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

by Sanjeev Sanyal

Few people realize that the university was partly funded by the Sri Vijaya kings of Sumatra.

We can gauge this from how the Dutch considered it a victory when they forced the English in 1667 to hand over the tiny nutmeg-growing island of Run in the East Indies, now Indonesia, in exchange for a much larger island in North America’s eastern seaboard. That island was Manhattan.

Marthanda Varma of Travancore who decisively defeated the Dutch and ended their dreams of colonizing India.

One comes across characters like Nathaniel Courthope of the English East India Company who heroically held out against the Dutch, under impossible circumstances, at his post on the remote Indonesian island of Run.

In other words, history is not a predetermined path but the outcome of complex interactions that, at every point in time, can lead down many paths.

As Mark Twain is said to have remarked, ‘History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.’10

Khoi-San people of south-western Africa are the oldest surviving human population as they have the greatest genetic variation.6

Till as recently as the 1960s, the Indian rupee was used as legal tender in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE!

Archaeological finds over the last two decades suggest instead that India was the likeliest place where iron was first mass produced.

Thus, one of the unintended consequences of early Iron Age migrations seems to be that the world has come to celebrate the birthday of an ancient god from Haryana!

They also introduced their script which was originally written left-to-right and right-to-left on alternate lines; not such a silly idea if you think about it. The Sabean script would evolve into the Ge’ez script of the kingdom of Aksum and survives as the modern Ethiopian script (although it is now written exclusively left-to-right).

The speakers of AA languages were the other important ethnic group of South East Asia. They include the Vietnamese, Khmer (i.e. Cambodian) and the Mon in Myanmar and Thailand. Unlike their Malay and Polynesian cousins, however, this group seems to have preferred to migrate over the land rather than over sea. At some point, small groups of AAs drifted into north-east India. The descendants of these migrations are the Munda-speaking tribes, such as the Santhals, who are scattered all over eastern and central India. A somewhat later wave survives today as the Khasis of the state of Meghalaya. Thus it came to be that India’s population mix includes people who speak languages related to Vietnamese and Khmer!

A Jain devotee was found in Pataliputra drawing a picture showing Buddha bowing to a Jain tirthankara. Ashoka ordered him and his family to be locked inside their home and for the building to be set alight. He then ordered that he would pay a gold coin in exchange for every decapitated head of a Jain. The carnage only ended when someone mistakenly killed his only surviving brother, the Buddhist monk Vitashoka (also called Tissa). The story suggests frightening parallels with modern-day fundamentalists who kill cartoonists whom they accuse of insulting their religion.

Kassapa then decided to build a new capital for himself at Sigiriya. It is a site dominated by a gigantic rock. The new capital was laid out at the foot of the rock while the palace was built on the top. I strongly recommend visitors take the trouble to climb the rock; a moderately fit person will take about an hour and a quarter to make the round trip. The top is like a miniature Machu Picchu and provides amazing views of the surrounding countryside.

Muhammad bin Qasim directed a constant bombardment against the fort using catapults. Eventually the fort was stormed and all the defenders massacred. As a pilgrimage town, Deval also had a large Brahmin population. Ferishta tells us that every Brahmin male above the age of seventeen was decapitated and all their women and children were enslaved.18

Although surrounded and severely wounded, Raja Dahir fought till he was killed on the battlefield. The Sindhis now withdrew to the fort of Ajdur under the command of their queen where they remained under siege for several months. Facing starvation, they eventually decided to commit ‘jauhar’—the Hindu equivalent of the last stand. The gates were thrown open and the queen led the survivors out for a final charge and they were all massacred. Many of the remaining non-combatants committed suicide. In this way, the Arabs conquered Sindh.

According to Ferishta, Muhammad bin Qasim captured two of Dahir’s daughters and sent them to the caliph as a gift. They were added to the imperial harem; but when the caliph called the elder princess to his bed, she told him that she was no longer a virgin as Muhammad bin Qasim had already raped her. The caliph flew into a rage at this insult and had the general executed by having him sewn up in animal hide. When his corpse was presented to her, the brave princess confessed that she had lied in order to have her revenge. The veracity of this extraordinary tale of revenge is difficult to ascertain. Arab sources independently confirm that Muhammad bin Qasim was executed soon after his conquest of Sindh but they do not mention the princesses.

Despite the relative ease with which they had taken over Sindh, the Arabs found it difficult to expand beyond their foothold in the subcontinent. The Gurjara–Pratihara empire ruled over much of north India at that time and its armies easily fended off the Arabs. Indian inscriptions also record that the Arabs attempted to push into the Deccan through Gujarat and were repulsed by the Chalukya king Vikramaditya II. Indeed, Hindu ...

With eastward expansion blocked off, the Arabs turned their attention north towards Central Asia. The Turkic people of the region mostly worshipped the sky god Tengri or were Buddhist. There were also Hindu and Zoroastrian influences. In the middle of the eighth century, they found themselves caught between two great powers. The Chinese Tang dynasty was pushing in from the east while the Abbasid caliphate was pushing in from its base in Iran. The two faced each other at the Battle of Talas in AD 751 in whic...

When the Arabs conquered Persia in the seventh century, the majority of Iranians were Zoroastrian. After the conquest, however, more and more people converted to Islam. Faced with growing persecution, some of the remaining Zoroastrians fled to India where their descendants survive as the tiny Parsi community. The history of how this community settled in India is recounted in the Qissa-i-Sanjan, a text composed around 1600.

