A Short Summary Of India's Martitime Heritage

This was originally written as the foreword of my book on the dockyard, and was later changed. However it remains a fair summary of India's maritime past. For those who are interested . ..  .

India’s maritime history predates the birth of Western civilisation. The world's first tidal dock is believed to have been built at Lothal around 2300 BC during the Harappan civilisation, near the present day Mangrol harbour on the Gujarat coast. Modern oceanographers have observed that the Harappans must have possessed great knowledge of tides in order to build such a dock on the ever-shifting course of the Sabarmati, as well as exemplary knowledge of hydrography and maritime engineering. The earliest known reference to an organization devoted to ships in ancient India is to the Mauryan Empire from the 4th century BC. It is believed that navigation as a science originated on the river Indus some 5000 years ago. The very word, "navigation," comes from the Sanskrit navagati, meaning "to travel by boat." According to Sardar KM Panikkar, the well know historian and India’s first ambassador to China, Hindus in the Indus Valley Civilisation used the magnetic compass (matsya yantra), and ventured far into the distant reaches of the Indian Ocean.

A fourteenth century description of an Indian ship credits it with a carrying capacity of over 700 people giving a fair idea of both ship building skills and maritime ability of seamen who could successfully man such large vessels. Another account of the early fifteenth century describes Indian ships as being built in compartments so that even if one part was shattered, the next remained intact, thus enabling the ship to complete her voyage. This was perhaps a forerunner of the modern day subdivision of ships into watertight compartments, a concept then totally alien to Europeans.  

            Through the 5^th to the 13^th centuries, Indian mariners from a series of dynasties, Maurya, Andhra, Pallava, Pandava, Chalukya and Chola, established close links with a number of foreign nations like Java, Sumatra, Siam and Cambodia. The kingdom of Vijayanagar had as many as 300 ports, while the Vijayanagar Emperor Dev Raya II, even assumed the title, “Lord of the Eastern, Western and Southern Oceans”. Sea trade flourished during the Hindu Period which ended around the fifteenth century after the fall of Vijayanagar. The presence of large number of merchant ships had attracted a number of pirates in the Arabian Sea and to ensure that their trade was not hampered, a number of Indian states maintained strong navies.

Indian sea power began to decline in the 13^th century when the Hindu Kingdoms of the south went into decline due to their own internal rivalries. Another factor in the decline of Indian sea power was emergence of the caste system which forbade high caste Hindus from venturing out to sea. Delhi came to be ruled by the Central Asian Dynasties, for whom sea power was an alien concept. At sea, there was a mad scramble for monopoly of the sea trade, which was eventually taken over by the Arabs, keeping India’s traditional trading partners out of the scene. On land, Muslim invaders from the north-west effectively cut off trade with Central Asia. The result was that India became isolated, with only the Arabs providing contact with the outside world. Meanwhile, the west had made significant scientific and technological advances which enabled them to navigate far beyond their shores and were therefore seeking to turn their scientific achievements into profits through trade. Till then, trade with India had been conducted only via the overland route, dominated by the Venetians, and it was only a question of time before the sea route to India from Europe was discovered.

The Portuguese had navigated as far as the Cape of Good Hope and it was a Portuguese merchant-sailor, Vasco da Gama who discovered the sea route to India. There was a brief resurgence of Indian maritime power in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, with the Zamorin’s admiral Kunjali Marakkar putting up a stout defence and even warding off the Portuguese for a while, followed by the Maratha Navy under Kanhoji Angre and the Siddis of Janjira. Success at sea was on account of quality ships being made by a well developed shipbuilding industry. However, it was the endless squabbles of the numerous states that did India in. Thereafter it was left to the Portuguese to demonstrate the ease with which Indian coastal states could be subjugated, by using a well trained navy capable of sailing long distances, armed with guns and cannon.

