Kohinoor Coming Home?

photo via New India Abroad

The exciting news this week that the Indian government has partnered with France to create a world-class museum heartened me, because such a museum is long overdue. India’s got plenty of museums and majestic outdoor monuments that function as museums, but nothing on par with the Louvre, the British Museum or the Smithsonian.

My first thought on reading the news in New India Abroad about plans for the Yuga Yugeen Bharat, meaning essentially National Museum of India, is that they’re laying the groundwork for the Kohinoor Diamond to finally return to the region.

One of the UK’s oft-repeated reasons for refusing to return the gem that the British Empire looted from India is that there’s no museum in India secure enough to display it while protecting it from being stolen. I’ve heard this same sentiment expressed by diasporic Indians in the US. While this might be arguably true or just a common misconception, this argument will evaporate with the launch of the Yuga Yugeen Bharat, which is still several years off.

The Kohinoor aside, India has many other historic art and cultural treasures that deserve a first-rate museum, so I’m happy to hear it. I do believe there’s a quiet agenda here, though, to clear a path for cornering the UK into finally returning it.

The French meet Hyder Ali

Given the fighting in India that went on between the British and French Empires in the 18th century, which in many ways mirrored their simultaneous conflicts and proxy wars in North America, I can’t help seeing the fact that France has stepped up to work with India as an old score being settled, the ghost of the French Empire firing a final shot across the bow of the British Empire before the sun sets on both empires forever.

Time will tell regarding the Kohinoor but if I’m right, you heard it here first.

RRR is historically significant – and not because it smashed box office records

I’m grateful to have been offered an opportunity to write about the international Indian hit film RRR for Contingent Magazine, whose mission statement is “history is for everyone.” They purposely waited until 15th August (India time), India’s Independence Day, to publish the article as their lead story today.  What does RRR have to do with my Kolkata theatre research as a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar?  You’ll see. And be sure to read those footnotes.

The article begins below:

Sure, George Washington was a good war strategist, but could he pick up a motorcycle by one wheel and swing it around in battle? Or how about if Martin Luther King Jr. had busted Malcolm X out of prison by carrying him on his shoulders and dodging gunfire while hopping across rooftops, and together they took out J. Edgar Hoover? These events could not, and never did happen, but would be pretty cool to see in a big-budget historical fantasy action flick.

Cont’d at https://contingentmagazine.org