Even as Arabs, Parsis and Jews were settling in India, at least one group of Indians migrated to the Middle East. It has long been suspected on cultural and linguistic grounds that the Roma (Gypsies) of Europe were of Indian origin. Genetic studies have confirmed that they are the descendants of medieval migrants from north-western India.20

India was the first to get a taste of what was to follow. Turkic invaders from Central Asia pushed out the Hindu Shahi rulers of Kabul and then began to make raids into India. Led by Mahmud of Ghazni, the Turks made as many as seventeen raids between AD 1000 and 1025 and destroyed and pillaged many of the prosperous cities and temple towns of north-western India. Perhaps the most infamous of these was an attack on the revered temple of Somnath in Gujarat. Fifty thousand of its defenders were put to the sword and some twenty million dirhams worth of gold, silver and gems were carried away. Somnath would be destroyed and rebuilt many times, but Mahmud’s attack is still remembered most vividly. The temple that stands on the spot today was built in the 1950s. Its symbolic importance can be gauged from the fact that it was one of the first projects initiated by the Indian Republic.

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. This led to the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate and opened up the rest of India to conquest. Over the next two centuries, the Turks would lay waste ancient cities, temples and universities in one of the most bloody episodes in human history. It is difficult to estimate exact numbers, but millions would have perished.

The Turks raped and looted their way through the mountains of Darjeeling and Sikkim before entering Tibet.

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

The founder of Melaka was a prince called Parmeswara who claimed descent from the Sri Vijaya. He initially attempted to set up his base in Singapore but later decided to shift further north due to local rivalries and the continued fear of Javan attacks. The Chinese would provide him with systematic support from the very outset and we know that Parmeswara made at least one trip to China in order to personally pay obeisance to the Ming emperor. Interestingly, Melaka was now encouraged to convert to Islam. Although Zheng He and many of his captains were Muslim, this should be seen mainly as a geostrategic move to create a permanent opposition to those troublesome Hindus of Java. It was probably also intended to create a permanent schism within Indic civilization and prevent a future anti-Chinese geopolitical alliance. Whatever the original motivations, Melaka prospered under Chinese protection while the Majapahit were steadily pushed back. This is the origin of the steady Islamization of South East Asia.

In March 1521, after sailing around South America and enduring many hardships, Magellan’s fleet managed to reach the Philippines. When the Spanish landed on the island of Cebu, the area was ruled by a Hindu dynasty of possibly Tamil origin. Magellan signed a treaty with Raja Humabon and converted him to Catholicism. This is the basis on which the Spanish would later claim the islands. One of Humabon’s vassal chiefs Lapulapu, however, refused and the Spanish were obliged to demonstrate their military superiority. It is not known why Magellan decided to storm Lapulapu’s island personally but it is possible that he was trying to live up to Serrao’s exploits. In any event, he was surrounded and killed on the beach.

This is how Elihu Yale, the Governor of Madras, amassed a large personal fortune before being removed from his post on suspicions of corruption. Part of this ill-gotten wealth was used to fund the university that bears his name. Thus, one of North America’s leading universities is built on money garnered through dodgy deals in the Indian Ocean.

France took over large swathes of north and west Africa.

Germany had only become a united country in 1870 but it lost no time in claiming territories that we now know as Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Namibia, Togo and Cameroon.

When the Omani Sultan of Zanzibar objected to the land grab in East Africa, Otto von Bismarck sent in his warships.26 The Sultan had probably hoped that his British allies would help, but the British turned a blind eye and carried out their own land grab in what is now Kenya. A few years later, they placed thei...

Even tiny Belgium got into the act and occupied a large swathe of central Africa, what is now the ...

Ethiopia would be the only African country to successfully defend itself against the colonial onslaught.

Given their long history of defending their country against both the Arabs and the Europeans, often at great cost, the Ethiopians can be justly proud of their record of preserving their independence.

The Haider Pasha cemetery in Istanbul contains the graves and ashes of a few of these soldiers. One of the memorial stones reads: ‘The following Hindu soldier of the Indian Army is honored here: Lance Naik Dhan Bahadur Limbu, 6th Gurkha Rifles.’

When you are wandering around in the Maratha hills you chance upon a war memorial in some tiny hamlet; and it is moving to read that, say, eleven men went from that village to serve in Irak. Many of these village lads were at Kut. Very few men, once taken prisoner, returned or were heard of again. The clean fighting Turk saw to that.7

Countless Hollywood films have led us to believe that the attack on Pearl Harbour marks Japan’s entry into the Second World War. In reality, the very first shots were fired at 10.20 p.m. on 7 December 1941 on the beaches of Kota Bharu on the north-eastern corner of the Malay peninsula.13 Given the differences in time zones, this took place a little before the first bombs fell on Pearl Harbour. Despite resistance from Indian troops in the area, the Japanese were soon storming the beaches and landing men and equipment. By 4.30 a.m., Japanese bombers were making raids on Singapore.

Amidst the chaos, a daredevil pilot from Odisha called Biju Patnaik flew secret missions into Java and rescued two key Indonesian rebel leaders from being captured (he would later go on to become the chief minister of Odisha).25 Prime Minister Nehru, meanwhile, organized the Asian Conference in New Delhi that pressured the UN Security Council to take action against the Dutch. It is remarkable that the first foreign policy action taken by newly independent India was to support Indonesia’s freedom movement. It was as if an ancient civilizational kinship had been suddenly rekindled. It was also appropriate that someone from Kalinga had played an important role in the sequence of events. It is said that Sukarno named his daughter Megawati, meaning ‘Goddess of the Clouds’ in Sanskrit, in honour of Biju Patnaik’s heroics in the sky.

Time devours the greatest of men and the mightiest of empires.