Anita Anand is a journalist and author based in the UK whose works include Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary and Kohinoor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond, co-authored with Scottish historian and writer William Dalrymple. Ms Anand was in Islamabad to launch Kohinoor, where Dawn caught up with her to discuss the book.

Q: What made you want to write about the Kohinoor Diamond?

A: The idea came out of the blue. I’d finished a book about Sophia Duleep Singh, in which the Kohinoor has a small part, in the background. And William had just done Return of a King, which is about the Afghan empire and it’s in there as a thread. And he said, why don’t we do a talk on the Kohinoor? William, I and Navtej Sarna met at the Southbank. I was [sceptical] and I thought everyone knew the story. And what happened was amazing because when we each did our bit, like this relay race, the other two were like, ‘I had no idea that happened?’

So, we decided we would do the book and we both knew our areas very well - I’d been researching Ranjit Singh for four years for my last book, and he’d done a similar amount of research for his last book. And then this Indian solicitor-general made this statement out of the blue that India would no longer pursue the return of the Kohinoor because it was a gift from India, from Ranjit Singh, to the British.

First, it could not have been a gift from Ranjit Singh because he had been dead for 10 years and second, how can you call it a gift? So that sort of accelerated the process because there needs to be a clear history of this diamond, because people are getting away with saying all sorts of nonsense.

Q: What was the collaborative process like?

A: In a way it was a delight, because writing is lonely, boring and hard work, and when you have someone to collaborate with who is fun and interested and enthusiastic, it makes the whole thing more of a pleasure.

But we cut the book in half. William’s expertise is on the early history of this diamond. He’s written so beautifully about the Mughals and the Afghans. And my expertise is on the Sikh empire, the fall of the Sikh empire, the rise of Queen Victoria. So it was a simple cut - we did not have to collaborate on each sentence, but what we did was we would ring each other up all the time, saying, ‘Look what I found!’

And then we swapped halves. He was in India and I was in London and it worked fine.

Q: You have spoken about the ‘curse’ of the Kohinoor. Is there any story of the curse that stands out to you in particular?

A: What’s my favourite doom story? I just think this extraordinary run of bad luck that happens as soon as this diamond enters British territorial waters, you know. [Former British prime minister Sir Robert Peel] dying, [an assassination attempt on] Queen Victoria.

It’s really interesting looking at the newspapers at the time because, although they didn’t directly blame the Kohinoor, they juxtaposed the stories, ‘Kohinoor arrives’ - ‘Terrible thing happens’, which I loved. It’s not so much loving the curse, but it’s loving the way in which suddenly starts taking root in the imagination.

And you can see right from the time those newspaper articles started coming out like that, this idea of this thing being cursed, and the letters shuffling between the palace and India, saying, ‘Is this thing cursed? For God’s sake, tell us, is it really going to be bringing bad luck?’

And I loved the flourishing of that idea, and I also loved when they thought they’d cut the curse away. So with the re-cutting of the diamond, when it is pretty and somehow de-Asianised in a way... all of a sudden, things start being named for the Kohinoor to bring good luck – pencils for exams, racehorses that are winning, ships start being launched with the name Kohinoor. So suddenly it’s as if they feel like they’ve cut the bad luck off, but not to the extent that any monarch will wear it [since Queen Victoria].

Q: Why doesn’t the book make a case of ownership of the diamond?

A: What was important to me and [Mr Dalrymple] was that we put aside a lot of the fallacies that surround [the diamond]. I was not really interested in the politics, that is for the politicians or the barristers who get paid an awful lot of money to fight it out. In a way, I wanted to do the groundwork for free, which is, this is what really happened, here are the sources and footnotes and these were the people who were there at the time. I am as interested as you are to see what happens next.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2017