The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History

by Sanjeev Sanyal

As the Chalukyas expanded south, they came in conflict with the Cholas. With the Cholas distracted by wars on their northern borders, the Sinhalese began to claw back their island under the leadership of Vijayabahu.

one must realize that the Sri Lankans were part of an anti-Chola alliance led by another Tamil clan, the Pandyas. Indeed, Vijayabahu’s army had several Tamil mercenary units. Having pushed the Cholas out, the Sinhalese would help the Pandyas recover their kingdom on the mainland.

Nissanka Malla, an Odiya prince, who used the Sinhalese link to ancient Kalinga to claim descent from King Vijaya (recall the Kalingan prince who is said to have first settled the island in the sixth century BC). Given that his claim to the throne was always suspect, Nissanka converted to Buddhism and proclaimed that only a true Buddhist could be the king of Sri Lanka. Thus, it was an insecure Indian prince who cemented the link between Buddhism and the Sri Lankan throne!

How Buddhism started weilding power to Srilanka's throne

combination of a Malay prince ruling over a Tamil kingdom founded by an Odiya adventurer in the north of Sri Lanka!

Beginning of Tamil- Sinhalese faultline

Indian readers will recognize the parallels with the colonial-era ‘Aryan Invasion Theory’ about how Indian civilization was a gift from white-skinned invaders from the north.

It is amazing how many of these racist ideas have remained alive even after the end of the colonial era.

Fifty thousand of its defenders were put to the sword and some twenty million dirhams worth of gold, silver and gems were carried away.

To an Indian of those times, the Turkic raids would have seemed like yet another round of incursions like those of the Macedonians, Huns, Bactrians and Scythians of the past. The invaders had been either pushed out or absorbed, and had not posed a civilizational threat. If anything, there seems to have been a sense of complacency. So when Prithviraj Chauhan, ruler of Delhi, fended off a raid by Muhammad Ghori in 1191, he allowed the invader to return home to Afghanistan! Ghori returned the following year to defeat and kill Prithviraj.

The Turks were unbelievably cruel towards Hindus and even fellow Muslims, but they seem to have reserved their worst for the

Buddhists.

In 1235, the great city of Ujjain, a major Hindu religious and cultural centre in Madhya Pradesh, was destroyed by the Delhi Sultanate.

The region would be ruled by Chengiz Khan’s descendants for the next century and, despite the fact that Mongols were generally tolerant of different religions, for a while there was genuine concern that Islam would not recover from this shock.

the systematic destruction of temples did not just hurt intellectual and cultural life but also had a long-term paralysing impact on finance and risk-taking. As already discussed, temples acted as banks and their destruction meant that Indian merchant networks suddenly lost their financial muscle.

Minimal cultural but maximum financial impact

In other words, the Arabs and the Chinese recovered faster from the Turko-Mongol shock. In contrast, Indian Hindus imposed on themselves caste rules that discouraged the crossing of the seas. Why did a people with such a strong maritime tradition impose these restrictions on themselves? Was it a loss of civilizational self-confidence? I have long looked for a satisfactory answer but have not yet found one.

Perhaps the most vivid eyewitness account of the times has been left behind by two travellers—Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta.

Polo also mentions that Indians had a peculiar way of drinking water—they poured the water into their mouths without the lips touching the cup. This way of drinking water still survives in parts of southern India!

Marco Polo on how Indians drank fluids

Rudrama Devi ruled till around 1289, just a year before Marco Polo’s visit. Since she too had no sons, the throne was passed to her daughter’s son, Prataparudra.

This is how Sultan Alauddin Khilji obtained the Koh-i-Noor diamond. An attack by the Turks on the city of Madurai further south ended the ancient Tamil dynasty of the Pandyas in 1311.

He was afraid to return to Delhi as he did not know how the Sultan would react to the news of the failed embassy. So, he joined a Turkic warlord on his invasion of the Hindu kingdom of Goa.

One of the intriguing aspects of the medieval world is the success with which the Arabs blocked information about the Indian Ocean from reaching the Europeans.

Mandeville was an Englishman who left his country in 1322 and returned after thirty-four years claiming that he had been to China, India, Java and other places in the East. He then wrote a book of fantastical tales about one-eyed giants, women with dogs’ heads and two-headed geese.

The ships were also armed with cannons which were not widely known in the Indian Ocean.

Da Gama desperately needed a friendly harbour to replenish supplies and, most importantly, a pilot who could guide them across the ocean to India.

