Across the kala pani

A minor part of the freedom struggle in India was an attempt to depict a glorious past, which had been (temporarily) subverted by British colonialism. India had been great in the past, and would be again once it was free. This applied to maritime matters as well as the land: India had a proud maritime past, and her ships dominated the waters of the Indian Ocean. Historically there had been a Greater India, one where India had dominated culturally (and according to some, even politically) many of the areas around the Indian Ocean. In the case of East Africa, it was claimed that the gold mining in Zimbabwe was controlled by Indians. The famous carved doors found on the Swahili coast demonstrate, so we are told, Indian influence. And indeed, one scholar has triumphantly 'proved' that India dominated the Indian Ocean area, for why else would the ocean be called 'Indian'? Similarly in Southeast Asia, Indian super-patriots claimed that much of this region had been a mere cultural colony of India. Closer examination would weaken these claims; yet in fact there does seem to be some justification in seeing India as the fulcrum, or hub, of the Indian Ocean. Much flowed out from here; but oddly, little of significance came back.

First, a few definitions are in order, including that of the Indian Ocean. If one were to take it as meaning only the ocean, that is water, we would have little to say, for the sea per se has little role in Southasia. Rather, the term Indian Ocean means the countries around its rim, or littoral, and here there is an even greater diversity than was the case for Southasia. There are topographical extremes, all the world's major religions, about 30 modern states and great variations in economic development. Further to complicate matters, it is essential to differentiate between the western ocean, the rather misnamed Arabian Sea, and the eastern, the equally incorrectly demarcated Bay of Bengal. Even this is too simple, for it leaves out the vast Great Southern Ocean, conventionally considered to be all waters south of 60 degrees South. For that matter, there is a considerable difference between the monsoon Indian Ocean, down to 10 degrees South, and the trade-wind regime south of this. Yet at times we have to consider the greater Indian Ocean. For instance, today, India is making quite ambitious claims on Antarctica. The question would arise as to what the other Southasian states think about this.

Insular economy
At first sight, it might seem that distance militates against Southasia being able to trade successfully with many areas of the Indian Ocean. It is, after all, 7000 km from Mumbai to Durban, and 3600 from Chennai to Jakarta. Despite this, throughout history Southasia has played an important role in the total trade of the Indian Ocean. In part, this is because travel by sea is often easier and cheaper than overland; and partly this is thanks to the advantages of the monsoon system, which was understood and used for deep water sailing since the third century BCE. More important is the central fact that the Southasian economy, both historically and today, has been much more advanced than the others around the shores of the ocean. The people of the Indus Valley civilisation traded with Mesopotamia 4000 years ago. Southasian products have been found in Berenike, an Egyptian port on the west coast of the Red Sea. Excavation has found seeds, peppercorns, bamboo, glass and stone beads, coconut husks, teak wood, textiles, sail cloth and pottery dating back to a century either side of the beginning of the Common Era, sourced from the Subcontinent. There is a common Indian source for cloth found at Berenike and along the Silk Road to China.

Thanks to the monsoons, sailing within the ocean became relatively routine, even if hazardous. Thus, there were regular connections linking East Africa and West Asia to this region, and these links extended on to Southeast Asia and so to the South China Sea. This integrated network has flourished for at least 2000 years – far predating the arrival of Europeans. Broadly speaking, the terms of trade always favoured Southasia. The region had goods much in demand elsewhere, but required little from overseas. Before colonialism – that is, up to around 1800 CE – the two largest economies in the world were those of Southasia and China. Southasia at this time exported some specialised products such as saltpetre and indigo dye, various handicrafts, and especially cotton and silk cloths. These ranged from coarse, common stuff to fine and elaborate products, which showed a sophistication of manufacture unmatched elsewhere at the time. Southasian cloths clothed people living on the Indian Ocean rim for millennia; indeed, Indian cloth was even used as a form of currency in Indonesia.

