For the past sixty-seven years, the citizens of India have embraced their country’s independence all the while seeking to regain their past. Prior to this renewed sense of freedom, India had belonged to the British Empire. From 1858 to 1947, the British government claimed India and its inhabitants as a colonial possession. Before the British Empire laid claim to the vastness of India, the British East India Company helped to oversee the transfer of the Kohinoor Diamond from the Sikh Empire to their motherland in 1851.
Fought over for centuries and claimed by many, the owner of this diamond only yields it to another at the cost of an empire. Believed to have originated from the depths of an ancient Indian mine, the Kohinoor Diamond is a missing link to an illustrious past of a fledgling modern nation. Since its independence, Indians, both in the Republic of India and those who reside throughout the Commonwealth, have demanded the return of the sacred jewel. A demand the British government has continually refused. For the British, the diamond is also a reminder of their renowned past when the sun never set upon their domain. Forever covered in the blood of its past owners, men and nations will continually fight one another, rather with words or war, just for the opportunity to hold the cursed gemstone.
Brief History of the Gemstone
Against the backdrop of war with an ever expanding colonizer, a young dethroned king finds himself spirited away to a foreign land. Standing face to face with his conqueror and new sovereign, the Queen of England, the young king surrenders the Kohinoor Diamond into the hands of his victor, a spoil of war. Not long after, in 1877, Queen Victoria obtains the title Empress of India. This is the historic...
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...tish Studies 48, no.2 (2009): 391-419.
Nelson, Sara C. “Koh-i-Noor Diamond Will Not Be Returned To India, David Cameron
Insists.” The Huffington Post, February 21, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/02/21/koh-i-noor-diamond-not-returned-india-david-cameron-insists-pictures_n_2732342.html#slide=2132686.
Plunkett, Suzanne. “Cubic zirconia replicas of the original and a modern Koh-i-Noor.” Getty
Images. Web. Feb. 28, 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/02/21/koh-i-noor-diamond-not-returned-india-david-cameron-insists-pictures_n_2732342.html#slide=2132686.
Press Association. “Ruling Tightens Grip on Parthenon Marbles.” The Guardian, May 27, 2005.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/may/27/arts.parthenon.
Reitemeirer, Frauke. Strangers, Migrants, Exiles: Negotiating Identity in Literature. University
of Gottingen: Gottingen, Germany, 2012.
Deep within African mines, elusive diamonds lay enveloped in the Earth’s crust. Possessing much influence, beauty, and tension, nature’s hardest known substance causes parallel occurrences of unity and destruction on opposite sides of the globe. Diamonds, derived from the Greek word "adamas", meaning invincible, are formed deep within the mantle, and are composed entirely from carbon. Moreover, only under tremendous amounts of heat and pressure can diamonds form into their preliminary crystal state. In fact, diamonds are formed approximately 150km- 200km below the surface and at radical temperatures ranging from 900-1300 C°. When these extremes meet, carbon atoms are forced together creating diamond crystals. Yet how do these gems, ranking a ten on Moh’s hardness scale, impact the individual lives of millions of people besides coaxing a squeal out of brides-to-be? These colorless, yellow, brown, green, blue, reddish, pink, grey and black minerals are gorgeous in their cut state, but how are these otherwise dull gems recognized and harvested? Furthermore, how and why is bloodshed and violence caused over diamonds in Africa, the supplier of approximately 65% of the world’s diamonds? (Bertoni) The environmental, social, and economic impact of harvesting, transporting, and processing diamonds is crucial because contrary to popular belief, much blood has been spilled over first-world “bling”.
Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone has been read as an archetypal piece of imperial propaganda, and yet it seems to lend itself to an alternate reading in which it represents a distinct challenge to the colonial mindset. The majority of the tale is set in England but the Indian location of the prologue and epilogue explicitly root The Moonstone within the context of the colonial experience in India. Far from being incidental embellishments, these two sections provide the opening and the closure of the story. Significantly, the thefts of the eponymous jewel is carried out by a series of upper-class Englishmen, starting with John Herncastle. It is hugely relevant that he steals the moonstone during the siege of Seringapatam in 1799, an event which consolidated the dominance of the East India Company in colonial India. The Moonstone first appeared in serial form on January 4th 1868 by which time myths and facts about the British termed ‘mutiny’ of 1857 were firmly entrenched in the national consciousness. Amidst the widespread repercussions of the events of the mutiny was a loss of former power on the part of the same company. Through his evocation of these memories Wilkie Collins seems to link looting and violence with colonial maladministration.
The British considered Indian civilization to be inferior and implemented their western ways, overriding ancient Indian customs. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that British imperialism in India resulted in both positive as well as negative reforms in political, economic and social aspects of its new colony. To begin with, one can observe that the British colonizers did indeed improve Indian civilization by developing means of communication and transport. They built a great number of bridges, over 40,000 miles of railway and paving an astounding 70,000 miles of road (Doc. 4. The adage of the adage.
