INDIA SEEKS REPATRIATION OF GIGANTIC COINS
The Indian government is resurrecting its hunt to claim two gigantic gold mohur coins dating from India’s Mogul period. One of these two coins has been located, but the other continues to allude India’s Central Economic Intelligence Bureau.
At the center of the hunt is money, lots of it. Ajay Agnihotri was a top CEIB official during 1980s and 1990s. In a June 11 The Sunday Guardian interview, Agnihotri referred to the two coins as being a “precious national asset.” Agnihotri further referred to the coins as being “a stolen asset” and as having been “smuggled” out of India.
The question remains regarding if the two coins should be considered cultural patrimony belonging to India or if the two coins are the personal property of a descendant of the nizam of Hyderabad, to whom the coins were presented centuries ago.
According to information obtained during the 1970s by an informant former CEIB spokesman Shantanu Guha Ray has declined to name, the two coins were shipped from Mumbai to London in a VIP’s personal luggage. At that time, it was a courtesy not to search VIP luggage.
The gold coins in question are a 1613 1,000 mohur with a weight of 11,935.8 grams and a 1639 100 mohur weighing 1,094.5 grams. Mogul Emperor Aurangzeb presented at least the larger coin to Nawab Ghaziuddin Khan Siddiqui Bahadur, Feroze Jung I, whose son Nizam-ul-Mulk founded the Asaf Jah dynasty. The coins passed from generation to generation within the family. The coins were absent from the Nizam family vaults when the vaults were searched by the Indian government during the 1970s.
In 1971, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi stripped all local nobility within India of their titles. According to Indian government records, the two mohur coins were the property of Mukarram Jah, Nizam of Hyderabad at that time.
Sometime during the early 1970s National Museum of India Director General L.P. Sihare learned well-known jeweler Harry Winston was planning to auction the coins in Switzerland, bringing this information to the attention of Gandhi. Switzerland declined to seize the coins as requested. The coins were not offered by auction at that time, but that is when the Indian government commenced efforts to seize them.
The smaller of the two coins, a 100-mohur is not perfectly round and has a diameter of 95 and 97 millimeters. The obverse and reverse have epigraphic with a central panel surrounded by four grandiloquent distichs each within a cartouche. According to Agnihotri, this coin has been located in a museum in Kuwait “and shall be compelled to return lest it faces international opprobrium.” Other sources indicate the Emir of Kuwait purchased this coin in 2009 for $6.6 million at a private auction.
The 1,000 mohur has a diameter of 210 millimeters. Cast rather than struck in Regnal Year 8 (AH 1022, A.D. 1613), the coin is similar to the 100 mohur in iconography. The edge is plain and slightly convex.
In a Sept. 10, 1987 letter to me, the late Indian coin expert William Spengler wrote, “They are also the only gigantic gold pieces known to have survived, since the several copper and plaster casts are of pieces which have evidently disappeared either from sight or existence. (There are, however, recurring rumors of such pieces in India, and even in Pakistan.)”
The search is now on for the 1,000-mohur coin. It appears from
