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THE INDIAN OCEAN: THE HISTORY, ECOLOGY AND MAKING OF A COMMUNITY
Himanshu Prabha Ray, Rohan D’Souza and Gulshan Dietl
It is not often that seas and oceans, and the people traversing them for a variety of reasons form the focus of discussion. Post-colonial studies have, however, emphasised the central role that India played in its interaction with countries to its east and west. There is similarly an increasing interest in the contribution of shipping and maritime groups to the creation of trans-regional communities and cultures not just in the past, but also as these survive and adapt to the present. Are these communities in the danger of becoming obsolete in the new global world order? More significantly, is their habitat becoming increasingly polluted and a health hazard? Is the history of this Indian Ocean community to be located in studies of the new nation states or is there a need to sensitise academic disciplines to take into account mobility and cross-cultural movements? How does one define an Indian Ocean community with increasing concerns of security and terrorism?
History
The Indian Ocean has been a somewhat late entrant in the study of maritime history, and even at present it is national histories that are emphasised upon in the teaching and study of history, rather than issues of cultural transformation within a wider Indian Ocean sphere. The teaching of Indian history also does not take into account the movements of maritime communities and cultures across the Indian Ocean littoral and the formation of their distinctive identities. It is time to redress the situation and to incorporate more broad-based issues in the teaching of history and culture of the Indian Ocean. This is essential if we are to build on the enduring relationship that marked the interaction between Asian countries and the Indian subcontinent in the pre-colonial period.
In this essay, I shall focus on two issues that I consider of primary importance. The first is the diversity amongst the communities who traversed the Indian Ocean and who had stakes in the maritime world. These communities were sustained by a number of occupations associated with the sea—fishing and harvesting other marine resources, sailing, trading, shipbuilding and piracy. These communities, as I argue in my own research (Ray 2003), cut across political boundaries and created several overlapping networks of communication, but are seldom represented in the textual sources that historians use for the writing of history.
The second objective is to highlight the distinctive nature of the Indian Ocean world when compared to contemporary developments in Europe and the Mediterranean. This uniqueness is not to suggest isolation from Europe or the Mediterranean world, but it does get undermined when history is studied within methodological frameworks based on the European experience.
Early interest in the history of the Indian Ocean dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries onwards, and relates generally to the study of European trade and trading activity in the region. The economic and political dominance of the rest of the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by Europe provided the basis for an intense preoccupation with Europe as the driving force in modern world history. This position was countered by several Indian historians including Radha Kumud Mookerji in his study titled Indian Shipping: A History of the Sea-borne Trade and Maritime Activity of the Indians from the Earliest Times (Mookerji 1912). Writing in the 1970s, Ashin Das Gupta (1979) highlighted the role of the Indian maritime merchant who invested a substantial portion of his capital in shipping and traded across the Indian Ocean in the eighteenth century. Since then there have been a large number of historical studies on the Indian Ocean, but the focus has by and large remained on trade and trading activity though there have been some exceptions to this.
M. N. Pearson’s study titled Pious Passengers: The Hajj in Earlier Times (1994) was a pioneering attempt to draw attention to the role of religious travel in the Indian Ocean world. It is now evident that major religions of the world such as Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism and Jainism travelled across the sea-lanes, but this expansion continues to be one of the most under-researched and neglected themes. Islam has fared somewhat better with historians evincing interest not only in the expansion of the religious networks, but also in anthropological studies based on adaptation in parts of South and Southeast Asia. This is a theme that interests me greatly, but I will not be able to expand on it here. Instead, I will briefly talk about the distinctive nature of watercraft in the Indian Ocean. Until recently, the building of country-craft or the dhow—as the British termed the water-vessels of the Indian Ocean in the eighteenth century—involved trade and transportation of wood for planking, and coconut-coir for stitching from different regions of the Indian Ocean, thereby creating and sustaining networks of interaction (Ray 2007).
In antiquity, boats in the Indian Ocean were marked by a diversity as complex as at present though it was the stitched, or sewn tradition that was distinctive and has, hence, merited detailed descriptions in accounts of travellers to the region. These sewn boats were undoubtedly the cargo carriers of antiquity, and though they shared some common elements, there were several regional variations. A common feature of the sewn boats of the Indian Ocean was the use of the coir-rope for stitching (Chittick 1980). As coconut palm plantations were restricted to certain parts of the Indian Ocean littoral, coir-rope would have been one of the commodities in demand along the boat building settlements of the coast. Perhaps the earliest reference to the import of timber dates to the fourth century BC. The Greek author Theophrastus writes that in the island of Tylos (i.e., Bahrain) off the Arabian coast, they say that there is a kind of wood with which they build their ships, and that in sea water this is almost proof against decay (History of Plants, Book V, Chapter 4). As there is no such durable wood in the Persian Gulf, this in all certainty refers to the import of teak from the Indian subcontinent. Somewhat later in the first century, the Periplus Maris Erythraei (section 36) again mentions the import of rafters and beams into Oman, a fact repeated in the medieval period by Ibn-Jubayr (p. 71).
