Pranay Somayajula Pranay Somayajula is a London-based fiction writer and essayist. He runs the blog “no more mangoes,” where he explores themes of migration, human rights, and South Asian diasporic identity from a critical left perspective.

Shiny Objects | The Koh-i-noor, Rishi Sunak, and the Aesthetics of Anticolonialism

Pranay Somayajula

It’s unclear who, exactly, was the first person to refer to India as the “jewel in the crown of the British Empire.” The phrase has been commonly attributed — perhaps apocryphally — to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who proclaimed Queen Victoria Empress of India in 1877. It was popularized by British novelist Paul Scott, who in 1966 used it as the title of the first book in his Raj...