India has not yet got its hands on the Koh-i-Noor, despite the county’s many efforts to retrieve the diamond from Britain’s crown jewels. But the ongoing controversy over the jewel has obscured the success of the country’s wider efforts to repatriate cultural and historical artefacts. Since 2014 India’s leader Narendra Modi has made it his personal mission to secure the return of priceless treasures, including thousands of manuscripts taken during or after the colonial era. The strategy has been an ingenious way of winning the moral argument for the return of the world’s most famous diamond, by securing the return of much less controversial treasures from Britain and other nations.
Modi has now succeeded in bringing back cultural artefacts from his trips to many countries including Canada, Australia and the United States. India wants ‘cooperation in manuscripts… in a manner consistent with existing international arrangements,’ an unnamed government representative told the news website Politico.
That what was stolen must be returned has an indisputably powerful resonance
It’s an approach that is paying big dividends.
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