These cargo carriers travelled to the distant centres of the Indian Ocean depending on the remunerative freights offered and returned to their homeports for overhauling during the south-west monsoon. The patemara was the traditional cargo carrier of Karnataka and a large part of the west coast. It had a thatched cabin in the aft part and a cooking galley was provided for underneath the deck. The capacity of these vessels ranged from 30 to 300 tons, and they used from one to five sails depending on the size of the craft. These cargo carriers formed the foundation of trading ventures in the Indian Ocean.
Perhaps the single-most significant point of disjunction in this tradition was the introduction of steamship navigation in the nineteenth century. Historical evidence indicates that, as a result, the indigenous system underwent radical changes. Seafaring activity shifted from being ‘fair weather’ to ‘all weather’. Instead of the traditional communities, liner companies now dominated maritime trade. These transformations in boat building paralleled expanding cartographic knowledge of the Indian Ocean and its representation in maps and navigational charts.
The geography of Claudius Ptolemaeus (AD 87–150) no doubt played an influential role in subsequent developments of the discipline even though his maps of India erred on several counts, one of these being an inaccurate depiction of the courses of rivers. The Ganga, for example, was shown flowing south and discharging into the Arabian Sea instead of the east. In the medieval period, the works of Claudius Ptolemy and other Greek astronomers and philosophers were translated into Arabic either directly or through the medium of Syriac and Pahlavi. The world map of Idrisi (1099–1164) was made in 1154. It is based largely on Ptolemy, whose work was unknown in the West at that time, and is complemented by road maps and reports of Arab travellers and geographers. As in the Ptolemaic model, there is a land connection between East Asia and Africa and the Indian Ocean in this map appears as an inland sea.
The earliest surviving map of the Indian Ocean was made in 1477 based on information provided in the writings of Ptolemy and inputs from subsequent voyages to the region. The map, however, has grave errors; for example, the Indian Ocean appears as an inland sea, and the Indian subcontinent is drawn far too small. In general, the map gives names of a few places and is surrounded on all sides by twelve heads representing the winds.
In 1535, Martin Waldseemuller and Laurent Fries appended 20 Tabulae Modernae based on the latest Portuguese reports to an edition of Ptolemy published in 1513. In comparison with older maps published before Vasco da Gama landed in India, the coastline of South and Southeast Asia had been greatly improved. The illustrations added later are of ethnographic interest. The picture of a woman on a funeral pyre is a reference to the custom of sati. According to the inscription on the map, King Narsunga, the most powerful ruler in India, had 200 wives, all of whom were burned alive after his death. The pygmies who live in the Himalayas and who, according to legend, are constantly at war with the cranes, are illustrated too. Also of interest is the reference to the existence of diamonds, emeralds and other precious stones.
References to local navigation charts occur in European sources such as by Marco Polo and by the Portuguese. According to Barros’ writing in the 1540s, Vasco da Gama was shown charts of the coast of India at Malindi before he set out to cross the Arabian Sea for the first time. Indigenous charts were based on the use of stellar altitudes, which allowed measurement of latitude. The idea of a grid of latitude and longitude lines does not appear on any surviving terrestrial map until the middle of the fourteenth century. Surviving examples of nautical charts come from Gujarat and date from 1644 onwards. These relate to the areas as distant as Sri Lanka, South India and the Red Sea.
A navigational pothi in Kutchi language and Gujarati script, dated 1644, which is now in the National Museum, comprises 35 folios including five pages of cartographic representations of the Malabar coast from Kayankulam to Kanyakumari. The linear distances on these maps were not proportional to the actual distances represented on the earth’s surface. Instead, the measure used was a zam, or a unit of time-distance that corresponded to the distance that could be covered on an average during a three-hour watch. Sailors were dependent on reaching visible landmarks depicted on the maps. But one of the problems that arose from it was that these types of maps combined details of landmarks that would be visible mainly during the day with stellar bearings, which would largely be useful at night.
The traditional nautical charts also contain additional information such as numerous toponyms, or place names for coastal localities, skyline profiles of prominent features, offshore islands and, occasionally, explanatory notations such as ‘troublesome shores,’ coastal vegetation and ocean depths. In addition to the five maps, there are four other pages of illustrations in the pothi, representing seasonal fluctuations in the position of certain stellar constellations, and 26 pages of text that has still to be translated. These local navigational texts raise the issue of the nature of maritime communities, and the extent to which they were literate. A related question is that of ownership of watercraft and contacts with other land-based communities.