In the prologue learn see that John Herncastle, a soldier in the English army, killed the three Brahmin priests who guarded the Moonstone in order to gain possession of it, while in India. Although he denies killing them we can infer that he did kill them because he was the only one there. Here is where we see both greed and selfishness for the first time in the novel, because he wanted the diamond for himself and was ready to do anything to get it.
James, Lawrence. Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.
7. Holdich, Sir Thomas. The Gates of India. London: The MacMillan Company, 1910. [Document 9]
The 'Secondary' of the Web. The Web. The Web. 11 Mar. 2015. The 'Secondary' of the http://www.diamondfacts.org/index.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26view%3Darticle%26id%3D128%26Itemid%3D134%26lang%3Den Howden, Daniel. A. "Exclusive: The Return of Blood Diamonds - Africa, World - The Independent."
It’s hard to imagine that a mineral could be fueling wars and funding corrupt governments. This mineral can be smuggled undetected across countries in a coat pocket, then be sold for vast amounts of money. This mineral is used in power tools, parts of x-ray machines, and microchips but mostly jewelry. Once considered the ultimate symbol of love, the diamond has a darker story. "Blood" diamonds or "conflict" diamonds are those mined, polished, or traded in areas of the world where the rule of law does not exist. They often originate in war-torn countries like Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, and Côte d'Ivoire were rebels use these gems to fund genocide or other questionable objectives. Even with a system known as the Kimberly process which tracks diamonds to prevent trade of these illicit gems, infractions continue as the process is seriously flawed. The continuation of the blood diamond trade is inhuman, and unethical, and in order to cease this illicit trade further action to redefine a conflict diamond, as well as reform to the diamond certification prosess is nessasary.
" India was where the riches of the world came from, the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. The British needed to dispel the threat of other Europeans in Africa to maintain control of India, and they did so efficiently. They quickly gained control of both the major sea routes to India and then turned their eyes to the rest of the continent. Whether the British were trying to foster public support or prevent another nation from becoming a threat, all British actions in Africa were directly or indirectly linked to India. The British were motivated by their desire to become powerful, and they skillfully combined enterprise and conquest to create a globe spanning empire centered around the wealth of India.
As a result, many diamond miners and their families lack the very basic necessities that we as Canadians take for granted each and every day, such as clean running water, and proper sanitation. This extreme sense of impoverishment links to the movie “Blood Diamond,” as a Mende fisherman named Solomon Vandy was captured and enslaved to work in the diamond fields following the Revolutionary United Front’s invasion of his small Sierra Leonean village of Shenge. Moreover, Solomon is forced to work in extremely dangerous conditions, while being grossly underpaid. Thus, when Solomon discovered the remarkable diamond while working in the diamond fields, he immediately buried it underground for safekeeping, as he came to the realization that, that specific gemstone may be his last chance to get himself and his family out of the re-occurring poverty cycle. Also, the diamonds that are discovered after days of individuals being hunched in mud, digging, washing, searching the gravel, tend to end up on women in the form of an exquisite piece of jewelry such as a ring or necklace. Although to the knowledge of very
The mutiny, regarded by many as India's first War of Independence, was to have important consequences and the structure of British India was to be re-organised extensively. Increasingly, India came under direct Crown rule as the British East India Company was dispossessed of its functions and, in 1877, Queen Victoria was crowned Empress. Despite the severity of European reprisal as each territory had been regained and its subsequent defensive proposals of military alteration, a measure of conciliation had been introduced to administrative policy. Integration of the higher castes and princes was now considered important, land policy was revised and plans for radical social change were shelved.
The web page points out the controversy behind the De Beers organization involved in Diamond trade across the globe and accusing it stating that it buys illegal diamonds from African leaders and rebels who in turn use the money they get from the diamond sale to fund wars in their countries. The page also highlights some of the challenges facing the South African-based multinational company and the reason behind the shrinkage of their shares in the market. In response to this accusations, DE beers management opted to cast diamond into elements that show love and loyalty increasing the dominance of diamonds in the lucrative luxury market. Mr. Epstein, a managing director, referred to the allegations as a coup which is meant to destroy the company’s
Rakhee Moral, “In Time of the Breaking of Nations The Glass Palace as Post-Colonial Narrative” Amitav Ghosh: Critical Perspectives ed. Brinda Bose (New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2003)152.
The decision to grant independence to India was not the logical culmination of errors in policy, neither was it as a consequence of a mass revolution forcing the British out of India, but rather, the decision was undertaken voluntarily. Patrick French argues that: “The British left India because they lost control over crucial areas of the administration, and lacked the will and the financial or military ability to recover that control”.
It combines social, cultural, and political history with the hardships and goal of a travel book. With Kim, a young white boy, sahib, at its center and his friend and mentor the Lama, we see the world of India in the nineteenth century as it is ruled by Great Britain. The story unfolds against the backdrop of The Great Game, the political conflict between Russia and Britain in Central Asia. It is set after the Second Afghan War which ended in 1881, but before the Third. The novel is notable for its detailed portrait of the people, culture, and varied religions of India.