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

by Sanjeev Sanyal

For all the many twists and turns, there are several continuities in the long history of the Indian Ocean ranging from the constant migration of people to the stories people have been telling each other over hundreds of years. One such continuity is the presence of Indian soldiers and mercenaries serving in faraway lands since ancient times. The global importance of Indian soldiering is not widely explored by historians perhaps because Indian empires, with a few exceptions, have rarely carried out military operations outside the subcontinent. In contrast, Indian soldiers and mercenaries have often fought wars from Europe to China. Once one begins to notice them, they seem to pop up everywhere in the historical record. In ancient times, one finds them fighting for the Persians against the Greeks and a little later, driving war elephants for the Macedonian general Seleucus against his rivals in the Middle East. During the medieval period, one finds Indian mercenaries fighting for Sinhalese rulers in Sri Lanka, dying for the Shiite cause in Karbala and protecting commercial interests of Tamil corporatized guilds in South East Asia. Later still they would serve the British in the Opium Wars in China, the Boer Wars in South Africa and across the globe during the World Wars.