This volume explores Western India’s contributions to the intangible connectivities of the Indian Ocean. It seeks to look beyond measurements and statistics to reveal hitherto invisible ties that participate in the reality of an Indian Ocean World. Its approach is intentionally plural and eclectic: selecting significant essays across a variety of fields has been a strategic choice in order to propose an initial step within an ambitious intellectual territory with perspectives that are deliberately wide.
Gujarat’s maritime history and its distinctive sea-oriented commercial tradition are not terra incognita. Remarkable corpora by local historians, such as Makrand Mehta,1 have brought to light unknown sources that illustrate the long commercial history of its coastline. Further studies, with larger perspectives, have underlined its unique trading systems, financial tools and commerce-inflected social structures (Lachaier 2008, 2017; Pearson 1988; Haynes 2012).2 Michael N. Pearson drew the particularity and efficiency of Gujarat’s past economic ecosystems to the attention of international academia with his studies on local brokers, highlighting a system that facilitated fluid exchanges and favoured market regulation by powerful local economic actors (Pearson 1988). Other historians working on larger historical, geographical or conceptual scales, such as Lakshmi Subramanian, Douglas Haynes and Edward Simpson, have voiced the originality of Western Indian trade and its vital role within the mercantile Indian Ocean (Subramanian 2008; Haynes 2012; Simpson and Kapadia 2010; Barendse 2002). Meanwhile, a number of economic questions have been answered during a series of symposia held by Darshak Itihas Nidhi (DIN),3 especially during the conference “Port Towns of Gujarat,” organized in Daman, Gujarat, in 2012 (Keller and Pearson 2015). Thus, by the time DIN organized its fourth symposium on “The Sea and Knowledge” in Bharuch , in 2016—an event that inspired this publication—the broad canvas of Western India’s commercial identity was established. Lotika Varadarajan and Michael Pearson , who led the 2010 and 2012 conferences, respectively, are, alas, no longer with us to observe the growth of the seeds they planted. But the publication of the present volume in the Palgrave series of Indian Ocean World Studies is an acknowledgement of their inspiring presence.
The vigour of Western India—to encompass a wide and coherent historical region which exceeds the borders of present-day state of Gujarat,4 with successful commercial enterprises on an exceptionally large historical scale,5 not only induced but also shadowed transfers of knowledge. The aim of this new chapter in the study of Western India’s maritime role is to look at the non-obvious, if not the invisible, but yet, crucial connections that actively contributed to the strength of Western India’s overseas network. It targets to inspire with this case study a more global discussion on the intangible and its impact on the shaping of past and present societies.
The challenge of the conference that inspired this publication was, therefore, to divert our attention from the indisputable dynamism of Western India’s trade and to focus on other connectivities that accompany such exchanges. We proposed to look at the people and the intangible and non-profit-oriented objects that travelled along with the merchandise in the ships coming and going from Western India’s coastline. We were interested in ideas , knowledge, beliefs, designs, aesthetic sensibilities, memories , values and genetic programs; as well as their carriers, pilgrims, sailors, slaves, indentured labour , books , plants and seeds , etcetera—connections that tied individuals, social groups and landscapes across seas for far longer than the life of a manufactured object or piece of merchandise.
To speak of Western India in terms of culture and knowledge may sound a hazardous project. The region, and Gujarat and Bombay in particular, persists in the Indian imaginary as the commercial organ of India, and a part deprived of cultural depth. This new contribution, “Knowledge and the Indian Ocean,” rather insists on the complementarity of trade and cultural development. Unfortunately, bibliographies largely continue to refer to Gujarat as a pure commercial agency, often quoted in contrast to its cultivated counterpart, Bengal , the country of poets and litterateurs. Reproducing the rivalry between the sister goddesses Lakshmi (goddess of wealth ) and Saraswati (goddess of art and education ), lively clichés represent the Gujarati as a cunning and rich merchant who lacks the manners and education of the Bengali. We know of Bengal ’s importance as an economic actor—its agricultural and commercial significance were particularly valued during the British era—but stereotypes have long lives. The “Bengal vs Gujarat debate” appears to have its roots in the diverging political and economic paths taken by both regions post-1910 and the loss of Bengal ’s political legitimacy once the British Raj quit Calcutta for Delhi. The frustration of losing national authority propelled local energies towards (re)shaping a Bengali identity based on cultural, intellectual and revolutionary values. And while the swadeshi movement had a leader in Gujarat, the activist Mohandas Gandhi , it had an inspiration in Bengal in the form of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. Yet, the Bengal vs Gujarat rivalry only reached its peak in the early twenty-first century when the Marxist Bengali state harvested a poor economic balance, paling in front of Gujarat’s development successes. Deciphering the detailed reasons for Gujarati economic fame and Bengali cultural success is not the object of this volume. Nevertheless, it looks beyond Western India’s known identity as a mercantile body to recognize its qualities as a dynamic place of learning and host of knowledge (Quraishi 1972; Malisson 2005). Indeed, it points up the commercial connections that have nourished cultural, intellectual and spiritual life in the region.
The first intangible connectivity resulting from Gujarat’s economic ease is an entangled network of dues. In an economic system poorly furnished with precious metals,6 many transactions were not instantly honoured, but rather translated into services or a promise of future exchanges (Lachaier 2008, 2017; Nadri 2009, p. 71). The debt , declared or tacit, was a common accounting feature and a permanent financial state (Barendse 2002; Bishara 2017, pp. 61–62). Such exchanges (or conversions) generated great market flexibility and multiplied the financial ties between debtors and creditors, with every creditor himself owing further creditors—the debt becoming a “tie of life, mortal knot,” as Charles Malamoud so strikingly noted.7 Within this financial alchemy, valuable and tangible objects were translated into invisible links which of...