The Indian (Destiny in the) Ocean

In March, the Indian Navy took control of a bulk carrier – MV Ruen – that had been hijacked by Somali pirates in December. The operation to free the civilian vessel took place around 2,600 kilometers off the Indian coast. 

While this was a welcome move – more countries should be involved in anti-piracy operations – it was also a rare one. Over the past two decades, there have been few instances of the Indian Navy being engaged in such an operation, especially that far from its own territory – but that it seems to be gradually changing. 

One can expand this observation into a much more sweeping point: That over centuries and even millennia, Indian states, as such, very rarely engaged on the high seas.

This is rather startling given India’s geographical position – jutting out like a pier into the Indian Ocean. Of course, it may be pointed out that until 1947, India historically was never a single state. Thus, many Indian kingdoms of yore shouldn’t be singled out, as they didn’t even have access to the coast. But looking at the past from a bird’s eye view, even this point turns out to be irrelevant – those Indian kingdoms that did have access to the sea also very rarely possessed a navy capable of sailing very deeply or meaningfully out into the high seas.

To make a crude generalization: In the ancient era, the Greeks dominated sailing across the Arabian Sea (not the whole Indian Ocean) once they mastered the pattern of winds in the first century AD. In the Middle Ages, trade across the sea was mostly dominated by Arabs. The early modern era saw a shift to many contenders, but eventually it was the Europeans, particularly the British, that built a dominating position. That last nation held this dominance throughout the 19th century, only losing it in the 20th. 

It is baffling to think that with India being in the middle of all this happening – between China and Southeast Asia on one side, and Europe and Africa on the other – hardly any Indian kingdom emerged as a major power as a result of their involvement in the process. 

It is even more puzzling given that in the era of sailing ships, vessels needed to make stops on the coast: to resupply, to make repairs, and so on. India was thus not just an important destination for trade, but also a territory that offered a long coast for merchants bound farther abroad. For instance, during the early modern spice trade (in the 16th-18th centuries especially), South Asia was not only a source of pepper for European markets, but also a stopover territory for ships bringing other, more expensive spices (cloves, nutmeg, and mace) to Europe from the Banda islands (in what is now Indonesia). 

But these general conclusions turn out to be more complex when we look on the other side of the Indian Ocean – the trade across the Bay of Bengal and across the Strait of Malacca. The picture is complicated further when we factor in not only kingdoms with their navies but also merchants with private ships. Once we do this, we see greater Indian involvement.

First of all, for centuries, India had a massive influence on Southeast Asia that included religion, architecture, theater, languages and scripts, and a host of other aspects. While the historical reasons for how this influence began are still uncertain, it seems that trade between India and the region was one of the main engines of the process. 

There is also enough evidence to point out that it was the Indian merchant guilds that played a pivotal role here – especially those from eastern and southern India (areas that are now states such as Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu). It is also rather clear that the rulers of those regions did encourage and support merchants. 

And thus it would be unfair to declare that most of Indian monarchs weren’t interested in the seas. A more balanced summary would be that while many Indian rulers with access to the coast didn’t build high-seas navies, they were aware of the benefits of oceanic trade, and supported merchants in plying those seas. This conclusion also applies to the trade toward the west – into the Arabian Sea – although in that case the Indian merchants did not leave as great an impression as they did on Southeast Asia. 

For instance, in the early modern era, traders from Gujarat became a major economic force in the Arabian Sea. They would routinely sail to Middle Eastern and East African ports, and by the end of 17th century even began to reach Canton (today’s Guangzhou) and Manila, far east from their region. And yet again, this seemed to be mostly a private enterprise. 

Surat – the main port of operations for Gujarati merchants – was under the control of the Mughal empire for most of the early modern era. The Mughal empire, in turn, was one of the largest states of the word in that time (at least in the 17th century and early 18th century). And yet the Mughal emperors did not possess a high seas navy (not counting a multitude of littoral and riverine vessels they owned). It would seem the emperors were content with protecting the port of Surat (and of course with taxing its maritime trade), but not interested in extending this protection to the high seas. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Gujarati traders possessed over 100 seagoing ships, while their political overlords, the Mughal emperors, had… two.

As John F. Richards puts in his book, “The Mughal Empire”: “Mughal military power was land-based – not maritime. Unlike their contemporaries, the Ottoman Turks, the Timurid [Mughal] emperors never considered or pursued expansion by sea.” And thus, while European competition with another “gunpowder empire,” the Ottoman Turks, took place both on the sea and on land, in case of the British conquest of India, the European navies did not encounter any Mughal resistance on the Indian Ocean.

There is at least one equally startling exception to the above observations: the Chola empire of southern India. In the later half of the Middle Ages, the Cholas possessed a navy, and not only used it to attack nearby countries and regions (like Sri Lanka), but in the 11th century reached as far with their naval expeditions as the Malacca Strait. The Chola empire’s attacks were also apparently successful, resulting in capturing, if only briefly, the capital of the Srivijaya kingdom on the island of Sumatra. 

While the exact reasons for these military expeditions remain uncertain, it seems likely that they were connected with the Chola kings’ interest in maritime trade, given how much the Malacca Strait mattered for trade (and it matters even more now).

Is it possible that other Indian kingdoms possessed navies comparable to that of Cholas? Yes, although so far no evidence of this has been uncovered. Is it possible that the Cholas involved themselves on the high seas even more than we currently recognize? Certainly.

But the main point is this: From the Chola era until the 21st century, no Indian state navy – not a private flotilla of merchant ships, but a proper navy – is known to have been involved in military operations distant from South Asia. It is only the Indian Navy operations against Somali pirates over the last two decades that have changed this trend. These, however, have still been small-scale operations and brief events.

If in the future New Delhi does take up the task of securing maritime trade in the Indian Ocean even more seriously, and builds its navy to become a force that may engage deeper on the high seas, India will finally fulfill the oceanic destiny that always has eluded it.