Hypothetical Interview with Kohinoor – Animism as a methodology, developing curatorial frameworks
2023- Written in the context of  an academic assignment at the Royal College of Art, London, with the MA Curating Contemporary Art
(Revised 2025 version — lightly expanded to reflect current political and conceptual developments)





Abstract


This essay focuses on the power imbalance between British and Indian cultural and heritage sectors as a result of colonialism and colonial loot. It tries to establish contemporaneity of colonial collections in British museums and their role in the urgent multi-disciplinary discourses around repatriation and decolonisation. It does so through a rhetorical, imaginary interview with the ‘ Kohinoor’ ( Koh-i-Noor).

Kohinoor is personified as an interviewee, in an effort to bring forth new epistemological methods going beyond the notion of subject and object as a ‘knower’ and ‘known’, perpetuating colonialism, western hegemony and ‘otherness’. By challenging the subject-object duality, the essay explores Koh-i-noor’s identity as a complex one of misrepresented refugee, a subject of ‘object diaspora’. The essay also thinks through the multitude of material identity of ‘Koh-i-noor’ as a diamond, stone, lens, form of carbon.

This 2025 revision incorporates expanded political context drawn from Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s framing of the world as a jewel, linking looted objects and displaced peoples through shared imperial genealogies. It integrates anti-caste, feminist, Tamil oral epistemologies and critical citation practices as methodological interventions. Digital culture—including meme-discourse documented in international media—is treated as legitimate historiography of restitution. A personal photograph captured without consent in the Tower of London is included as a diasporic counter-archive that challenges museum surveillance regimes.

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Introduction
Repair is becoming an urgent appeal. Repair of self, repair of humanity, repair of nation, repair of international relationships and most of all repair of global. Humanity and the world might go to a point of no return because of borders in land and lack thereof in the sky. While a third of world’s income inequality could be attributed to colonial impacts, and climate crisis could be explicitly linked to colonialism and capitalism, repair of future is intrinsically tied with the past. We can no longer afford to not look at the global crisis as a mesh of inter-temporal and inter-geographical incidents. The solution needs an interdisciplinary approach.

As a powerful narrator of the past, museums play an important part in defining the future. Originated as a product of colonialism, fetish of collecting, museums have come a long way in being regarded as purveyors of culture and education among general public. Though in most cases this transition doesn’t seep beyond paper, and they still remain a colonial institution, complacent of the colonial impacts in global crisis.

This revised version explicitly acknowledges the contradiction that the United Kingdom’s current immigration regime welcomes looted objects across borders while restricting and deporting racialised asylum seekers. Drawing from Azoulay, the essay situates Kohinoor alongside displaced people as co-refugees of imperialism, revealing the inverted hospitality that structures British cultural institutions.

The revision also uses an anticolonial citation methodology (Clarke et al. 2023), shifting epistemic authority toward Global South, Dalit, feminist, Tamil oral and domestic knowledge systems. Citation becomes a relational practice rather than an extractive academic mechanism. Conversations with Tamil women in the author’s family—held across kitchens, WhatsApp calls, and rituals—form foundational epistemic ground.

Finally, contemporary meme cultures, documented in global media, are recognised as grassroots theorising that articulates public sentiment around restitution. These memes, emerging especially after Queen Elizabeth II’s death and Rishi Sunak’s appointment, critique empire, race, and contemporary migration politics.

A personal photograph—captured under museum surveillance in the Tower of London—functions as a Tamil feminist counter-archive. It exposes the asymmetry of institutional control: while the museum prohibits visitors from imaging the Kohinoor, it reserves total rights to image racialised visitors.

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INTERVIEW

Albert: Could you introduce yourself and explain why you consider yourself a contemporary?

Kohinoor:
In the current intersection of socio-political struggles followed by an emperor’s death, racial comments on the first British Prime Minister of colour, proclaimed immigration “crisis”, and the increasing carbon footprint of colonialism, I would like to introduce myself as a misrepresented refugee with an identity crisis, who is being used for political agenda. At the same time, I feel, as a fellow carbon-being, residing in an important position I could be an instigator in vital discourses.

To name myself a “misrepresented refugee” is to acknowledge the structure that displaced me. My movement from South Asia to Britain was engineered through imperial violence, just as contemporary refugee movements are shaped by state power, coercion and border-making. Britain rejects refugees while hosting me with pride—revealing its preference for displaced objects over displaced peoples.

A widely circulated meme summarised this contradiction: “The only immigrant Britain ever welcomed was the Kohinoor.” Documented by international media, such memes articulate collective political critique through humour and satire.

