“The Persian Gulf was at the heart of the Indian sphere” suggests Robert Blyth in his Empire of the Raj. For millennia, the Indian subcontinent has been the beating heart of a complex cultural and commercial network that forms the latticework of the Indian Ocean. For generations, monsoon winds of the western Indian Ocean have tied the fate of India’s Gujarat, Konkan, and Malabar coasts to the Persian Gulf. British seafarers built on this rich mercantile legacy when they spread their trade tentacles outward from Bombay, roughly around the second half of the eighteenth century. The British rendezvous with the Gulf lasted roughly till 1971 when the US took over the British base in Bahrain to make it the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet.
At the pinnacle of the Raj, British India’s direct political profile reached as far as the African coast. Ameen Rihani, an American Lebanese writer, even declared in 1930, “The Gulf should be renamed: it is neither Persian or Arabian, it is British.” Or as the unrelenting Lord Curzon, India’s Viceroy from 1899-1905, put it in 1903: “To all intents and appearances the State of Muscat is as much a Native State of the Indian Empire as Lus Beyla or Kelat, and far more so than Nepal or Afghanistan.”
Political residents astutely nurtured British India’s presence in its extended neighbourhood, including the Persian Gulf. The Resident at Bushire, on the southwest Persian coast, oversaw British India’s informal empire across the Gulf and parts of the Arabian Peninsula. Until 1873, the Gulf Resident took his orders from the Governor of Bombay, and thereafter from the Viceroy of India.
The agreement sustaining British India’s informal empire was straightforward. As James Onley argues in Arabian Frontier of the British Raj, local Arab rulers sought protection under British India’s security umbrella while influential men from flush Indian, Arab, and Persian families acted as the Resident’s “native agents” in various political posts under the overall Gulf Residency. These native agents were the connecting links between local leaders and the British Indian Resident in Bushire. In today’s diplomatic-speak, such native agents would be alluringly called ‘honorary’ consuls. Native agents were brokers of power, prosperity, and prestige.
Starting in the 1880s, Bahrain, the Trucial States (the UAE), many chiefdoms in Aden (Yemen) and Kuwait became British India’s “protected states.” Qatar followed in 1916. Oman had already been under British India’s protection since 1809. Persia and a sizable chunk of Ottoman Iraq were also under Calcutta’s (and later Delhi’s) sphere of influence. These varied interests in the larger Gulf also led British India to expand its reach over parts of East Africa from Somaliland, Kenya, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar over different periods.
Apart from Lord Curzon, Olaf Caroe “epitomized the official mind” of the Raj. He served as British India’s foreign secretary throughout the Second World War. In his exposition of Caroe’s thinking, Peter John Brobst argues that British India’s informal control of the larger Persian Gulf held off Russia’s “piecemeal absorption” of more than half of Eurasia. The Persian Gulf or “Southwest Asia” was the “western glacis” of the Indian subcontinent. It was also the only antechamber for Russia, and later the USSR, to erupt into the Asian rim. As Caroe put it, Russia’s quest for Southwest Asia grew from her wish “to keep open the windows which point her way to the sea.” In short, British India’s suzerainty over large chunks of the Persian Gulf was a smaller piece in the “Great Game” between global land and sea power.
Keeping aside this great-power rumble, the security of the Indian subcontinent itself has been indelibly linked to its western periphery for centuries. Writing in 1912, Halford Mackinder observed that there exists no obvious geographical border between Persia, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan—linking the history of all three regions with India.
At the same time, the western Indian Ocean oceanic loop is crucial, too. British India was simply plugging into the long maritime legacy of the subcontinent. Lest we forget, the Satavahanas used the title of ‘Trisamudrapati,’ or Lord of the Three Seas. In effect, if we look at it from the continental or seaward perspective, the destiny of the Indian subcontinent is deeply interconnected with the larger Southwest Asia. A reality that British India was aware of, just like its predecessors.
British India’s history lives on
In the last two decades, a new enthusiasm has grown in Delhi to reconnect with Southwest Asia without the baggage of ideological blinkers. The emphasis on engaging with the Gulf Arab monarchies, specifically the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Oman points towards a return to history.
After a long detour of drenching India’s ‘West Asia’ policy in the sepia-toned snake oil of socialism— in the early post-independent period—Delhi is once again embracing the logic of history and geography. Southwest Asia is also another theatre where India’s interests align with close partners like the US. Way back in 2009, the then-US Defence Secretary Robert Gates first articulated that Washington wanted India “to be a partner and net-provider of security in the Indian Ocean and beyond.”
To say that Delhi’s objective is to return to the heyday of the Raj and regain the same level of control in Southwest Asia is too simplistic and unlikely. The world today is dramatically different. All states, big and small, exercise their agency to navigate choppy waters. Many regional and extra-regional powers are also vying for the affection of smaller states in Southwest Asia. Having said that, one trend looks relatively certain. Delhi is positioning itself to feature prominently in a new equilibrium in Southwest Asia. Be it deploying naval flotilla for anti-piracy missions in the Gulf of Aden or hosting unofficial conferences with regional dignitaries, Delhi’s active outreach to the Gulf is evocative of the past.
Any long-term balance in the region must be reconciled with the reality that the security of Southwest Asia/larger Persian Gulf region is intimately connected to that of the subcontinent, believed the “official mind” of British India. Olaf Caroe’s interest in the region was piqued after he read about the geopolitical quandaries of Mughal India in Akbarnama. The actors of the grand drama may have changed, yet the play goes on.