British travelers who visited Surat, saw for the first time, ships of a tonnage and size under construction, that they had never before seen in Europe’s yards. Although they came ostensibly for trade, most western powers had formed public-private partnerships, where joint-stockholding companies were floated. These companies were allowed a measure of free hand where it came to maximizing their profits, given the internecine struggles of countless local rajas, including the use of force. Eventually, the British managed to oust the Portuguese, the French and the Dutch from the main stage in the Arabian Sea. It is no accident that the rise of the British coincided with the ascendancy of their navy, and the simultaneous decline of the other European powers along with their maritime capabilities. The British also realized as had the Portuguese, nearly a half century earlier, that the key to sustaining their maritime dominance and thereby their grip over India, was a well established and professional dockyard, capable of maintaining and building ships. A dockyard was therefore a strategic asset, to be carefully maintained and developed with the latest technology available.

That the Dockyard proved its worth several times over is a recorded fact, obvious to any reader of history in the subcontinent. The Yard had a role to play in almost all wars fought in Asia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for that was when Britain was consolidating her colonies using the might of the Royal Navy. The British also realized, in later years, the folly of ignoring the Yard’s development, as happened at the outbreak of both world wars. The British reigned supreme in the Indian Ocean for well over a century, till 1941 when they had to contend with the Japanese. Fortunately for India, the British left a few years later.

The Yard’s modernization and expansion began only after Independence and being a long process, it continued in stages till the seventies. Since then, realizing that the nation faces multi-directional threats, additional dockyards have been created. Despite the additional infrastructure created from time to time, the dockyard continuously faces the challenge of technology as newer ships are added with state of art weapons, sensors, communications, missile and electronic warfare packages and propulsion systems. New roles for the Indian Navy are defined at an increasing frequency, with terrorism raising its ugly head and taking on new forms.

The coastline has changed vastly over the years, however the Arabian Sea continues to wash the rocks at the entrance to Mumbai harbour, as it has done for generations. While it is for the Indian Navy to ensure that the lessons of the past are not forgotten, at the very core of India’s maritime aspirations lies the Naval Dockyard at Mumbai, the history of which remains intertwined with the city of its birth.

Book Review

Obama’s Wars

By Kris Tee

Obama’s Wars

By Bob Woodward

Simon & Schuster

Price: US $ 20

Pages: 441

President Obama had the unenviable distinction of inheriting a war in which their main ally in the region, Pakistan, was in fact a dishonest partner. The Americans on their part had little choice but to go along with Pakistan, playing the role of a nanny escorting a peevish child, lest the fragile fabric of Pakistan’s uneasy stability give way completely.

          While one of Obama’s campaign promises had been that he would get the ‘boys’ back, he could not simply order them home, abandoning the sacrifice of so many American lives and giving up the proactive pursuit of the war on terror. At the same time, he had to prevent the situation from descending into another Vietnam. This meant that the aims of the war had to be very carefully scripted and translated into actionable and achievable goals for the military. On the one hand while the military was pushing for a troop increase, the general public wanted the boys to return home.

          This book describes the tightrope path negotiated by the US President in managing the various wars, both physical and virtual. The book has been written as an eyewitness account of the goings-on and deliberations during meetings, briefings and informal conversations. The pace tends to get rather slow and the author tends to pre-suppose knowledge of the US national security apparatus in the reader. Further, given the number of characters, the reader is forced to flip pages to ascertain who’s who. The book could have been made more interesting and perhaps shorter, had the author maintained a narrative form. The book provides insight into the functioning of the American security establishment and brings out many unusual aspects of the relationship between the President, in his role as Commander-in-Chief and military commanders. Post reading, a student of strategic and military affairs could use it as a useful reference book.

The Disappearing Home

The Disappearing Home

Like many of my generation, I grew up in bungalows set on plots that had a reasonable amount of space around the house for a modest lawn, backyard, a room for the servants and possibly a garage. This was more or less the norm followed when our fathers decided to commit their life’s savings to building a house in which to settle down after retirement in much the same way as their fathers had done before them. It was always “building a house” then.

When we left home and started our work lives, those of us who were lucky enough to work in the same city where we grew up, continued to live in the same house that our Dads built. Being independent houses, it was easy to expand them, adding bedrooms to accommodate the growing family. Even if there were no children staying there, it was common for the offspring to add a floor upwards in due course, where a tenant could be installed, with the rent adequately supplementing father’s pension.

The house was where children got married and returned to during holidays, and where grandchildren could run free under the fond eyes of grandparents. There was always room for guests, with everyone cheerfully mucking in. Bathrooms were readily shared and the drawing room was a place where the centre table would be cleared to spread mattresses for children or extra guests to sleep upon.

