changed its stand after what the solicitor general had said in the Supreme Court. Making a U-turn is nothing new in governance, even this government has had its fair bit of the practice, the most recent being the one on taxing Employees' Provident Fund (EPF).
But what becomes bit of a problem is the blatancy of blaming others for one's own stand. What is hard to digest is the convenience of forgetting what the government itself put on record in Parliament. Whether the Koh-i-Noor comes back to India or not is no longer the issue, the issue is that this government refuses to play fair.