My culture, worn.
Jewellery is a haunting reminder that what glitters in Western vaults was never theirs to begin with.
When I adorn myself in jewellery, I do so to carry with me a defining part of my identity.
As I get ready to take on whatever the day has in store for me, something that is constant is my jewelry—the gold and diamond encrusted necklace that my grandmother made in honour of my birth. My mother’s rings, adorning my fingers, and its the blue sapphire reminiscent of my great aunt. I wear the memories of my family back home in India, they remind me of who I am and how far I have come.
For us, women of the Global South, jewellery is more than a mere status symbol or worn to flaunt one’s net worth. It is an inheritance of culture. From the day we open our eyes, to the day we close them, jewellery is woven throughout, symbolizing a sense of belonging, of family, and of tradition. Beyond financial wealth, it is an indicator of cultural richness.
To Indian women, for instance, jewelry was never just adornment. In times where women were fundamentally stripped of their agency and made to be entirely dependent on their husbands for quality of life—excluded from legitimate work or being able to own property—jewellery was akin to hidden savings. Jewellery, through dowry, was a source of insurance. If a woman’s husband died, abandoned the family or fell into debt, she was served a security by her gold to sell and survive. In India, a woman’s red and gold bangles, shimmering under the moonlight, was a lifeline; a measure of protection in a system that left her otherwise dependent.
In the West, however, a chest full of jewellery has historically been a physical display of the wealth that one has accumulated, rather than a covert tool. For the West, jewellery is tied to class and status. Meanwhile, the Global South has noted jewellery as a living archive, a physical preservation of stories of struggle, devotion, and strength.
India, a powerhouse in the Global South, has held one of the largest reserves of gold and jewels globally, with Indian women alone currently owning 11% of the world’s gold. Much of it, however, has depleted, a fault of colonial looting. The very heritage that families, like mine, hold on to through neckpieces, was also the target of centuries of imperial plunder.
Colonial powers have also historically disregarded jewellery as culture. They saw it as attainable capital. The infamously greedy British empire, for example, weaponised gold and jewels for domination. One by one, India’s treasures were looted: the Koh-i-Noor diamond, for example, extracted under “dubious circumstances”, still sits in the British Crown Jewels. This significant depletion of jewels carried a particularly devastating weight for Indian women.
When the colonisers raided treasuries, confiscated gold, and destabilised local economies, they didn’t just financially drain empires; they dismantled the only form of security that South Asian women could control. Their independence, in times of crisis, sat caged in a stuffy, trophy room somewhere in the depths of Britain. Plunder was economic and social theft, but more importantly, it heightened women’s precarity in an already patriarchal society.
This transformation from heritage to commodity was deliberate. Jewellery that once circulated within families and communities was ripped out of cultural contexts and displayed in British museums and crowns. Its value was mocked. No longer a symbol of continuity, it became a marker of colonial wealth and superiority.
Even today, ownership of these jewels reveals the persistence of colonial logics. Consider the Patiala Necklace. Designed in 1925 by Cartier for Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala, it included over 2,900 diamonds and at the centrepiece, was the DeBeers, one of the world’s largest yellow diamonds. By the mid-20th century, parts of it had disappeared, and Cartier later restored it using synthetic stones. At the 2022 Met Gala, influencer Emma Chamberlain wore the necklace. Worn by a white influencer, after its adornment was denied by Cartier to an Indian singer, Diljit Dosanjh, was a reminder of the Western colonialism and of its persistent bloodshed.
It is proof that colonial extraction didn’t end in the 19th century; it just took on a new form. Today, the global jewellery industry continues to exploit Asia and Africa, profiting off of child labour in diamond fields, and toxic gold mining that devastates and wipes out entire communities.
To me, jewellery remains what it always was: a connection to my heritage. When I wear my grandmother’s gold chain, I don’t think of it as a symbol of wealth. I think of it as a symbol of strength, of belonging to a family and a culture that survived despite colonial theft. Reclaiming the meaning of jewellery is a step towards rejecting the colonial narrative that reduces it to luxury and excess. It means acknowledging the exploitative industries still profiting off the Global South and refusing to romanticise European crowns and museums that display stolen artifacts.
We know that Europe is not the owner of these riches. It never was. The gold adorning my fingers tell an entirely different story; a story of cultural richness, resilience, and resistance.
Jewellery is more than material wealth. It is a haunting reminder that what glitters in Western vaults was never theirs to begin with.