Having joined the Services I was fortunate to have lived in accommodation that guaranteed me the same space as had been provided to my father, although in my case it was flats as opposed to the bungalows allotted to my father when he was in service. However there was plenty of space available for all my trunks, boxes, furniture and various collectibles accumulated on account of the nomadic life I had chosen.

A few years ago my wife and I began scouting for flats in our maximum city where I was posted. We visited various projects and inspected dozens of sample flats and debated endlessly on the pros and cons of different localities. The plushness and quality of internal fittings was way beyond all that I had become used to after a lifetime spent living in government quarters. One thing became clear very soon, that we would not be able to afford anything more than a cubby hole in this city and that we would have to look elsewhere either in the far flung suburbs or in neighbouring cities for anything that resembled what we were used to.

I remember visiting a sample flat where the bedrooms were so tiny that it appeared unlikely that they could accommodate two full sized beds. The builder informed us that concepts like three foot wide single beds were about as current as dinosaurs and that double beds did not exceed five feet in width. While I was reflecting on how one would accommodate guests, the builder as if reading my thoughts unveiled his piece de resistance, a service flat in the building where one could accommodate visiting house guests and even a common servants toilet! I wondered if I needed to give my relatives a time table to visit depending upon availability of the service flat. But that was six years ago.

Today with bungalows in the major cities becoming unaffordable for most but the very rich and flats becoming even more compact, we are witnessing the phenomenon of the disappearing home.  Apart from the fact that rooms sizes being what they are in the modern flats being offered, where it is no longer possible to accommodate a mattress for an extra person to sleep on, the drawing room where one could earlier easily make space for two or three people to sleep, has also become impossibly small. Besides, the main door in most flats opens directly into the drawing room and it would be unseemly to open the main door early morning for the newspaper or milk and allow curious strangers the view of sleeping guests.

The puja room has disappeared, having been replaced by a mandir in the complex for those lucky enough, while in other cases the family deity has been relegated to a small alcove built into the wall of a passage. While once the balcony was a place to set a couple of chairs and enjoy a hot cup of tea with the newspaper, today the balcony is either occupied by the washing or has been covered and enclosed to create some extra space in the drawing room. In fact the ‘H’ in BHK which stands for ‘Hall’ is a complete misnomer. The daily washing has infact been ejected from the dwelling, strung up on lines outside windows. So now you can’t use that ‘lakeeron wala kachha’, it has to be a designer label. After all what would the neighbours think? It gives the phrase ‘washing your dirty linen in public’ a whole new meaning.

Six years ago, the tiny toilets required me to walk all the way in before I could shut the door, today’s builders have eliminated the door altogether, making the bathroom cum toilet an integral part of the bedroom. The logic touted is that doors take up too much space and besides since the bathrooms are lavishly done up with ornate fittings, one would like to show them off. Yeah right, and what happens when you are having a nice conversation with friends or family in the bedroom and someone decides he or she wants to go?

Built in cupboards have shrunk to a size where they will not accommodate more than half a dozen clothes on hangars and a few clothes and linen on shelves. So where do you put your woolens and other clothes that you don’t use regularly? Where do you store old newspapers, magazines and children’s’ school books before you can dispose them off to the kabariwala. As such where do you put your collection of books and mementoes? Even shoes are stored outside the house. The society understands perfectly if you have placed a shoe cupboard outside the main door. We are Indians you see, we like to keep our houses clean and pure. As for the outside . . .

With the drawing cum dining room having shrunk to a size where four people are a crowd, kitchens have also reduced in size and you cannot work there without bumping into the maid. Ah yes, needless encumberances like kitchen doors went out long ago. The problem of cooking for guests has been solved by ordering from the friendly neighbourhood take away. In any case it is far easier to entertain at a good restaurant nearby, since that eliminates the problem of clearing and cleaning up afterwards.

Builders are especially considerate to the needs of children and have provided play areas populated by Disney characters. Some builders are particularly sensitive and have even provided study areas for children, so that they don’t disturb their parents at home.

What it finally boils down to is that the modern flat is not so much a home as merely a place to sleep. All other functions are being performed outdoors and in other locations. The home has begun to disappear.