This brings me to the question of the sea being peripheral to Indian consciousness. It is often suggested that due to Dharmasastric (Dharmasastras or Law Books) restrictions on maritime travel, the Hindu population turned to agrarian pursuits and production, away from trade and maritime transport. This is a somewhat erroneous representation, since maritime travel in the ancient period involved several groups and occupational specialisations. Cargo carriers formed the foundation of trading ventures. Merchants and traders in some cases certainly owned ships and watercraft, but they neither manned nor sailed these. More often, the goods and cargoes were entrusted to the captain of the vessel, who was then responsible for their sale and profit. Thus maritime activity involved diverse communities from the owners of watercraft to those who commanded these, and still others who sailed them. Hence, there can be no simple caste attributions of the communities involved in trading activity. Moreover, the normative rules laid down in the Dharmasastras need to be balanced against the narrative literature in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, Tamil and vernaculars, which provide glowing accounts of maritime travel by merchants, craftspeople, musicians and others.
In Tamil poems dated to the early centuries of the Christian era, fishing is described as one of the major activities of settlements along the coast, such as that of Muciri or Muziris. The fishermen are described as harvesting the salt on the shore (Akananuru 280)1 and collecting at the harbour, ‘where they take fat pearls from the spreading waves and divide them on the broad shore’(Akananuru 280). Specific areas are demarcated and fishermen inhabit the outer streets of a town (Pattinappalai 77).2
Maritime voyages in the early centuries of the Christian era were regarded as profitable ventures, and Buddhist canonical literature describes a variety of social groups who were involved in seafaring activity. In addition to merchants, there are references to princes who travelled across the seas to make money. The prosperity and social standing of these mariners is evident from the donations made by them to the Buddhist monastic establishments and recorded in the inscriptions of the early centuries of the Christian era.
Though the primary objective of the Jataka stories is to eulogise the previous lives of the Buddha, there are references to seafaring activity and to the different seas, viz., the Khuramalin (fish with bodies like men and razor-like snouts), Dadhimalin (gleaming like milk or curds), Aggimalin (with radiance like a bonfire), Kusamalin (like a stretch of dark kusa-grass), Nalamalin (like a grove of bamboo) and Valabhamukha (hollow like a saucer).
Of the non-canonical literature of Theravada Buddhism, it is the Milindapanha, or questions posed by Milinda, identified with King Menander, to bhikhu (monk) Nagasena that is relevant to the issue. It contains a detailed discussion of the various regions traversed by the mariner, or navik, after he had paid his customary dues at the port and entered the ocean (VI.21.359). The available text is a Pali translation of a Sanskrit or Prakrit original composed in north India at the beginning of the Christian era.
Similarly, a survey of the extensive non-canonical Svetambara Jain literature shows that several texts dated between the eighth and the eleventh centuries contain references to merchants and trade, while the epics and plays composed between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries depict merchants and traders as their central character. The objective of the Jain dharmakathas, or folk tales, was to expound religious precepts in the form of stories, and the earliest of these non-canonical texts is the Vasudevahimdi. It is in two parts, the first of which was composed in the early decades of the sixth century, while the second part followed much later in the ninth or eleventh century. The story revolves around Charudatta who started his life by selling fruit, but later amassed enormous wealth as a result of maritime trade. Sailing across the three seas is described—the eastern ocean into which the Ganga pours; the western ocean entered by the Sindhu, or Indus, and so on.
I could go on and add to this data both in terms of references in literature and iconographic representations of watercraft. Such representations are seen on Buddhist monastic complexes, Hindu temples and memorial stones erected to commemorate those who lost their lives in sea battles. It is essential then that the statement regarding the sea being peripheral to Indian consciousness be re-examined, as also the role of travel by sea to the survival of Indian Ocean communities.
A study of the organisation of shipping involves a series of issues to which no clear answers are available in the records. For example, what does ownership imply? Does it mean full proprietorship of the entire vessel by one person or does it refer to forms of shared property? Data on these aspects is seldom available in a historical context. Early Buddhist texts make a distinction between owners of vessels, sea-traders and the crew manning the watercraft. Merchants who earned a living by maritime trade are referred to in the Jatakas, while the Sanskrit grammarian Panini makes a distinction between merchants who owned two vessels and those who sailed with five ships. In contrast, members of the crew responsible for manning a big ship, or mahanava, included a captain, a pilot, a manipulator of the cutter and ropes, and a bailer of water. The Jatakas include amongst the crew, oarsmen and sailors who worked the sails while the ships sailed in the open sea where the coast was no longer visible.