Indian industries declined under British colonialism, in large part due to British policies such as flooding India with cheap machine-made goods and denying any tariff protection.. During this period, however, Southasia provided labour and business expertise to its Indian Ocean neighbours, and this continues today. Indian labour built the railways in Kenya, and harvested rubber in Malaysia. Indian capital was everywhere, operating beneath the British imperial umbrella. Indian financiers dominated trade and industry on the East African coast. Indian financial houses, often Gujaratis, backed Indian traders and moneylenders, often kin or at least community members, all around the edge of the western ocean. In 1873, an experienced British officer described all this: 'Hardly a loan can be negotiated, a mortgage effected, or a bill cashed without Indian agency.' He went on:

Everywhere, wherever there is any foreign trade, it passes through the hands of some Indian trader; no produce can be collected for the European, American or Indian market, but through him, no imports can be distributed to the natives of the country, but through his agency … it is difficult to convey to those at a distance an adequate idea of the extent or completeness of the monopoly.What did this mean for Southasia, and what did the Indian Ocean provide economically for Southasia? We have claimed that India played a diverse, but usually important, economic role around the shores of the ocean. What is interesting, however, is that while this was crucial for Indian Ocean littoral areas, these exports did not make up a major part of the total Indian economy. Southasia was and is very much an insular, internally driven economy. For instance, around the year 1600 in the province of Gujarat, revenue from taxes on sea trade was only about seven percent of the total revenue of the area, and yet Gujarat was probably more involved in maritime matters than any other area of India. Today, revenue from customs and import duties stands at 17 percent in India, 19 percent in Pakistan. (Data for other countries in the region is not available.) External trade is relatively unimportant, though growing fast, in India's total economy. Only 20 percent of its gross domestic product comes from external trade, which indicates the overwhelming impact of the very large internal market.

Economic data supports a finding that external trade, and indeed maritime matters generally, are of little significance for Southasia. The Indian Navy receives only a small part of the country's total defence budget, barely over 10 percent; the same goes for Pakistan, where expenditure on the navy runs at about 15 percent of the total defence outlay. In 1901, agriculture occupied about two-thirds of the population throughout the undivided Subcontinent, but even on the broadest definition maritime activities were the occupation of only about one percent. It is also important to bear in mind that Indian fishing is overwhelmingly close to shore, not out in the Ocean. Finally, the trade that goes on strictly within the Indian Ocean littorals is rather limited. In contrast with the close economic association of states of the Northern Atlantic, intra-Indian Ocean trade makes up less than a quarter of total trade of the countries around its rim.

If exports were a small part of the Southasian economy, what of imports from the Indian Ocean states? Again, the contribution from Indian Ocean states to the Subcontinental economy was and is very minor indeed. Centuries ago, the Southasian economy was nearly self-sufficient, requiring only some fine spices and bullion. For most of history, the region operated as a great sink for bullion from other places, as indeed the Romans complained 2000 years ago, and the British and Dutch 300 years ago. Some gold and silver came from within the Indian Ocean area, especially gold from Zimbabwe, but most from far afield, first Europe and later the Americas.

Fear it much

If we accept that the three major religions in Southasia at different historical times are Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, we can see quite varying attitudes to oceans and maritime matters. The Buddhist of history seems to have had no problem with travelling by sea, especially from Southasia to southeast Asia. There was also a reverse flow. East Asian Buddhists used to come to the holy places in Bihar by ship, as well as overland. In theory, Hindus face scriptural prohibitions against travel over the kala pani, the Black Water that the Laws of Manu forbade Hindus from crossing for fear of suffering serious caste 'pollution'. However, the Dharmashastras are far more flexible on this account, and these prohibitions are generally seen as precepts rather than strict rules. If nothing else, this is demonstrated by the ways in which Hindus have crossed the ocean since time immemorial, even if the sea does not play a major role in Hindu thought. Typically, then and now, coastal trade and fishing were done by folk low in the caste hierarchy.

All this needs to be qualified in two ways. First, we have copious documentation of Hindus (and Jains) living in many coastal locations around the shores of the western ocean, and even into the Red Sea. Second, closer examination seems to show that the real problem with sea travel was that correctly prepared food would not be available. We have accounts of Hindus travelling by sea suffering severely if their voyage was extended, as they had run out of ritually pure food and water, and could accept nothing from their fellow passengers. When Mohandas K Gandhi sailed to England in 1888, he ate only food given to him by his mother, which he carried along with him.

