The Indian Ocean Read online

  Nor was it only the ports of British India. Goa was the central port for the Portuguese from 1510, and it seems that as ships got bigger the estuary of the Mandovi, leading to Panaji and Old Goa, became too dangerous. However, as the capital of the Estado da India, Goa obviously had to be kept. Isabel Burton left a harrowing account of arriving and leaving from this port in April and May 1876. She and her husband Richard were in a steamer coming down from Mumbai. It let them off far off the mouth of the river, and they had eight miles in a row boat to reach Panaji. A little later, getting back on a steamer for Mumbai was an equally dangerous experience. They were told to reach the steamer at midnight. They set off in a large open boat with four rowers:

  We rowed down the river and then the bay for three hours against wind and tide, bow on to the heavy rollers, and at last reached the mouth of the bay [that is, the mouth of the Mandovi river], where is the fort. We remained bobbing about in the open sea in the trough of great waves for a considerable time. A violent storm of rain, thunder, and lightning came on . . .

  so they went back to the fort to take shelter. On finally hearing the gun of the steamer, they set off again and reached the steamer after an hour, and then had a hazardous time getting on board it.28

  A similar impact of colonial needs was seen in East Africa, again then showing the impact of political decisions on the fate of port cities. In earlier times the sheltered river mouths or estuaries were accessible through the coral, as the rivers' discharges affect coral growth and create gaps in the reef for ships to enter. Once steam ships arrived bigger harbours were needed, and Mombasa replaced all the others as only it had a reasonable harbour. But even in Mombasa economic changes dictated changes in the port. The old dhow harbour was incapable of taking larger ships, and was replaced by the new Kilindini harbour on the other side of the island.

  Sri Lanka again bears out the dominant influence of land matters over maritime ones, that is that again a good harbour does not necessarily create an important port. At one time Galle was the main port for Sri Lanka, but in the later nineteenth century Colombo was better placed to serve the plantations inland, and so a viable port was created at vast expense. For that matter, Trincomalee had a much better harbour, but its location, in the wrong place to service through-traffic crossing the Indian Ocean, dictated that it never flourish.

  The Red Sea also shows how ports are often located on intrinsically hostile shores simply because this location is determined by inland needs. Suez was located to service through-traffic from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, both before and after the opening of the Suez Canal. Isabel Burton in 1876 wrote that 'Suez is a most inaccessible place, and steamers anchor in the bay, an hour's steam from the town, and much more by sail; if you leave your steamer, and if there is a contrary wind you can never be sure of getting back to it.' Nor did things improve as her ship went down the Red Sea. Jiddah if anything was worse, yet was essential as the disembarkation place for pilgrims bound for nearby Mecca, and as the hinge connecting the northern and southern reaches of the Red Sea.

  I never could have imagined such an approach to any town. For twenty miles it is protected by nature's breakwaters – lines of low, flat reefs, huge slabs of madrepore and coralline that cut like a knife, barely covered, and not visible till you are close upon them; there is no mark or lighthouse, save two little white posts, which you might mistake for a couple of good sized gulls; in and out of these you wind like a serpent; there is barely passage for one ship between them, and no pilot will attempt it, save in broad daylight...

  and in fact her ship did collide with another when they finally reached the open roadstead.29

  Port cities by definition are located on water, whether it be a river, a lake, an estuary, a delta, a harbour or an open coast. Yet not all maritime people, people of the sea, are in port cities. We can now consider the more general matter of coastal or littoral society. One focus here will be fisherfolk, and a discussion of them will segue easily into a concluding description of the most truly maritime people of all, those who actually live on the water.

