Punjabi Pride
Pride in Punjabi heritage and the golden threads that connect us
Over the last two months, I’ve been researching my book, which documents my family’s history of the British Partition of India. I’ve always appreciated my identity and rich heritage, but I didn’t anticipate this level of ancestral healing and pride in the region of my parents’ childhood.
A fortnight ago, I stood in front of an image of Maharani Jind Kaur at the Last Princesses of Punjab exhibition at Kensington Palace, grandmother of suffragette Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, tears streaming down my face, with a mixture of awe and outrage.
Jind Kaur was a proud and formidable woman if ever there was one, coming out of purdah to mobilise her army against the British, not once but twice. On the second occasion, she was dragged out of her palace by her hair, thrown in prison and had her young son, her only child, taken from her to England.
She escaped prison disguised as a servant and trekked 800 miles to Nepal, where she lived in exile for over a decade.
The exhibition, which runs at Kensington Palace until November 2026 and is included in the ticket price, is one of the most powerful exhibitions I’ve been to in years. If you can get there, go.
The diamond at the heart of it all
Jind Kaur’s son, Maharaja Duleep Singh, was just ten years old when he was compelled to hand over the 105.6-carat Koh-i-Noor diamond to the British under the Treaty of Lahore in 1849, after his mother was (literally) thrown in prison by the British. Koh-i-Noor means “Mountain of Light” in Persian but the reality of how it came to sit in the British Crown Jewels is dark.
What I hadn’t known, until I started researching this piece, is that a Hindu text said to date from 1306 reportedly carried a warning about the stone:
“He who owns this diamond will own the world, but will also know all its misfortunes. Only God, or a woman, can wear it with impunity.”
The history of the diamond’s male owners lends weight to that warning. For over 500 years, the Koh-i-Noor changed hands through violence, coups and conquest. Every empire that held it eventually fell. Since arriving in British hands, the Royal Family has ensured that the stone has only ever been worn by women. A diamond taken from a Punjabi child king, now worn only by women of the institution that took it, because the men are afraid of what it might do to them.
The golden thread
Speaking of formidable women, I first came across barrister Felicity Gerry KC when she appeared on Channel 4’s The Cruel Cut in 2014. At the time, I’d just started working on the asylum claim of Afusat Saliu and her two daughters, who faced deportation to Nigeria and the risk of FGM on her girls. I contacted Felicity asking for help, and she offered to take instructions on the legal case if I built the legal team. My campaign gathered 126,500 supporters and the interest of parliamentarians.
Neither of us knew then the golden thread that connected us, our Punjabi lineage.
Felicity has just co-written this piece in Eastern Eye “What’s the law on Koh-i-Noor?” on the legal and moral case for returning the diamond - the same stone that Maharani Jind Kaur’s son was compelled to hand over. Felicity, it turns out, is herself apparently descended from a Punjabi lineage. The thread carried further than either of us could have imagined when we were fighting to keep a mother and her daughters in this country.
Those arguments aren’t only for courtrooms. When I researched Smallwood Trust’s historical investments in the East India Railway Company, I made the same case to their CEO.
NYC Mayor gets involved
On Wednesday, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani was asked at a press conference how he envisioned his meeting with King Charles at the 9/11 memorial. He said the visit should focus on the victims of the attack. Then he added: if he were to speak to the King separately, he would “probably encourage him to return the Koh-i-Noor.”
Mamdani is the son of Ugandan-Indian parents. His mother, acclaimed filmaker Mira Nair is Hindu Punjabi like me. The stone’s contested provenance spans India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. The question of where it should go, if it goes anywhere, is genuinely complex, as Felicity’s piece explores. But the fact that a sitting US mayor said it, publicly, the morning he was due to meet the King, is hugely significant.
Then Diljit Dosanjh appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Oh, my heart.
He told the US late-night audience about the Komagata Maru incident. In 1914, a ship carrying 376 passengers, mostly Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus from Punjab, was barred from entering Canada under exclusionary immigration laws and forced to return. Dosanjh connected that moment to the 55,000-strong crowds now filling stadiums to hear his Punjabi music, just two kilometres from where those passengers were turned away. The studio erupted.
From my sofa in Leeds, so did I. I’ve watched it back over ten times.
He used his platform as only he could. Mamdani used his. Felicity uses hers. We don’t all have the same platform, the same reach, or the same stage. But the thread is the same. And it runs deep.
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Anj Handa is a specialist in equality, governance and systems change, working with civil society organisations, women’s sector bodies and boards navigating structural change. If this piece connected with something you are working through, she would like to hear from you.
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