Sailing Ships, Naval Expeditions and ‘Project Mausam’

Abstract

In recent years, sailing ships of the Indian Navy have been increasingly involved in diplomatic missions and cultural voyages across the world, in addition to their primary purpose of providing practical training in navigation techniques and seamanship. These three-masted barques built at the Goa Shipyard and used by the Indian Navy are very different from wooden sailing vessels that traversed the Indian Ocean in the premodern period prior to the development of steamship navigation in the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, these distinctions have often been blurred as these modern naval ships have been utilised to recreate historical ‘expeditions’ such as the much-celebrated Chola invasion of Srivijaya in the Indonesian archipelago. Nor is India the only country to be involved in promoting this ‘popular history’ for contemporary geopolitical interests, as is evident from China’s efforts to rebuild ships used in the Voyages of Admiral Zheng He across the Indian Ocean. What gets short shrift in the process is investment in research in underwater archaeology and the discovery and preservation of shipwreck sites. This article highlights the urgent need for interdisciplinary research in premodern shipping and seafaring activity beyond the rhetoric of valorising national heroes.

Realigning India’s Vietnam Policy Through Cooperative Sustainable Development: a Geostrategic Counterbalancing to China in Indo-Pacific

“…It examines vital processes and phenomena that link different parts of the Indian Ocean littoral and those that connect the coastal centers to their hinterlands, extending from East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian subcontinent, and Sri Lanka to the Southeast Asian archipelago. This project aims to build potential economic relations through the Indian Ocean to answer the Maritime Silk Route ambitions of the BRI [ 3 , 63 ].…”

The geocultural heritage of the Silk Roads

“…India and Indonesia are among those countries where governments are encouraging and funding heritage agencies to invest in maritime histories that counter the Maritime Silk Road narrative. India established Project Mausam, as a platform for a regional natural and cultural heritage based around Indian Ocean monsoon winds (Ray 2020). Indonesia is also looking to put itself at the centre of a regional maritime heritage discourse by promoting spice route histories (see Figure 5).…”