Even if the question of his successor is settled among the various claimants, there is no certainty about the Koh-i-Noor reaching India. In fact, Duleep Singh himself had spent most of his later life trying to reclaim the jewel and all that it represented for him. By leading a miserable and controversial personal life, however, he had squandered the respect that was due to him as the youngest son of Ranjit Singh. But then he was only five when he had become Maharaja of the Punjab in1843.

Duleep Singh was a titular head as the real power was wielded by his mother, the young and comely Rani Jindan. The arrangement suited the British until she resisted their attempts to reward Jammu ruler Gulab Singh by handing Kashmir over to him. His treacherous conduct in the war that sealed the fate of the Sikh kingdom had endeared him to the British. In retaliation and to prevent further mischief, the queen was separated from her son and banished to Sheikhpura and from there to Benaras, where she had to live in conditions of virtual penury.

Dalhousie, the governor general, had Duleep Singh forcibly sent to Fatehgarh where he was tutored in Occidental manners. His baptism in 1853 and adoption of the Christian name, Frederick, angered the orthodox Sikhs while the Christian missionaries of the time compared it with the baptism of Emperor Constantine by Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, in 337 AD, which firmly established Christianity in Europe.

It is a different matter that it was not until 1386, overa millennium later, that the European continent's last pagan ruler, Grand Duke Jogaila of the Lithuanians, was converted.

Fed up with his monotonous, if not rustic, life at Fatehgarh, Duleep Singh opted to leave for Britain where the government bought a home for him in fashionable Wimbledon. A few years later, when he asked for permission to visit his mother he was, instead, encouraged to go on a holiday to Italy. It was while holidaying in Turin that he heard about the 1857 rebellion.

With the British not honouring the treaty of 1849 under which Rani Jindan was entitled to considerable privileges, she was compelled to migrate to London but not before her large jewellery collection was confiscated as repayment for her debts. She died almost totally impoverished in 1864.

It was while returning from India after immersing his mother's ashes in the sacred rivers that Duleep Singh met and married Bamba Muller, the daughter of a German merchant, in Egypt. His proclivity to spend lavishly and the Britishadministration's tendency to go back on its promises combined to pauperise the young Maharaja. Finally, his property was attached and Duleep Singh became a commoner.

All along, he made efforts to get the Koh-i-Noor back through an ingenious interpretation of the 1849 treaty but it made no difference to the British. Even his reconversion did not have any effect on the Sikh community whose help he sought in his bid to reclaim the precious diamond.

Following the death of Princess Bamba in Lahore (she was buried in the Lahore Christian graveyard), Duleep Singh remarried in June 1889 and died on October 22, 1893. He left behind the manuscript of a book, Annexation of the Punjab (republished in Pakistan recently) which when published caused quite a sensation for it showed how perfidious and cunning the British were in dealing with a young ruler and his mother, heirs to an illustrious throne.