When analysing “contemporary” in art, Bourdieu remarks: “The field of the present is merely another name for the field of struggle.” With my recurring presence in political struggles, I ought to be considered a contemporary. I bring together times from the 15th century to the present, stitching discordant histories.

Digital culture keeps me contemporary. Memes, TikTok edits, and viral commentary reframe me as a living political actor rather than a static artefact. International news coverage confirms that my meme-circulation forms part of discourse around restitution and British imperial nostalgia.

Also there are prevailing inequalities between contemporary art market of previous colonies and colonial powers. This is further defined as repression embedded in institutions. When colonial impacts permeate contemporary art markets, I become as contemporary as any artwork produced today.

Further, ethnographic museums suspend non-Western objects in an atemporal frame, studying Western traditions diachronically and non-Western traditions synchronically. This alienates colonial loot to the past. I demand colonial loot to be considered contemporary.

I also remain contemporary because my materiality contains histories of caste-oppressed labour. The mining and handling of stones like me has historically relied on Dalit and Adivasi labour—rarely acknowledged in museum narratives. My carbon body is a record of caste, extraction and environmental damage.



Albert: Could you elaborate on your identity crisis and political instrumentalisation?

Kohinoor: Countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and India have claimed me. The UK defends its claim based on Fallmerayer theory, arguing that current populations are not direct descendants of those from whom I was taken. Applied to me, it ignores Partition and its refugee crisis—produced by British colonial policy.

My identity crisis is therefore inseparable from imperial border-making. My meaning is fragmented across the very borders empire carved into the subcontinent.

Indo-Pakistan war permeates everyday life and is used politically. Britain welcomes multiple claims to avoid acknowledging any one sovereign right.

While part of my identity crisis stems from provenance debates, a major part arises from being presented as a gift. I ended up in Queen Victoria’s hands when an eleven-year-old Maharaja signed the Treaty of Lahore. Am I a gift? A war prize? A refugee? A slave?

UNDRIP urges states to restore properties taken without free, prior, informed consent. Historians note that coerced acquisitions warrant return. The surrender of a diamond by a colonised child cannot be considered consensual.

This coerced “gift” mirrors how asylum seekers today are pressured into signing documents under duress. Consent, in both cases, is manufactured. My identity crisis reflects the crises of classification that empire produces: I am simultaneously “heritage,” “property,” “refugee,” and “political instrument.”  


Albert: Earlier, you mentioned that museums use temporal strategies that position you outside the present. How does this relate to the “universal museum” model?

Kohinoor: “Universal Museums,” narratives are developed after the 2002 Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums. It is noted:

“This concept has not helped to resolve questions of provenance and ownership relating to some collections in major Western museums as was intended. On the contrary, it seems to have elicited more questions than answers…”

It points out the fallacy of the Declaration by examining the institutions that signed it—predominantly colonial powers whose dominance structures these narratives.

The so-called “universal” is not neutral; it is an imperial fiction. Dalit, Indigenous and Global South scholars have long argued that universality masks dominance. The Universal Museum reproduces this logic: it universalises its right to hold what it stole while enforcing particular cultural hierarchies as global norms.

Also, repatriation debates are often framed as cultural nationalism vs. cultural internationalism. But restitution claims are never strictly dualistic. “Universal Museums,” ostensibly supporting internationalism, enact cultural nationalism by implying Western guardianship is superior.

New Stream theory examines the indeterminacy of legal argumentation in international law. Using this theory, debates around my return reveal structural irresolution. They cannot be resolved internally. An external framework is needed.

Introducing caste-conscious, feminist, migrant, and Indigenous epistemologies into these debates breaks this legal stalemate. When only states and Western museums negotiate, the core violence is untouched. Including those historically excluded—Dalit labourers, Adivasi miners, Tamil diasporic women, refugees—exposes the political incompleteness of the Universal Museum.

Throughout this interview, I draw on ascending and descending arguments from New Stream theory, revealing the indeterminacy around my retention/return. Solving this requires moving beyond legal or museological frameworks toward transdisciplinary approaches.


Albert: What does such a transdisciplinary approach look like for you?

Kohinoor: Deliberative democracy offers clues. Examples in Chicago among police, teachers and local communities show how complex crises can be addressed through shared dialogue. Repatriation successes in Sweden, Denmark and Aberdeen reveal that non-legal negotiations—conversation, collaboration, relationship-building—often produce more ethical outcomes than courts.