  We can first consider the very narrow strip where the tide has an effect, what Winton called 'the distinct ink line where the water meets the shore – the ever-contested margin of high water.'30 As Lencek put it rather melodramatically: 'it was on the borders of continents and islands that the first living creatures crawled out from the sea to begin their inexorable march toward conquest of terra firma.' Here the ressac notion is even more compelling and appropriate than in our earlier discussions, at least in part because the term itself comes from geography. Again Lencek puts it well: 'one cannot help being intrigued by the face-off between land and water... Here, two titanic forces – one stationary and one in motion – engage in eternal dispute.'31 Dakin says the seashore is 'that narrow strip of land over which the ocean waves and the moon-powered tides are masters – that margin of territory that remains wild despite the proximity of cities or of land surfaces modified by industry.' It is a magic place: 'one of the most delightful and exciting areas of the earth's surface – the seashore, that marginal strip where the sea meets the land, and which is covered and uncovered by the tides. From the dark ocean abysses to the mountain-tops, from the desert to the luxuriant jungle there is no place with more variety and flexibility of life than where the tides ebb and flow.'32

  This narrow strip, the quintessential littoral, is constantly changing. Sand dunes move back and forth, rocks are exposed and then submerged, the sea itself is always changing and moving. The littoral is always fluctuating, moving, changing, advancing and retreating. Standing on the edge of the surf, with your ankles in the water, you are precisely where land and sea meet. How pleasant this is, even more so with rod in hand.

  What we have here is ambiguity, lack of definition and boundaries, a zone where land and sea intertwine and merge, really the fungibility of land and sea. Emily Eden looked at the Sunderbunds down from Kolkata in 1837 when she was travelling on a 'flat' or large barge towed by a steamer. The scene she saw was 'a composition of low stunted trees, marsh, tigers and snakes, with a stream that sometimes looks like a very wide lake and then becomes so narrow that the jungle wood scrapes against the sides of the flat'. Then she reflected, very acutely, that 'It looks as if this bit of world had been left unfinished when land and sea were originally parted.'33

  We have been describing the beach, the area where land and sea meet. Humans are rather different here than are other species. 'Beaches are beginnings and endings. They are frontiers and boundaries of islands. For some life forms the division between land and sea is not abrupt but for human beings beaches divide the world between here and there, us and them, good and bad, familiar and strange'.34

  The question is whether we can see people who live on the littoral as making up a distinctive society, one that can be separated from those further inland. And if so, can we find any commonality in littoral society all around the far flung shores of the Indian Ocean? Does location on the shore transcend differing influences from an inland which is very diverse, both in geographic and cultural terms, so that the shorefolk have more in common with other shorefolk thousands of kilometres away on some other shore of the ocean, than they do with those in their immediate hinterland?

  Littoral society is usually considered to be the same as coastal society. Heesterman stresses that it is transitional, permeable: 'The littoral forms a frontier zone that is not there to separate or enclose, but which rather finds its meaning in its permeability.'35 Braudel wrote evocatively about coastal society, stressing that it was as much land as sea oriented. The life of the coast of the Mediterranean

  is linked to the land, its poetry more than half-rural, its sailors may turn peasant with the seasons; it is the sea of vineyards and olive trees just as much as the sea of the long-oared galleys and the round-ships of merchants, and its history can no more be separated from that of the lands surrounding it than the clay can be separated from the hands of the potter who shapes it.36
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  Several modern scholars have ruminated on the nature of the shore folk of the Indian Ocean. Middleton focused on the East African coast.

  Part of the coast is the sea: the two cannot be separated. The Swahili are a maritime people and the stretches of lagoon, creek, and open sea beyond the reefs are as much part of their environment as are the coastlands. The sea, rivers, and lagoons are not merely stretches of water but highly productive food resources, divided into territories that are owned by families and protected by spirits just as are stretches of land. The Swahili use the sea as though it were a network of roads.37

  We may note here that the very term 'Swahili' means 'shore folk', those who live on the edge of the ocean. As Pouwels has it, Swahili culture was 'a child of its human and physical environment, being neither wholly African nor "Arab," but distinctly "coastal", the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.'38

  Islands are perhaps where we are most likely to find littoral societies, for one would expect to find here more concentrated mixings from various cultural influences. Indeed, on smaller ones there would be nothing but coastal people, for the sea would permeate the whole area. The Seychelles, the Andamans and Nicobar Islands, tiny fragments of land in the ocean, are purely littoral. Similarly, islands in the rivers can be seen as making up small littoral societies all their own, even far 'inland'. The Zambezi system had many islands, as also did other river basins and deltas: the Hugli, the Ganga, the Tigris-Euphrates, the Irrawaddy and so on.