Another issue that has a bearing on this question is the location of fishing villages vis-à-vis agricultural settlements. Along the coast of Orissa, there is a marked variation between the northern and southern sectors. Though characterised by stretches of sand beaches, north Orissa provides pockets of agricultural land not far from the coast. The fishermen as a result live in the villages populated by agriculturists, and though their primary occupation continues to be marine fishing, they also work as agricultural labourers and, at times, possess some land. Wealthy men of the village—who determine the share of different crew-members in the catch—also employ fishermen, who often own boats, on wages.
In contrast, fishing settlements in south Orissa are situated on the broad, sandy beaches, and there is a clear segregation from agricultural villages located inland. Fishermen own boats and nets, and live exclusively by fishing. As a result, they are able to exercise far more control over the catch and its marketing.
Another example may be quoted from Gujarat. The region has the largest traditional fishing boats in the subcontinent, though it has the least productive marine fishing grounds and the lowest demand for fish in the hinterland. This somewhat anomalous situation may be explained by the fact that fishermen have to resort to alternate means of earning a livelihood, and participation in coastal cargo trade presents one such possibility.
The traditional sailing system in the Indian Ocean was transformed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in many ways. I have referred to the introduction of steamship navigation around the 1830s. The port as we understand it today, with its particular morphology of a constructed harbour with permanent docking and storage facilities, was the creation of the Europeans. European intervention had another major impact, viz., it reinforced the pre-existing slave trade dispersing Africans across the western Indian Ocean from East Africa to the Middle East and the Mascarenes, and eastward to the slave markets and ports of the Americas.3 In the eastern Indian Ocean, the Dutch engaged in the local slave trade with slaves from throughout the Indonesian archipelago and from South Asia.4 They also transported slaves and political prisoners from the archipelago to Colombo and Cape Town adding a vital new element to the population of these ports. In the nineteenth century, the formal slave trade gave way to a system of indentured labour with large numbers of Indians moving to Mauritius, Malay, Myanmar, East Africa and Natal where they were drafted in the cane fields and on railway construction.
In conclusion, it is evident that the Indian Ocean impacted the lives of not only the communities living on its shores, but also those located further inland. This essay has attempted to shift the focus of maritime networks in the Indian Ocean from elite trading activity, controlled by the state, to an analysis of shipping that sustained this travel across the seas. One of the conclusions that is evident is the dominant stitched tradition of boat building, which was shared by several coastal centres across the Indian Ocean. This also involved the movement of timber, coir-rope and boat-building communities across the region, and a regular network in agricultural products and coarse cotton cloth to sustain these coastal centres. Another important category of travellers comprised the religious clergy and pilgrims. In this paper we have indicated the expansion of Buddhism from India to Sri Lanka and several parts of Southeast Asia, but there is a need to study and analyse several other religious groups, such as the Hindus and the Jains. But most important of all, it is crucial that the ancient history of India be studied and researched in its wider Asian context for a proper appreciation of its dynamics and vibrancy.
The Ecology
There is a striking story called ‘The Ocean Dome Resort’ located, perhaps, in South Japan. A ‘sea resort’ has been put into a dome with mechanically simulated ocean waves. Apparently, it can house, almost everyday, 10,000 visitors who can bathe and swim in this artificially simulated ocean and not be disturbed by live crabs or fish or sea weed. The temperature is kept warm. On the dome, clouds have been painted, as also the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean. At one point there is a huge volcano from which the water slides. There is some background music also5. It is an artificial way of enjoying a natural phenomenon!
The question one asks is why does one actually need to have an artificial ocean and not the real one. If one stretches the argument a bit further, it is because if you look at the numbers and the implications of ocean ecology today, it is quite possible that large parts within the ocean are absolutely dangerous, besides the fact that you have oil slicks, dumping of toxic wastes and a series of very nagging and, perhaps, desperate problems that have not yet been entirely addressed properly. One of these major issues is that of the brown haze.
It is reported that up to ten million square kilometres of the Indian Ocean was under a brown haze of what they call pollutants which were not organic, but inorganic substances such as fly ash, soot, sulphates, nitrates and high concentrations of gases, which included carbon monoxide as well. The point here is that the Indian Ocean rim is surrounded by about two billion people, and much of what is shot into the air in terms of effluents and refuse, is actually slowly finding its way into the middle of the Indian Ocean. What many scientists have been saying is that when you get such a dense haze, you prevent the moisture from being pulled up by the sun’s rays into the ocean clouds, and the hydrological cycle is affected. Most studies are still at an incipient stage, but alarming enough for us to be worried about it. There are many kinds of theories about the haze; whether it was something to do with the tropical forest burnings that hit much of Southeast Asia in the 1990s. But there is also enough evidence to show that non-organic substances such as fly ash, soot and sulphate could be coming from industrial activity as well, and unless action is taken this is a big problem area.
