The young and dynamic mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, when asked what he would say to visiting British monarch King Charles said, "If I was to speak to the king ... I would probably encourage him to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond."

King Charles was in NYC last month to honor the 9/11 victims a few blocks from City Hall. Critics instantly pointed out that Mamdani was using this occasion as an opportunity for a freshman barb on colonialism and imply that this crown jewel belongs to India. Others questioned Mamdani's standing to demand the diamond--has he appointed himself as a representative of India's government?

Nicole Gelinas, contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, criticized the mayor's rudeness, tone and demeanor and said, "Mamdani did his best version of a petulant teen betraying intolerable boredom. ... Serving as mayor of a city with so much global history is a big job--it is not all day care and cheap eggs."

However, Mamdani is not the first to demand that the diamond, estimated to be worth 100 million British pounds, be returned to India. The demand was made by India for the last 70 years, and more recently voiced by a collection of Bollywood stars and businessmen pressing the British government in 2015 to return the stolen jewel, on the same legal basis as art looted by the Nazis during World War II. Successive British........

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