  Despite all these general statements, the precise elements of commonality of littoral society have not yet been adequately worked out. We could look at food, obviously largely derived from the sea, even if some fisherfolk prefer to trade some of their catch for cereals. Houses are usually different from those inland. As one would expect, locally available materials are usually employed. For much of the coast this means that palm trees are used to provide a housing structure, and a thatched roof. In some areas however coral is available; on the Swahili coast it is widely employed as a building material. Jacques Cousteau in fact found it to be of universal utility in the Maldives. It was used to construct the landing strip and the houses, and even the beaches were pulverised coral, not sand. 'Everywhere we saw tiny cemeteries under palm clusters. The tombs themselves, crosses and all, were made of coral. Everything here is bound up with the sea, even life and death.'39

  The whole rhythm of coastal life is geared to the monsoons. Ship styles historically were relatively uniform, as we will describe in detail in the next chapter. Certainly, as we have noted, littoral society is much more cosmopolitan than are parochial inland people for, at the great ports which constitute the nodes of the littoral, traders and travellers from all over the ocean, and far beyond, were to be found. This characteristic of cosmopolitanism produced another element of unity. Certain languages achieved wide currency, such as Arabic in the earlier centuries. There are some 5,000 words of Arabic influence in Malay, and more than that in Swahili, and about 80 per cent of these are the same, that is in Malay and Swahili, so that we have a 'corpus of travelling Arabic words'.40 Freeman-Grenville tried to find links and commonalties between Swahili and the language of the Sidis of Sind.41 Later a sort of nautical Portuguese, and today some variant of English, have achieved a similar quasi-universal status.

  Folk religion on the littoral similarly is to be distinguished from inland manifestations. The concerns of coastal people were usually quite different from those of peasants and pastoralists inland. On the coast religion had to do with customs to ensure safe voyages, or a favourable monsoon. Particular gods were propitiated for these purposes. Specifically maritime ceremonies marked the beginning and end of voyages.

  A particular west coast Indian rite celebrates the end of the southwest monsoon and so the beginning of the sailing year. The always quotable and always acerbic Dr John Fryer noted this in Mumbai in the 1670s: 'After this Full Moon, the Banyans, assisted by their Brachmins, go in Procession to the Sea-shore, and offer Cocoe Nuts to Neptune, that he would restore them their Mare Pacificum; when they make Preparations to go to Sea, and about their Business of Trade.'42 Ovington in Mumbai at about the same time wrote that

  the Bannians endeavour to appease the incensed Ocean by offerings to its inraged Waves, and in great plenty throw their gilded Coco-nuts into the Sea to pacify its storms and Fury, and render it peaceable and calm. And after these Ceremonious Oblations are past, the Oraculous Bramins declare safety to the Ships that will venture upon the Ocean, before which not one of them will offer to weigh Anchor

  and similarly in the Maldives, in Goa and in Mumbai.43

  Dr Varadarajan's ethnographic work in Gujarat has found rather similar things happening today, though based on very old traditions. Her account makes clear that littoral location, and occupation, transcend religion. On the 'narial prunima' day both Hindus and Muslims take part in ceremonies when the forces governing the sea are worshipped, and boats are symbolically taken out to mark the beginning of the season. Rites are conducted by the community rather than the temple priest. 'As the ritual is so intimately connected with their vocational life, all seafaring folk come together to celebrate this day coalescing religious heterogeneity through group participation.' The god Darya Lall is worshipped under various names by different communities, both Muslim and Hindu. His protection is invoked to avoid peril at sea, but formal thanksgiving occurs on safe return to land. Hindus observe vows on the second day of the bright half of every month by passing water through a sieve. Muslims wade into the sea with votive offerings on any convenient day, and allow the sea to carry their gifts. The third important saint or god is Khizr Pir, the immortal one, invoked in times of distress at sea by both Muslims and Hindus. At Porbander there is a shrine dedicated to him, and at the start of the season boats salute this shrine as they leave. There is also a saint called Shah Murad Bukhari. When his grave covers are replaced they make pennants from the discarded cloth. These relics are hoisted in times of danger at sea so that the saint will save them: again both Muslims and Hindus do this. In general 'occupational hazards to which they are exposed cut across religious differences.'44