The second issue is what happened in 1997–1998. Much to the shock of many marine biologists at that time, in that year alone about 90 per cent of the coral reefs in the Indian Ocean were suddenly stressed—a phenomenon called coral bleaching. Coral bleaching occurs when there is loss of the symbiotic algae that sit atop the coral reefs. These symbiotic algae are very sensitive to any alteration in temperature. So when there is an extreme form of temperature change, these algae get wiped off, or they die, or get unplugged from the coral reefs thus exposing the corals directly to sunlight. The corals then actually begin to die. Anyone familiar with this subject also knows that corals are often called the rain forests of the oceans because they have a rich bio-diversity and perform a lot of important ecological functions as well. So when they begin to melt, or bio-bleach, there are going to be ramifications across the marine world. This is another cause of concern, and a far more serious problem as well, because it has a lot to do with fears right now about climate change. In fact, corals are the best indicators today of how dangerous the situation is with respect to climate change because minor changes in temperatures can have a massive impact across the coral world. Often the International Policy Group on Climate Change (IPGCC) uses corals as a very important index to show how quickly or alarmingly enough the world is heating up.
The third sort of incident in this pathological exercise in the Indian Ocean concerns shrimp fishing. In 2001 alone, Europe apparently consumed seven billion dollars worth of shrimp. Much of the shrimp came from places like Thailand, parts of India, etc. A large chunk of them had actually come from the Indian Ocean rim, so to speak. Today 25 per cent of shrimp comes from farming while almost 75 per cent still comes from trawler catch. The problem with trawler-catch shrimp fishing is that they have one of the highest percentages of what is called bycatch, or non-targetted catch. For every kilogram of shrimp that is caught, almost twenty kilograms of bycatches die, and are dumped back into the ocean. This is something alarming. Some 400 different kinds of marine species are known to be dying as bycatches of shrimp fishing. One is already aware that the Supreme Court has issued strict instructions that shrimp farming should be banned in many parts of India. But so powerful is this lobby that many of them are still operating without legal sanction. The great problem with shrimp farming is that it is mostly happening along the wetlands. A certain amount of land is hived off and salt water is pumped into it; shrimp are given a lot of chemical feed, or even wild fish as food. Often because such dense numbers of shrimp are housed, antibiotics have to be used. By the time the shrimp is cultivated or harvested, that plot of land on which it is grown is rendered absolutely dangerous. And the water that is ejected pollutes the sea and nearby lagoons, and ponds. In fact, a recent paper by a scientist said that in the natural wild conditions if you talk about shrimp areas, you get 75 or a maximum 100 kg per hectare, but with shrimp farming they are packing between 2,00,000 kg and 6,50,000 kg in one hectare. So this is subject to disease for which they need to inject antibiotics. Then, of course, this hazardous water is just expelled into the nearby sea. In fact, in Thailand they have discovered now that in many places they are unable to continue shrimp farming because they have no access to clean water. So this is another very dangerous interface between the mainland and the Indian Ocean.
The fourth issue is that of stress that our wetlands are also experiencing. Wetlands like Pulikkad, Chilikka, the Gulf of Cambay or Kutch are the hinges connecting the Indian Ocean to the mainland. These wetlands are often called the kidneys of the Ocean because they concentrate and re-cycle a huge amount of nutrient material. Any stress on these wetlands will mean denying a large part of the Indian Ocean itself access to nutrients and minerals. To give one an idea of how genetically diverse and rich our wetlands are—and this is mainly the mangrove forest—in the Gulf of Kutch, for example, there are 210 species of algae, 70 species of sponges, about 40 species of corals, over 25 species of prawns, two to three varieties of endangered sea turtles and innumerable species of fish and birds.
Thus, a large number of biologically diverse flora and fauna function within a small area. If these wetlands are stressed—and a lot of them are being stressed by fertiliser emissions into these areas—often what is called algal bloom, or toxic bloom, will take place. Eutrophication from chemicals such as nitrates, sulphates and other elements lead to this algal bloom, and much of the marine life will then get choked without oxygen.
Talking about technology and the Indian Ocean in a broad sense, in 1997, the US Navy introduced a new technology called Low Frequency Active Sonar. This is a technique by which sound pulses are emitted into the ocean to locate enemy targets. These sound pulses are set up to 250 decibels, so that through sonar techniques they can actually make out whose submarine is where and what it is doing. What was also found surprising, mostly by ecologists, is that this low frequency active sonar was impacting on whales and dolphin populations quite adversely. For example, blue whales and dolphins communicate with each other at 150 decibels or above. The low frequency sonar would thus interfere with their communication.
