[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2273131462.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tDuring the much-ballyhooed visit of King Charles and Queen Camilla to New York City on Wednesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani called on the King to use his power to return the Koh-i-Noor Diamond to India.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs reported by Reuters, at a press conference before a ceremony to commemorate the victims of \u200bthe September 11 attack, Mamdani said, \u201cIf I were to \u200cspeak to the king separately from that, I would probably encourage him to return the Koh-i-Noor Diamond.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe two leaders did in fact meet later at the ceremony itself, but Buckingham Palace declined to comment and Mamdani\u2019s office did not respond to a request for comment about what was discussed.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn 1850, the Koh-i-Noor Diamond was given to Queen Victoria after Britain\u2019s colonial governor-general arranged for the exchange of a treasure that had belonged to a deposed Indian leader. The diamond has since come to be seen as a symbol of colonial \u2060British \u200brule by many Indians.<\/p>\n
\n\tA story about Mamdani\u2019s comment in the New York Times<\/em> noted \u201cThe Koh-i-Noor, which means \u2018mountain of light\u2019 in Persian, is one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, at 105.6 carats and about the size of a chicken\u2019s egg. Historians believe it was sifted from the sands in southern India thousands of years ago. It changed hands over the centuries in conquests across the Indian subcontinent.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWilliam Dalrymple, a co-author of the 2017 book Koh-I-Noor: The History of the World\u2019s Most Infamous Diamond<\/em>, told the Times<\/em>: \u201cIt has a long history of bringing bad luck and, again, seems to have been the tripwire which tripped up King Charles on his trip to New York.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tPriya Darsan Pattnaik, a Hindu activist who filed a lawsuit last year with the International Court of Justice calling for the diamond\u2019s return, added, \u201cI am amazed to hear that Zohran Mamdani raised this issue. We should make efforts to bring back the Koh-i-Noor.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/mayor-zohran-mamdani-king-charles-diamond-india-1234783317\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2273131462.jpg?w=1024″] During the much-ballyhooed visit of King Charles and Queen Camilla to New York City on Wednesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani called on the King to use his power to return the Koh-i-Noor Diamond to India. As reported by Reuters, at a press conference before a ceremony to commemorate the victims of \u200bthe September […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1914012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1914012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914012\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1914012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1914012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1914012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}