Mapping India’s Lost Roots: Project Mausam and the Spice Route

The 21st century has become known as the Asian century, as the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) has gained prominence for its strategic location and the importance of maritime trade passing through its sea lanes. The Indian Ocean carries half of the world’s container ships, a third of its cargo and twothirds of the world’s oil tankers. The region is rich in energy resources, mineral wealth and marine biodiversity.

The two Asian Giants – China and India – are trying to make their presence felt in the region by carrying out various initiatives to enhance and boost diplomatic and trade ties. Trade has been one of the major factors in determining ties between civilizations and establishing connectivity.

THE NEED FOR REVIVING LOST LINKS IN THE NEW AGE

The two ancient trade routes were the Silk Route – a land route linking China with Europe through Central Asia – and the Spice Route (also known as the Maritime Silk Route), a sea route linking India with Southeast Asia in the east and connecting West Asia and the coast of East Africa in the west. They covered a distance of over 15,000 km and functioned as arteries facilitating trade in the region.

Silk was the principal commodity traded along the land route, while spices were the most traded and proftable goods along the maritime route – supplying cinnamon, pepper, ginger, cloves and nutmeg. Other goods traded across these routes included textiles, wood work, metal work, incense, timber, saffron, tools, religious objects, art work, and more.

These routes functioned as bridges of cultural and religious exchange across the region. Islam and Sufsm entered India through Central Asia. With them came the Arabic and Persian languages, art and architecture, while Buddhism travelled from India to Central and East Asia via the Silk Route.

Similarly, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam were brought to Southeast Asia from India by Arab and Indian traders using the sea route. The influence of Dravidian architecture and the Sanskrit and Arabic languages can be seen strongly across many Southeast Asian nations, even today.

These routes played a signifcant role in the economic development and prosperity of civilizations and nations across the region, through exchanges of goods, services, and knowledge. Thus, both China and India are trying to rejuvenate these links due to their economic and strategic signifcance.

INTERCONNECTIVITY KEY TO ECONOMIC TRIUMPH

In 2013, China initiated the ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) project, comprising the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ and the ‘21st-Century Maritime Silk Road’ that focuses on interconnectivity and cooperation between China and Eurasia. The project aims to build multilateral mechanisms through six economic corridors – the New Eurasian Land Bridge, the China-Mongolia-Russia Corridor, the China-Central Asia-West Asia Corridor, the China-Indochina Peninsula Corridor, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the Bangladesh-ChinaIndia-Myanmar Corridor – to strengthen economic development and prosperity.

Of these, what worries India is the CPEC, as China is helping Pakistan develop a deep-sea port at Gwadar (one of the Pearls among China’s ‘String of Pearls’ encirclement strategy against India) that will serve as a transit for Chinese goods through the transnational Karakoram Highway, and connecting Pakistan and China through the land route, one of the routes that traces the ancient Silk Road.

To counter the Chinese presence in the Arabian Sea, India signed a pact with Iran in May 2015 to develop the Chahbahar port located on Iran’s south-eastern coast, which will give India sea-land route access to Central Asia and Afghanistan, bypassing Pakistan.

India is part of the International North-South Transport Corridor – a multimodal transportation system – that will connect India with Central Asia and Russia via Iran. The project, once implemented, will reduce cargo-transport time to Russia from the current 45-60 days to 25-30 days. A successful dry-run was conducted in 2014.

The Indian government is also emphasizing port-led development under the ‘Sagarmala’ project. This initiative plans to set up a series of ports, as well as coastal and inland shipping routes linked to road and rail networks, which will not just move cargo but also reduce the cost of domestic transportation.

The Sagarmala project is signifcant in this context, as these ports will act as drivers of economic activity by connecting India to the rest of the world via sea routes.

TRACING BACK THEIR LOST ROOTS

Like China, India also plans to connect with its neighboring nations through historical, cultural, and civilizational linkages. A couple of initiatives in this direction have been initiated by the Indian government and state agencies.

India’s ambitious and multifaceted Project Mausam was initiated by the Government of India (GOI) through the Ministry of Culture in 2014. The initiative is to be executed by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) as the nodal agency, with the support of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the National Museum as associate bodies.

The term ‘Mausam’ fnds its roots in the Arabic word ‘Mawsim’ which refers to the season when ships could sail safely. This wind pattern referred to as monsoon winds follows a regular pattern, which facilitated the movement of people, goods and ideas across the IOR, enabling exchanges of culture, ethnicity and religion.

To commemorate 60 years of diplomatic relations between India and Oman, a joint Sail Voyage was conducted by the Indian Navy ship Tarangini and the Royal Navy of Oman ship Shabab from November 24 to December 3, 2015, under Project Mausam.

“Project Mausam is not aimed at countering China’s Silk Route strategy. Instead it focuses on monsoon patterns, cultural context, maritime trade routes, and coastal landscapes, and examines key processes and phenomena that link different countries along the Indian Ocean littoral as well as those that connect the coastal centers to their hinterlands,” said the Minister of Culture in Rajya Sabha (India’s Upper House of Parliament) in a reply dated March 3, 2016.

India has identifed 39 countries, including China and Pakistan, under Project Mausam, to obtain transnational nomination for World Heritage. An amount of 150 milllion rupees crore was approved by the government for Project Mausam for the period April 2015 to March 2017.

The project was to be implemented by March 2017, but now fnds itself in troubled waters with respect to meeting its deadline. The reason attributed for this delay is lack of coordination among multiple agencies, with a lot of work pending. Another such initiative is the ‘Spice Route Project’ from the state government of Kerala, backed by the GOI to revive the ancient Spice Route under the Muziris Heritage Project (MHP). The Spice Route Project aims to re-establish maritime trade ties with 31 countries along the ancient spice route that will help boost tourism and revive cultural links.

The project is centred on the ancient port of Muziris in Kerala, where archaeological traces have been unearthed since the year 2000. MHP is also one of the biggest conservation projects in India, initiated at a cost of 940 million rupees crore, which aims to preserve a culture of over 3,000 years across an area of 150 square km. The first phase of the MHP was inaugurated by Pranab Mukherjee, President of India, in February last year.

Over the last decade, archaeologists have traced 129,000 artefacts, some dating back to the Iron Age, presenting proof of trade with the Mediterranean and the Arabian Peninsula during the Roman era.

In September 2015, the ASI suspended the Kerala Council for Historical Research’s (KCHR) licence to excavate at the Pattanam site in response to a complaint fled by a rightwing group. However, in December 2016, the ASI closed its enquiry and renewed the license. As a result the funds dried up and the research came to a standstill.

The project now faces an unpredictable future due to objections by certain groups, lack of funds and the retirement of PJ Cherian, Director of the KCHR, who had led the excavations since its inception.

THE SMART WAY FORWARD

The idea is to connect India with littoral states in the IOR and re-establish its ancient political, cultural, religious, and trade ties through archaeological and historical research along the Maritime Routes, and revive India’s lost historical and cultural links with the world.

These initiatives indicate India’s use of ‘soft power’ in a smart way. The government will have to take strong measures for the effective implementation of these projects by minimizing multiple and overlapping agencies with a single nodal agency. Once successfully implemented, these will open new gateways for India on the economic and trade fronts as well as building people-to-people contact across nations, adding an impetus for India’s ‘Look East’ and ‘Link West’ Policies.

The author is a Mumbai-based foreign policy analyst, who also writes on maritime security and energy.