However, these deliberative models must be expanded. A truly decolonial process cannot centre only states, administrators, or museum officials. It must include those whose labour, histories and bodies have been marginalised.

Dalit miners whose labour extracted me.

Adivasi communities whose lands were excavated.


Tamil women whose oral histories hold generational memory and domestic epistemologies.


Migrants and refugees whose displacement mirrors mine.

Digital publics who reframe me through critical memes.

These are the epistemic stakeholders.

Drawing upon the fluidity and non-hierarchical nature of Édouard Glissant’s archipelagic thinking, curatorial practice could serve as a transdisciplinary research site. Glissant proposes relational, non-totalising worldviews—networks of islands, rather than singular continents.

Seen through Glissant, I am not an isolated artefact but an island-node within an archipelago of histories: caste, empire, gender, carbon, migration, climate, desire. A decolonial curatorial methodology must attend to these moving, relational connections.

Maija Annikki Savolainen’s “/datacentre” exhibition explored synergy between artistic and scientific research, treating stones as ancient data centres—sites for gathering, processing and distributing knowledge.

Beloff, Berger and Haapoja similarly suggest that stones store and transmit memory.

If stones are data-centres, then I am a data-centre of extraction, caste labour, colonial conquest, displacement, imperial desire, and contemporary digital culture. My materiality is a portal-room: entering it reveals planetary entanglements.

The exhibition Dja Guata Pora: Rio de Janeiro Indígena demonstrates how Indigenous-led curating transforms process itself—decision-making emerges through collective movement, not predetermined outcomes.

“Movement of talking and searching … embodies awareness and helps work out future conflicts.”

This resonates with my situation. Repatriation is not simply about where I end up, but how people come together in the process.

“Crucially,” as Benhabib notes, deliberative views contrast with adversarial models dominated by experts. They recognise equal participation for all affected parties.

A reparative curatorial model around me must do precisely this: dismantle hierarchies of expertise, foreground marginalised voices, and treat knowledge as co-produced rather than inherited from Western academic lineages.

Albert: If curators, policymakers, and communities truly followed these principles, what would happen next? What do you believe is actually required?

Kohinoor: Drawing from earlier examples, I would propose a transdisciplinary curatorial approach facilitating my repatriation—not merely for my sake, but for the sake of a sustainable future.

The discourses around my ownership span political, national, economic, environmental, museological, legislative and humanitarian concerns. Deliberative democracy would involve stakeholders across these fields, acknowledging varied voices.

Curatorial methodology must go further than logistics. It must reconstruct relationships between labour, land, memory and justice. My return—if it occurs—should emerge from a collective process rather than a transfer of property.

My final methodological proposition is simple:

curating must shift from displaying objects to caring for entanglements.

Caste, carbon, climate, diaspora, desire, displacement—these are the material conditions I carry within me. A future curatorial model must be built around them.

Albert: And ultimately, what do you hope this methodology can achieve?
Kohinoor:
A shift in the architecture of care.

To move away from extractive, hierarchical, Eurocentric systems.

To cultivate decolonial futures grounded in feminist, caste-conscious, ecological and relational praxis.

To reimagine curating as repair.


Albert: As we come to the end of this conversation, what do you believe your presence can contribute to the future of curatorial practice?

Kohinoor:
I do not offer answers—I offer methods. For centuries, I have been framed as complete, static, resolved. In truth, I am unresolved. My histories cross borders, sovereignties, castes, climates and diasporas. I embody the entanglements that contemporary curatorial practice must finally confront: colonial extraction, caste-based labour, imperial border regimes, climate colonialism and institutional epistemic violence.

Albert: So you see yourself as an active participant—almost a collaborator—in these futures?

Kohinoor:

Precisely. My value is not as a jewel but as a junction. My carbon form carries the memory of forced labour and the violence of extraction; my displacement mirrors migrant precarity; my political circulation reflects the anxieties of nation-states; my digital afterlives—shaped through meme cultures—speak to people’s affective refusals.

I am, in essence, a portal. Through me, curators can trace the relations between caste, empire, climate, displacement and desire. If curatorial methodologies attend to these entanglements—rather than sanitising them—they may cultivate genuinely decolonial futures.

Albert: And what is your final appeal?

Kohinoor:

To remain in flux. To resist closure. Whether I move or stay is only one part of the question. The greater work lies in transforming the structures that made my displacement possible—curatorial, legal, political, epistemic.

Repatriation must be more than the movement of an object; it must be a shift in the architecture of care, knowledge and accountability.

If curatorial work can recognise this, then perhaps the future—yours, mine, and the earth’s—can move toward repair.