The crossing took less than a month and the fleet arrived at Calicut (Kozhikode, Kerala) on 14 May 1498.

This may explain why modern Indians love to blow their car horns; it is an assertion of their self-importance.

Car horn practice origin? Perhaps

The Arab merchants of Calicut were understandably unhappy to see their monopoly being broken. They even arranged to kidnap da Gama before he could return to his ship but the Samudrin intervened and had him freed.

Arab Monopoly to India route broken

After purchasing pepper, they lifted their anchors and headed home. Da Gama wanted to get home as soon as possible to tell his king about his discoveries.

Vasco da gama returns immediately

two-thirds of the crew had perished during the voyage, including Vasco da Gama’s brother.

Next they bombarded the city for two days and even forced the Samudrin to flee from his palace—a humiliation that the rulers of Calicut would never forget.

Portuguese invasion of India began with the request to evacuate Arabs

reputation for extreme cruelty. For example, when Vasco da Gama returned on a second voyage to Calicut, he refused to negotiate and simply bombarded the city for three days.

firing cannons.

Venice provided the Turks with inputs from their spies in Portugal and even put a team of gunners at the Sultan’s disposal. Clearly, economic interests trumped all other differences.

Despite these victories, the Portuguese were still operating like nomadic pirates and did not have a permanent establishment in the Indian Ocean yet. After another unsuccessful raid on Calicut, it was decided that Goa would be a good place to build a base.

Albuquerque would boast to King Manuel in a letter: Then I burned the city and put everyone to the sword and for four days your men shed blood continuously. No matter where we found them, we did not spare the life of a single Muslim; we filled the mosques with them and set them on fire.

One of the enclaves acquired by the Portuguese during the sixteenth century was Mumbai, then a collection of marshy islands.

Garcia’s secret name was Abraham. This is the real reason that Garcia da Orta was living quietly in Mumbai

things were tolerable till the arrival of Francis Xavier, a Jesuit missionary, in 1542. Xavier, later to be canonized as a saint, is known today in India for the numerous Jesuit schools and colleges named after him.

Egged on by the Jesuits, the Portuguese would destroy hundreds of temples. Thousands of Hindus would be killed or forcibly converted to Christianity. Many small children were forcibly taken away and baptized.

Mahalasa Narayani temple in the village of Verna, which was destroyed in 1567 and was rebuilt in 2000–05 (incidentally the site also has a large stone carving of a female figure that may date back to the Neolithic age).17

Their ancient rituals were condemned as heretical and they were forced to accept Latin rites;

Syrian christian practices too were not spared by Portuguese

vindictiveness of the Inquisition that Orta’s remains were dug out of his grave and burned, and the ashes thrown into the Mandovi River.19

The city had been established in 1336 by two brothers Hukka (also called Harihara) and Bukka in the aftermath of the Delhi Sultan’s raids

Many foreign visitors have left us eyewitness accounts of how the city looked in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Abdul Razzaq, an envoy from the Timurid ruler of Persia, wrote that the city had seven concentric walls that enclosed a vast area. The area between the first and third walls was semi-rural with cultivated fields and gardens. Between the third and the seventh were homes, grand temples, workshops and bustling bazaars.

Hampi

women ran the show within the palace complex including: women who wrestle, and others who are astrologers and soothsayers; and women who write all the accounts of expenses that occurred inside the gates, and others whose duty is to write all the affairs of the kingdom and compare their books with the writers outside; women also for music who play instruments and sing. Even the wives of the king are well versed in music.22

The sixteenth century had belonged to Spain and Portugal and, when their crowns merged, it would have seemed that the combined empire would be unassailable for a long time.

This brings us to one of the most important findings of history—never invest in real estate based on past performance.

The English East India Company had initially focused on South East Asia rather than on India.

Indian cotton would become so popular that wool producers would force the imposition of tariff and non-tariff barriers on their import. Thus, more than black pepper, textiles were the reason that the EIC decided to build permanent establishments on the Indian mainland.

Indian textiles and British EIC

as business grew, the EIC decided that it was necessary to build fortified settlements that could be defended against both Indian rulers as well as European rivals.

Given the unpredictable demands of the Mughal governor in Surat and raids by Maratha rebels led by Shivaji, the EIC’s agents soon preferred to operate out of Bombay. Thus, a more substantial fort was built on the main island—in the area still known as the Fort.