Islam, for its part, seems to carry a rather schizophrenic attitude towards sea travel. On the one hand, the Quran has positive things to say about the sea, and historically Muslims have travelled by sea from all over the Indian Ocean areas to fulfil the central obligation of the Haj. Yet, various aphorisms depict the sea as hostile and dangerous: A letter to the seventh-century Caliph Umar claimed that 'The sea is a boundless expanse, whereon great ships look tiny specks; nought but the heavens above and waters beneath; when calm, the sailor's heart is broken; when tempestuous, his senses reel. Trust it little, fear it much. Man at sea is an insect on a splinter, now engulfed, now scared to death.' When Umar conquered Egypt, his general told him that 'the sea was a huge beast which silly folk ride like worms on logs.' When Muslims ruled Southasia they generally took little interest in maritime affairs. One aphorism goes: 'Wars by sea are merchants' affairs, and of no concern to the prestige of kings.' This attitude made possible European control of much of Southasia's overseas trade from the arrival of the Portuguese in 1498.

Southasia played a major role in the dissemination of religions around the Indian Ocean. Yet here is where the ocean's eastern/western division is essential. If we look at East Africa and East Asia, Southasia had little role in the religious affairs of these regions. Instead, the great story is the spread of Islam, and this came from Arabia. Hindu and Jain traders were certainly present over long historical periods, even in the so-called Islamic heartland of the Red Sea; but while their economic role was central, they neither had, nor wanted to have, any major social or religious impact. When we turn to the eastern ocean, on the other hand, the picture is very different, for here Southasia provided important religious influences over a very long period. From at least the beginning of the Common Era, we have good evidence of the spread to Southeast Asia of Indian cultural and religious influences – first Buddhism and, from the fourth or fifth centuries, Brahminical Hinduism. From the first century, an increasing use of Indian Hindu and Buddhist religious ideas, monuments and icons, and Indian scripts and languages is evident.

The initiative lay in Southeast Asia. Local rulers there heard of South Indian ideas of kingship and ritual, and imported Brahmins to raise their status and legitimise them. They were thus not mere passive recipients of a higher culture. These connections continued for centuries, as Buddhist pilgrims not only from Southeast Asia but also East Asia visited holy sites in India, and studied in Sri Lanka. From the fifth and seventh centuries, we know of many Chinese pilgrims visiting Sri Lanka and India. In the former they went to the tooth relic in Kandy, and also studied important texts and worked with distinguished teachers. In India, where Buddhism was in decline, they went to places associated with the life of the Buddha, such as Bodh Gaya. In the early 11th century, the important Southeast Asian state of Srivijaya (in modern-day Sumatra) built a Buddhist shrine in Nagapattinam, the main port of the great Chola Tamil kingdom, for which the Chola ruler, a Hindu, allocated supporting revenue. These contacts from insular, Malay, Southeast Asia declined as Islam spread in the area soon after this, and new connections, now to Mecca, were created.

Areas of Southasia were converted to Islam from very early on; first parts of the western coast, later the Indus-Ganga heartland. In this, the main facilitators of conversion were from the Islamic heartland: Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq. However, when the Malay world began to be converted to Islam, it seems that little of the impetus came from this heartland. Instead, those who fostered Islam in Southeast Asia came mostly from Southasia, and thus often were themselves from recently converted communities. As in the spread of Buddhist ideas earlier, there was a close nexus between trade and religion: traders following first Buddhism, and later Islam, traded and spread their religions simultaneously. Broadly speaking, then, Southasia contributed to Southeast Asia's first Hindu and Buddhist notions, and later Islamic ones.

Other religio-cultural influences emanating from Southasia to the Indian Ocean region are various. One modern example is to be found in Bollywood movies – formulaic, but influenced by the Subcontinent's classical literature, especially the great epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. The recipe of dance and music routines, in conjunction with romance, adventure, violence and morality appeals not only to the Southasian diaspora but also to many in Africa, West and Southeast Asia. This is understandable in arguably 'Indianised' areas such as Burma and Indonesia; but such films also find a huge market in Kenya, Tanzania, Singapore, the Gulf states, Thailand and Indonesia.