(This bibliography follows a decolonial citational politics that centres Dalit, feminist, Global South, Indigenous, oral, diasporic and public-knowledge sources before Western academic scholarship. The order reflects epistemic justice rather than alphabetical hierarchy.)


Azoulay, A.A. (2019) Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. London: Verso.

Clarke, M.E., et al. (2023) ‘Critical Citations as an Anticolonial Practice’, SAA Archaeological Record, 23.

Chari, S. (2002) ‘Animism and Material Culture in India’, Economic and Political Weekly.

Dalit feminist and Global South scholarship on extraction, caste labour and colonial materiality (general reference for expanded discourse).

Glissant, É. (1990) Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Basu, P. (2011) Object Diaspora and Displacement.

Benites, A. and Lafuente, P. (n.d.) Dja Guata Pora: Rio de Janeiro Indígena.

Costantine, D. (2021) ‘Curatorial as Transdisciplinary Research’, PARSE Journal.

Benhabib, S. (2002) The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era. Princeton University Press.

Lundin, E. (2019) ‘Repatriation and Colonial Acquisitions’, Prospect Magazine.

Abungu, G. (2006) Universal Museums: New Instruments of Imperialism.

Abungu, G. (2008) ‘Universal Museums and the Politics of Display’.

Oral conversations with Tamil women in the author’s family (2018–2024).

Personal archive — Photograph of the author’s mother taken inside the Tower of London (2023), captured in a restricted visual field under museum surveillance conditions and used here as a feminist, diasporic counter-archive challenging institutional visual control.

Free Press Journal (2022) ‘Netizens trend “Kohinoor” on Twitter, ask India’s jewel back after Queen Elizabeth II’s demise’, Free Press Journal, 9 September.

NDTV (2022) ‘Ashish Nehra, Kohinoor memes flood Twitter as Rishi Sunak becomes UK PM’, NDTV, 24 October.

Le Monde (2022) ‘As Rishi Sunak Becomes Prime Minister, Several Kohinoor Memes Flood Twitter’, Le Monde, 26 October.

Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J. (2017) ‘Economic Impact of Colonialism.’ Centre for Economic Policy Research.

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Banteka, N. (2015) ‘Cultural Property, the Fallmerayer Theory and Repatriation’, University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, 37(4).

Bienkowski, P. (2013) Repatriation and Museum Ethics.

Bourdieu, P. (1995) Fields of Struggle.

Cartwright, M. (2021) ‘Koh-i-Noor Diamond’, World History Encyclopedia.

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Danziger, A. (2020) ‘Dividing Lines: Political Futures of India and Pakistan’, Stimson Center.

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Erdem, Z. (2022) ‘UK Immigration Crisis’.

Fung, A. (2006) Deliberative Democracy in Practice.

Griffiths, C. (2022) ‘Liz Truss Resigns After Shortest Tenure’, NPR.

Kinsey, A. (2009) ‘Duleep Singh and the Surrender of the Koh-i-Noor’, Journal of Imperial History.

Kingsley, P. (2022) ‘UK Faces Recession’, The Independent.

Martin, S. (2021) ‘Avoiding Carbon Colonialism’, The Hill.

Merryman, J.H. (1985) ‘Cultural Property Internationalism’, California Law Review.

Moore, S. (2021) ‘Impacts of War on Global Health’, News-Medical.

MyArtBroker (2022) ‘David Hockney: Record Prices’.

National Geographic (2022) ‘How the British Split India’, National Geographic.

Richter, H. (2013) ‘Mechanisms of Repression in Contemporary Art’, Art Journal.

Santos Silva, A. (2015) ‘Global Crisis and Interdisciplinary Approaches’, Review of Keynesian Economics, 3.

Singh, A. (2013) ‘India’s Economic Decline under the British’, Huffington Post.

Soirila, E. (2022) ‘Universal Museums and Legal Indeterminacy’, International Journal of Cultural Property.

Tharoor, S. (2016) An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India.

Tombs, R. (2022) ‘Kohinoor and British History’, Daily Mail.

UN (2007) United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

UN (2022) ‘Statement on Climate’, UN Press Office.

UNESCO (1970) Convention Against Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Property.

Worthy Staff (2021) ‘Valuation of the Koh-i-Noor Diamond’, Worthy.com Knowledge Centre.

Yap, A. (2014) ‘Ethnographic Display and Chronology’, Uppsala University.

Zeldin-O’Neill, C. (2022) ‘Racism and UK Media’, The Guardian.