A sea ghost tells a story

Abhijit Majumder Editor of MiD DAY, Delhi, Abhijit Majumder stumbles on the Mughals' maritime mistake and wonders if it still haunts us in the time of terror

Abhijit Majumder Editor of MiD DAY, Delhi,u00a0stumbles on the Mughals' maritime mistake and wonders if it still haunts us in the time of terror

Water games: Despite the noble intentions of Mughal emperor Akbar, it is hard to call his navy even tactically updated. And the seas undid the Mughals. But India doesn't seem to have learnt a lesson from history.
Representative pic

IN my three months in Delhi, I have had enough evidence of the Dalrymple's djinns. One meets them at Hazrat Nizamuddin's Friday qawaalis, the walled city's gullies, Punjabi colonies of west Delhi, politicians' bungalows in Lutyen's, even pubs. Past cunningly lives and breathes here, right under the fierce nose of the bling, materialistic present.

It can still be pleasantly surprising to meet the ghosts in their most likely place.

Week before last I was ambling through the vast mustiness of the National Museum, slowed down by gorgeous photos from Ladakh's Alchi monastery and an idle Saturday afternoon. Just behind the exhibition was one of those signature museum rooms a long unending row of drearily-captioned glass boxes, like coffins in space too boring to even want to peek in. It's the maritime gallery.

The first few boxes had coins and plaques from, if I'm right, Mohenjodaro down to Chandragupta, with cargo boats inscribed on them.

I moved to my main interest, the Mughals.

While Akbar had a fleet of merchantile ships, the great emperor's admiralty, the office of Meer Behry, seems to have been the weak feet of the empire. Thomas Bowrey (1669-1713), a merchant and sea captain, also compiler of the first Malay-English dictionary, is quoted in the museum caption saying the Mughal navy base in Dhaka was at best a collection of large boats, not a high-seas fleet.

Even other historians say the Arakan pirates from Burma, helped by Europeans like the Portuguese, terrorised and plundered it at ease.

Mughals come from landlocked central Asia, so seas were not their habitat. They rode and conquered with Ferghana Valley's famous "heavenly horses", and understood mountains and plains much better than the waves.

Akbar's naval philosophy was borrowed from Kautilya's Arthashashtra written 1,900 years earlier, so despite the noble intentions of arguably India's greatest ruler, it is hard to call his navy even tactically updated.

And the seas undid the Mughals.

European powers made rapid ingress taking the sea route, and eventually took over the empire.

Strangely, most recent incursions from Pakistan by terrorists have been through the sea, from the consignment for Mumbai's 1993 serial blasts to the 26/11 attack. Sir Creek is a still a very vulnerable point, and Pakistan uses 1,500 captured Indian boats in that area for spying.

Also, while the Indian Navy is admittedly larger and more equipped with superior numbers of aircraft and stealth carriers, destroyers and amphibious vessels, Pakistan is said to have meaner more modern submarines, the handiest things you could probably have in sea warfare.

That cobwebbed corner of the National Museum may just have the lesson Mughals didn't learn.