Again, what of any reverse flow? What about cultural and religious movements from the ocean to Southasia? Here, once again, there is little to find. Hinduism, of course, was and is rigorously internal and India-based. Buddhism moved out from Southasia, but apart from a few pilgrims there was and is little flow back. Islam did come from outside, but not really from any Indian Ocean area; rather, it came from the Hijaz area, far from the Indian Ocean. As for movies, all the Indian Ocean rim countries have minuscule movie industries, and find it impossible to compete with Bollywood, as is the case with the film industry of the other Southasian countries.

Contested contribution

At the time of India's independence, the historian K M Panikkar wrote, 'In fact it may truly be said that India never lost her independence till she lost the command of the sea in the first decade of the sixteenth century.' Unfortunately, this view is not corroborated by history. India, or the Subcontinent generally, never had, nor wanted, 'command of the sea'. While other contributors to this issue of Himal will discuss India's recent increasing strategic role in the Indian Ocean, this has to be seen as historically unprecedented. If we again utilise the western/eastern division of the ocean, Southasia has played almost no role whatsoever in the political or military affairs of either East Africa or East Asia. One exception to this, though, might be the use of Indian troops during the colonial period in many campaigns. Essentially, Britain conquered much of the Subcontinent, and then used troops from there to expand over the outlying area and the neighbouring regions. Southasian troops were used in the Sudan, in the Swahili-speaking areas of East Africa, and Mesopotamia in the western ocean, and in Malaya in the east. As imperial mercenaries, however, these troops can hardly be described as a Southasian ´contribution'.

Another exception, perhaps, is the common belief that M K Gandhi played a role in the freedom struggle in South Africa. As is well known, Gandhi began his 'experiments with truth' in a racially divided South Africa, and the techniques he evolved there were successfully translated to Southasia. The point, however, is that his techniques had very little success in South Africa, largely due to a different colonial regime there as compared with India. One might as well say that this was a contribution in reverse – that is, one from an Indian Ocean area, albeit one in the extreme south, to India.

Nor has Southasia played a large political or military role in the countries around the eastern ocean. The naval expedition from the Chola state in South India, which attacked Srivijaya in Sumatra in 1025, is both an unusual and a mysterious event in Southeast Asia's history. It is unusual as it is the only large-scale, long-distance naval attack launched from the Subcontinent in recorded history and we have only one very fragmentary account of it. Srivijaya was unusual in the Indian Ocean in that it was, at least loosely, a 'thalassocracy' or ocean state that tried to direct and tax trade in Indonesia. The Cholas resented its interference in the important trade going from Fatimid Egypt to Song China via South India; hence, the attack. Yet most historians see this as aberrant and unusual. As in the western ocean, more recently Southasian troops were used to conquer and/or pacify parts of the eastern ocean, though this backfired during World War II, when Southasian troops changed sides and fought, albeit unsuccessfully, alongside the Japanese.

In sum, it might appear that Southasia has given many things to the Indian Ocean region and rimland. Yet when we analyse these flows a bit more rigorously, we find that this claim needs to be qualified. Politically and militarily there has been very little export of influence. When we look at religion, Hinduism has remained endogamous, apart from some upper-level ritual use in the Malay world. Buddhism has spread out of here, but has vanished in its original grounds on the Ganga plains and it remains a minor religion in Southasia taken as a whole. Islam certainly spread east from India, but then the central places of this religion are not in Southasia. To an extent Southasian 'soft power' has been important, of which popular entertainment, the intertwined music and movie industries, is almost certainly the best example. In spreading soft power, however, popular culture and an appreciation of broad cultural matters, the modern state of India could be doing far more in this regard, where it lags far behind, for instance, well-targeted Chinese efforts.

What of trade and economics? It is only here that we find a substantial Southasian contribution to the Indian Ocean rim countries. Though again, the reverse significance of this – that is, the role of external trade in Southasian economies – is minor. Nor has the Indian Ocean region contributed much to Southasia in economic terms. All of this, of course, is how the dynamics of history played out – what of the current attempts intertwining the countries of Southasia in the rest of the global neighbourhood? How much effect will the patterns of old have in the days to come? Southasia as a whole may not have the influence; but perhaps India and its ambitions will now overturn history.

~ Michael Pearson is an emeritus professor of history at the University of New South Wales and adjunct professor of humanities at the University of Technology, Sydney.