Bala Kohinoor: A Rare Diamond Whose Beginnings and End Remain a Mystery
Hyderabad: Kohinoor, the Indian diamond that sits in the British royal crown, is world renowned. Every connoisseur of gems and jewellery would know about it. But the story of its little cousin, Bala Kohinoor, shrouds in secrecy.
The origin of Bala Kohinoor is unknown, though it was believed to have been mined from Golconda diamond mines in what is now the coastal Andhra Pradesh.
The story of Bala Kohinoor begins in 1820s, when a gold smith discovered it lying a buried earthen pipkin at Narkola (possibly Narkhoda) near Shamshabad on the way to Matkal (Makhtal).
Some accounts described it as larger than a pigeon's egg in size.
The gold smith, with intent to sell, broke Bala Kohinoor into three pieces. The larger of the three broken pieces was the largest as it represented half of the original diamond or 344 carats.
While the small part of the gem, which was broken off, was sold for Rs 70,000 ($1.8 million or Rs 14 crore in 2023), Raja Chandu Lal, the prime minister of the fourth Nizam, Nasir-ud-Daulah, took over the larger part of the diamond and deposited in the royal treasury.
Isabel Burton, who travelled to Hyderabad over 150 years back, wrote thus in his book, 'Arabia, Egypt and India - A Narrative of Travels': "The stone is said to be of the finest water... The face is slightly convex, and the cleavage plane, produced by the fracture, is nearly flat, with a curious slope or groove beginning at the apex. The general appearance is an imperfect oval, with only one projection which will require the saw. It is not unlike a Chinese woman’s foot without the toes, and it will easily cut into a splendid brilliant, larger and more valuable than the present Kohinoor."
"I can hardly wonder at this stone being ignored in England and in India, when little is known about it at Hyderabad. No one could tell me its weight in grains or carats. The hichest authority in the land vaguely said ‘about two ounces or three hundred carats,” Burton wrote explaining why Bala Kohinoor remained unknown to many people.
In 1850s, the Nizam, Nasir-ud-Daulah, got Bala Kohinoor sent to the Museum of Economic Geology in Calcutta, where its curator, Henry Piddington, measured it to be a whopping 277 carats.
The gem was finally cut into the shape of octahedron or the eight-faced diamond in the early 1920s by the order of the Nizam.
A few decades later in 1944, news about Bala Kohinoor came to the fore when the British's India Office, in London forwarded to the seventh Nizam a request from G.F. Herbert Smith, the president of Gemological Association of Great Britain seeking more details about the Nizam's precious possession.
The Nizam refused to honour the request, stating that the diamond was a sacred trust in his possession and it cannot be shown to anybody.
Many, however, believe that the Nizam refused to let the British gemologist see Bala Kohinoor because it was sold for more than $700,000 after it was cut in 1920s — following the World War-I — to settle his debts. But no evidence exists about its purported sale.
Inflation-adjusted value of $700,000 of 1920s in would be $12,134,520 or approximately Rs 100 crore in 2023, without considering its heritage value.
For the next 75 years, there was no trace of Bala Kohinoor. But in March 2019, the diamond emerged from secrecy at Siegelson, the prominent New York gallery, as the ‘Nizam Diamond’, sending the entire jewellery industry into a flutter.
Bala Kohinoor, according to reports, now weighs 120.8 carats — less than half of its size when it came into the possession of the Nizam. It now has an irregular pear shape and reflects the typical old Indian diamond cut. However, it lies in the chest of an unknown billionaire in the West like lakhs of Indian artefacts, thousands of miles away from the homeland.
