Koh-i-Noor stays

The Mountain of Light: One of the most blood-soaked stones on Earth.

Mr David Cameron says that the Koh-i_noor diamond will not be "repatriated" to India.

The barefaced cheek of Mr Tunsar Gahndi to demand the "return" of the diamond as "atonement for the colonial past" is breathtaking in itself. First off, the British Empire is something to be celebrated, not look upon with shame and requiring atonement. If it hurts Mr Ghandi's sense of self-esteem that India was once part of that empire, then that's his own look out and he should take up a hobby or something.

As for "returning" the Koh-i-Noor diamond, it is the rightful property of the Crown, having been given to Queen Victoria by the Honourable East India Company that took it by right of conquest (as it had by others in the stone's bloody past) during the First Anglo-Sikh War and the transfer of possession was agreed in the Treaty of Lahore. To give it to India would not be to "return" it, but to surrender it, If India really feels that keenly about getting their hands on it, I suggest they mobilise an invasion force to seize it rather than hide behind Mr Gandhi's repellant modernist tactic of trying to shame the victors in a previous war into falling into the worn old liberal fallacy that the only proper stance for a Westerner is to refuse to take his own side in a dispute.

Any any rate, it never belonged to India in the first place, so there's no "returning" it to them. It was previously the property of the Maharajah of the the Sikh Empire of the Punjab. If anyone gets it, it would be his descendants.

By the bye, if Mr Gandhi is so upset by empires, what about stumping for independence for the Punjab? How dare he sit idly by while it remains crushed beneath the Hindu heel of New Delhi!

For me, the remarkable thing is that Mr Cameron actually stood up for Britain rather than bawling that he'll have the diamond wrapped up straight away and sent off by return post, thank you very much, sir and can I do anything else while you're on the line?

Maybe he remembered to take his meds today.

Update: For an excellent (though very personal) account of how the Koh-i-Noor came to Britain, see here.