  Setting out and returning are obvious times to celebrate and propitiate. Qaisar found this in the seventeenth century. When a ship departed those on board may sip holy water, and offer curd, milk, rice, coconuts and garlands to the sea. Seafarers also printed auspicious palm prints over the vessels, especially on the seams. Sometimes an oculus was painted on the ship's bows, this being based on a very ancient Egyptian practice. Carrying bodies was considered to bring bad luck, so they had to be hidden. He also notes the importance of Khwaja Khizr, the guardian of the sea, whom we just met as the present day Khizr Pir. He could be relied on to answer an appeal for help from a traveller in distress. He is the patron saint of sailors, is omnipresent and has eternal life.45

  In Goa in the late sixteenth century we again find specific rites geared to the needs of those who go to sea. 'When they will make a voyage to the sea, they use at the least fourteene days before [they enter into their ships] to make so great a noyse with sounding of Trumpets, and to make fiers, that it may be heard both by night and day; the ship being hanged about with flaggers wherewith [they say] they feast their Pagode, that they may have a good voyage. The like do they at their returne for a thanksgiving fourteen days long'.46 In Goa today fishing boats are named after saints, and the owners and crew make offerings to the relevant saint on his or her feast day.

  However this in turn raises other questions and problems: remembering our past distinction between people on the sea and people of the sea, can we assume that littoral people are necessarily of the sea? We can look particularly at fisherfolk. 'For the fisherman and the sailor, water is life and death, sustenance and menace; it eats away the wood of the ship just as it does the life of a man who ventures out on the treacherous, bitter sea, putting his trust in the fragile board his foot stands on'.47

  Fisherfolk are different from peasants. Their catches us
ually depend on chance, not on wise husbandry. Certainly fishing is more dangerous than cultivating land, but we should remember that the further out one fishes the more dangerous it gets. In far offshore fishing it is not so much individualism which is created, but rather a necessary stress on cooperation. While it is true that gender divisions are more important than in peasant societies, this also is significant in terms of our current discussion of land and sea. Essentially a fishing family links land and sea, with the woman on the former, the man on the latter. Indeed, women may not only do the cleaning and processing and marketing, they may well cultivate land as well. The fishing family, whether extended or nuclear, has the possibility of exploiting both land and sea, while peasants have only the former option. Yet this exploitation differs dramatically between land and sea, for unlike agriculture fishing is a purely exploitative activity; as Dakin says, 'man is always taking away life from the sea – he neither sows nor fertilises the waters; only reaps.'48

  All this said, and while there is no doubt that fisherfolk are of the sea, not on it, the fact remains that they live as much on land as on sea, and fishing activities are crucially dependent on land matters: middle men, markets, processing plants. If we were to try to construct a continuum of dependence on the sea, we would have peasants and pastoralists at one end, then maybe various gradations of the inhabitants of the port cities, then fisherfolk, and finally the truly and purely maritime people, to whom we now turn. We have frequently stressed the dominance of land over sea, but just for a while we can turn to people who are by definition exceptional. These people are people of the sea, and unlike all others on the shore they are not amphibious: their lives are spent on or in the water.

  Some such people are simply sailors who sail for a long time, so long that they may lose their land ties. We have an account of the merchants of the great port of Siraf around 1000. Some of them travelled so much that they were away at sea all their lives. The contemporary account goes on: