Kohinoor: The Story of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond

by William Dalrymple

Writing to his wife, Login confessed that Mulraj was nothing like the bloodthirsty rebel she may have read about in the papers, a man who had killed a friend of theirs ‘but rather a weak, chicken-hearted fellow, afraid to do what was right, and entirely in the hands of some resolute villains around him. I don’t think he really intended any harm to dear Pat Vans Agnew’.14 Login was left with no time to dwell on his misgivings since, in addition to his responsibility for the toshakhana, he now had to take charge of Duleep. Arrangements had to be made and a little boy needed to be won over. Login resolved to show his new ward nothing but kindness. He believed a blameless boy was being punished for the actions of others beyond his control. Login was not alone in feeling this way. Sir Henry Lawrence, the Resident of Lahore who had been compelled to ignore Rani Jindan’s pleading letters, was touched by Duleep Singh’s plight. He had been against a land grab from the start, and would have preferred to leave Duleep on the throne, forging a mutually beneficial alliance with the Punjab court. As Lena Login later recalled: ‘the Governor-General’s [Dalhousie’s] decision [to annex the kingdom] was a sore grief to the generous-hearted Resident, and a reversal of many cherished hopes and projects’.15 Most others had no such misgivings. The British press crowed over the annexation and painted the boy king Duleep as the author of his own misfortune: ‘this famous diamond (the largest and mos...