Scientists found that outside Hawaii, for example, a lot of whales actually stopped singing, which is very critical to the way they function. They also found a lot of abandoned baby calves, which had got disoriented because of these low frequency sonar emissions. They could not communicate with their parents and invariably got lost. Some of them died, others got dehydrated and so on.
These technologies are stressing wild marine life across the ocean. It is possible that naval or military apparatus could be in the process of inventing or constituting such technological options and choices, which could have immense marine ramifications. There is also the whole issue of toxic dumping in the oceans, oil spills, which are now a very familiar sight, visually and otherwise. In 2003, the Green Peace group decided to make a big issue of what is happening on the Gujarat coastline at Alang, where a lot of these old ships were being dismantled and scrapped. In the process of scrapping the ships, they were releasing toxic substances into the sea. For example, many ships—this happened in Venice—used a substance called TVT as protection against rust. When exposed to sea water, away from Venice, TVT had a strange effect on the fish: the male fish developed female characteristics, and the female fish developed features of male! It was an absolutely strange phenomenon and situation, and quite scary as well.
If we look at the statistics and sad facts, we do feel an urge to do some re-thinking about our relationship with the Ocean in a far more severe and acute way. We should explore the ways in which we can think of the basis for an Indian Ocean community to build around. There are three basic principles—a lot of people working on international issues are pushing and pulling in different ways—not an exhaustive list again, but these are just some indicators of what one can think and reflect on.
The first is called the precautionary principle. This has come into wide play in all kinds of avenues. The precautionary principle roughly propounds that if the position of science on a subject is uncertain, then the onus should be on the people to prove that whatever they do will not have a negative impact, rather than the other way round, where if something has a negative impact then one goes around trying to find and establish proof and evidence. So the precautionary principle says that if you do not know what the implications are, then do not take any action until such time that you can effectively prove that you have solutions to the problems that may arise.
The second principle is called the global heritage principle; that is, if you have a certain natural endowment and no one technically owns this, it does not give everyone the liberty to pollute to it. A certain set of ethics by which it is regularised should be declared. One way to do it is also to debate very seriously about something called inter-generation equity. This is another term that comes with common heritage. Inter-generational equity implies that if one generation is using, utilising or engaging with a certain natural endowment, then it should preserve it in such a way that generations to come also have access to it in the same way. If the resources were to be consumed entirely—either by diminishing, destroying, or polluting—then I am denying the next generation access to it. So a clause for inter-generational equity must be put in so that when you are looking at the changes you are bringing about, you also think, or reflect, on what is going to happen for generations to come and succeed us.
The third one is called environmental rights. As a principle, environmental rights are slightly different from the notion of human rights. If anything is good for human beings, then it should be placed as a right, and not be violated. The problem with environmental rights is: Do we preserve aspects of the environment simply as an adjunct to human rights, or do we preserve rights for the environment on its own terms? Is the Indian Ocean being preserved only because humans need it, or because there are a set of rights, or a set of commitments that can be given to marine life as environmental objects as well? The problem, of course, is how nature speaks for itself. The other way is to say that everything is for the consumption of human beings. Suppose we sit down and decide that we need just 600 species of fish and not more, then that would again set off a whole chain of issues and problems.
If we are going to forge a community around the Indian Ocean, we would also have to forge this community not only on questions of politics, business and academics, but on a very serious engagement with the natural world that we inhabit around it.
The Making of a Community
What is a community? It is a feeling among people, a feeling of fraternity, a feeling of fellowship, a feeling of being—‘we are us, we are not them’. This is what a community is in an informal sense of the term.
Of the five oceans in the world, the Indian Ocean is larger than the Antarctic and the Arctic oceans, but it is smaller than the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. It is spread between Africa in the West, Asia in the North and Australia in the East. It covers 20 per cent of the global surface and is home to 40 per cent of the world’s population. So, this ocean is something that we all need to know about and we all need to look at closely. What is more, the Indian Ocean is the area that has three-fourths of the world’s gold, three-fourths of its copper and three-fourths of the tin in the world.
