Britain to India: Diamond in royal crown is ours
Reuters – Feb 20, 2013
British Prime Minister David Cameron says a giant diamond his country forced India to hand over in the colonial era that was set in a royal crown will not be returned.
…”I certainly don’t believe in ‘returnism’, as it were. I don’t think that’s sensible.” Go to story
excerpt from Morning Walk, Mayapur, March 17, 1976:
RADHAVALLABHA: Śrīla Prabhupāda, there was one story in the magazine National Geographic of a valuable diamond, the Hope Diamond, the most valuable in the world, that was stolen from a deity of Sītā-devī. So every single person that has ever gotten the diamond has been killed.
PRABHUPADA: Sītā-devī?
RADHAVALLABHA: Yes, a deity of Sītā-devī. They stole the diamond from this deity in India.
PRABHUPADA: When?
RADHAVALLABHA: Many years ago.
GURUKRIPA:This diamond is in the Washington…
RADHAVALLABHA: Yes. Smithsonian.
GURUKRIPA:…Institute. Washington, D.C. The biggest diamond in the world.
RADHAVALLABHA: Anyone that’s ever stole it’s been killed. Everyone is very much afraid now. They can’t understand why everyone is dying that has taken the diamond.
TAMAL KRSNA: Stolen?
TRIVIKRAMA:: Stolen from India?
PRABHUPADA: No…. Oh.
GURUDAS(?): Rāvaṇa’s. Who stole it?
MADHUDVISA: The largest diamond in the world?
PRABHUPADA: Well, the Britishers, they stolen so many diamonds from India.
TRIVIKRAMA:: Yes.
PRABHUPADA: Yes.
TRIVIKRAMA:: The whole British Museum.
PRABHUPADA: Yes. Whole British Museum means stolen properties from many countries, that’s all, especially in India.
YASHODANANDAN: Prabhupāda, I have heard that previously in India, some paṇḍita says, that when they used to put the jewels on the Deities they used to put some mantra that, when they install the Deity, that “Whoever takes this mantra will never be able to have peace or will die,” some curse mantras.
YASHODANANDAN: Whoever steals the jewels.
PRABHUPADA: Yes. It is possible.
RADHAVALLABHA: Even just recently they were laughing at this curse, and they took the jewel from Sītā-devī in their car to go to the museum, and their car crashed on the way.
PANCHA DRAVIDA: Did they die?
RADHAVALLABHA: No, they didn’t die. A severe crash, though.
PRABHUPADA: Don’t you think the whole British nation is now ruined?
TAMAL KRSNA: That has crashed.