Art to heart

The newly opened South Asia Gallery at the Manchester Museum sees Britain's vast diaspora community reflected in art like never before.

- SADAF SHAIKH

In the day I sit down to write this piece and I'm not entirely sure if it can be chalked down to pure coincidence-King Charles III and Queen Camilla are being crowned monarchs of the United Kingdom. Every Indian who grew up reading about their country's colonisation at the hands of the British is feeling some kind of way about it. Thankfully, the Koh-i-Noor, which in many ways symbolises the scale of the loot the English pillaged from India as well as the heinousness of the atrocities inflicted upon our countrymen, was conspicuously absent from the king's display of riches and regalia. And although other ill-begotten treasures such as the 22.8-carat Lahore diamond were on full view, there's no denying that the contentious Koh-i-Noor is an ever-present stain that tinges all conversations around British imperialism.