But let us take up the concept of community at a more formal level. At the formal level, a community is an organised, institutionalised body of people. And that is what has been happening in and around the Indian Ocean in the last ten years. It was Nelson Mandela who gave a call to form, what he termed, ‘an Indian Ocean Trading Alliance’ when he came to New Delhi in January 1995. Two months later, in March 1995, Mauritius hosted a meeting of seven states and called it the ‘Indian Ocean initiative’. Three months thereafter, in June 1995, Australia held another meeting—P-23—in Perth, and 23 countries sent representatives (unofficial representatives) to what was called a Forum. So, from a trading alliance to an initiative, to a forum, efforts went on from 1995 to 1997, when formally an association, called the Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation (IORARC), was launched at the inter-governmental level. Similar to the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation, or SAARC, IORARC is eight years old now.
Since then, some more countries have been added to the group. Some ‘dialogue partners’ have been invited along with an ‘observer.’ It is now a group of eighteen countries which is limping along. Nothing much has happened. In the past ten years, this group, which refers to itself by a very smart, attractive and esoteric name, IORAC, has not done anything substantial to write home about.
How then do we define the making of an Indian Ocean community? Here is something that we must understand about IORARC that is very unique. From its very inception, whether it called itself an initiative, or a forum, or a regional association, it always maintained that the Indian Ocean community would run on three parallel tracks. One track would be made up of official policymakers; the second would be made up of businessmen and the third would comprise academics. So the policymakers are doing small things, useful things. But what the businessmen and the academics are doing is far more interesting, and it has a far greater potential in the long term.
Let us look at what the businessmen are doing. The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) has launched a website that everyone can access. The address is: www.iornet.com, or www.iornet.org. Both the addresses lead to the same website, and anyone can register themselves there. If you are a businessman you can offer, or you can request, import, export, consultancy, marketing tie-ups, technology and investment. So a lot is going on in the Indian Ocean at the level of entrepreneurs—businessmen to businessmen, giving, exchanging, taking.
At the academic level, there are Indian Ocean studies, centres, programmes departments in various countries along the Indian Ocean Rim. Professor Satish Chandra has been running a pioneering group called the Society for Indian Ocean Studies, which has done some substantial work on the Indian Ocean, on various issues, such as sustainable development, law of the seas, islands, and so on. It brings out a scholarly journal called the Journal of the Indian Ocean Studies. Thus, out of the three tracks that are seeking to make an Indian Ocean community, the businessmen and academics are doing a lot in their own unofficial capacities. Because the making of the community in the Indian Ocean is unique, it has left some space for individual initiatives and individual interaction. And that is what gives us hope that this Indian Ocean community, which is in the making for as long as 5000 years already, will continue to interact, enrich, and be aware, be in touch, exchange ideas, exchange goods, and move in, around and along the Indian Ocean.
At the theoretical level, is the Indian Ocean community heading towards some kind of an economic union? No, not in the short term, and not in the medium term either. If at all, it may in the long run, we do not know. Let us look at what is happening by way of trade within the Indian Ocean countries. The intra-Indian Ocean trade is only 22 per cent of the global trade; 80 per cent of trading is done beyond the Indian Ocean. What is likely to change in this era of World Trade Organization (WTO) and in this era of globalisation? Countries are opening up more and more, and their trading partners are going to be more and more diverse, and more and more far-flung. To that extent, the Indian Ocean as an economic community will not be viable. Even though trade will expand among the Indian Ocean countries in absolute terms, the percentage-wise increase in the intra-Indian Ocean trade is not likely. Having said that, why should the countries look for other means for economic interaction? Across the border, however, trading is viable if you are looking not at huge amounts but small and medium amounts; not a high-tech kind of goods and services but medium range goods and services; and if you are looking at interaction from companies to companies, small businessmen to small businessmen, and things like that. That is what FICCI is trying to promote through the Business Forum, which is one of the three tracks envisaged. Regional economic rationale all over the world is now coming under tremendous pressure; we are globalising because there are WTO norms, which every country has to follow.
To take it up at a theoretical level, to start with, is the Indian Ocean community that we are envisaging a security community? ‘Security Community’ is a concept according to which, it is a group of countries amongst whom military intervention as an option is ruled out, and it is a community that looks at the external activities from beyond the group in the following manner—it evolves a common position; it evolves common policies to deny external activities; and, if you cannot deny the external activities, it at least tries to accommodate them. What then do we see in the Indian Ocean today? We see Americans all around. We see Americans fighting their war on terrorism here, there and everywhere, and threatening to continue doing so in other places as well. An interesting thing about the Indian Ocean community is that nowhere in its charter does it mention ‘security’ as one of its concerns, or as one of the items on its agenda. So you can forget about ‘security’ or ‘strategy’ as being a plan of the IORARC for the moment, and for some time to come. What are the Indian security concerns, or what kind of pure strategic posture should India be adopting? These are issues that require further discussion.
The Indian Ocean, among the rest of the oceans, is not as deep as the Atlantic or the Pacific. There are certain heritage sites marked out by the United Nations, UNESCO and other international bodies which have been undertaking studies, and which are aware of the tremendous ecological dysfunction that has been created by human activity of all kinds. So what lessons have we learnt? Are these measures adequate or is much more to be done? Or, are there parallel studies, like a study done on the history of the community for the Atlantic and the environmental issues pertaining to the Atlantic? Perhaps, similar studies have been carried out for the Pacific also. But the situation in the Indian Ocean is really an eye-opener, and it is very startling and indeed very grim, because at this level, we are heading for a major catastrophe, as has come out very clearly. But when will humanity reach a level of sanity? When can it really forge a united community for the interests and benefit of all?
When you talk about strategic interests of nations, then many political ramifications are also thrown up in the discussion. The concern is about the heritage sites in the Indian Ocean, which have been marked out. In the Maldives and Seychelles, hundreds of islands have been kept out of bounds. Tourism is also a major factor in causing ecological and environmental damage.
One has to have a clear understanding of what exactly we mean by ecological dangers. There is greater need for actual hard scientific work to be done. Having done scientific work—for example, on forest ecology—getting around social interests to actually agree to a minimum consensus in order to preserve certain national endowments is something different. Even when we achieve a certain kind of social and political consensus, sometimes, it is still tough to arrive at a common understanding on what we consider to be safeguarding or supporting the natural process. The Indian Ocean islands being declared as heritage sites is one example. There is a very live, active and ferocious debate among conservationists whether we can actually save the planet in parts; is it possible to talk about safeguarding islands amidst a sea of pollution? Most startlingly, this has come about in the natural parks and sanctuaries. In the US, they are discovering, as much as in India and elsewhere, that wherever they earmarked islands that are genetically rich and diverse, animal species still keep getting depleted. Many scientific studies show that animals are fairly mobile, and they need different spaces, or areas, in order to exchange genetic continuity. Of course, now we are talking about corridors, but increasingly it is coming to the point where it might not be possible to easily separate man and the natural world. We have to live with nature in ways that are more profound than we are already doing. Beyond the realm of politics, one would think also of some structure of ethics. Without being idealistic, even for those who would sit back and say, ‘oh, let us be practical,’ some of these utopian ideas have now become very practical if we are to talk about sustaining this planet in whatever capacity we think is necessary. That is why this whole idea of ‘let us take care of some heritage sites, let us pollute the rest,’ is not necessarily a workable concept and idea. Even in India today most conservationists and ecologists will tell you that we have to develop a new sync paradigm altogether if we are to co-exist in this natural world. These demarcations are not going to work.
If man is going to become entirely artificial and is no longer part of the natural world, there are definite consequences that we ourselves would have to pay for at another date.
There has been lot of pessimism about IORARC. However, if you look at the developments, regional blocks involving India have developed since we took up the issue of IORARC, whether it is the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) or the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). Now there is also the talk of India having a closer economic link with the Gulf countries. Perhaps at that stage we would have picked up much beyond our capacity. But since the idea has been floated, it appears that there is a slow progression and, perhaps, we should not be too critical about that. As far as the political aspects are concerned, India’s interaction in the field of security with its neighbouring countries has grown immensely. There are many naval exchanges. Also, there are international bodies where there has been active discussion concerning security-related issues, such as piracy, hijacking and similar issues. The Society for Indian Ocean Studies too has voiced its concern on these issues.
As far as the more important issue of the Ocean is concerned, there is a growing awareness among the international community about the danger that science poses not only to the globe but also to the Ocean. Within the country also, there is a greater awareness of many of these aspects. Without going into details, the Department of Ocean Development (DoD) is closely studying the problem of wetlands particularly and sustainable development. The Institute of Ocean Technology of Chennai has taken up several issues. But apart from the DoD, the Ministry of Environment should perhaps take much more active interest in the field.
References
Chittick, H. N. (1980), ‘Sewn Boats in the Western Indian Ocean and a survival in Somalia’, The international Journal of Nautical Archaeology and Underwater Exploration, 9(4): 297–304.
Das Gupta, Ashin (1979), Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat c. 1700–1750, Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Mookerji, Radha Kumud (1912), Indian Shipping: A History of the Seaborne Trade and Maritime Activity of the Indians from the Earliest Times, Bombay: Longman.
Pearson, M. N. (1994), Pious Passengers: The Hajj in Earlier Times, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers.
Ray, Himanshu Prabha (2003), The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ray, Himanshu Prabha (2007), ‘Crossing the Seas: Connecting Maritime Spaces in Colonial India’, in Himanshu Prabha Ray and Edward A. Alpers (eds) Cross Currents and Community Networks: Encapsulating the History of the Indian Ocean World, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.