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Coast to coast

A book that goes beyond economic and political histories to explore the human angle

Overlapping worlds. Organic unity. A shared cultural landscape. These are some themes that weave together a collection of articles edited by Himanshu Prabha Ray and Edward A. Alpers and published as a book, titled "Cross Currents and Community Networks: The History of the Indian Ocean World", by Oxford University Press India. At a book release function in Teen Murti House this Thursday, an eminent panel commented on the book. On the questions it raised. And the answers it provided.

Multi-disciplinary inputs

Gita Dharampal Frick, daughter of noted Gandhian Dharampal and Visiting Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, observed that Indian Ocean Studies, which dealt with the vast geographical space from the Red Sea to the South China Sea, was becoming a discipline in its own right. Multi-disciplinary inputs had enriched it with their respective research methodologies.

She hailed the book as an effort to move beyond economic and political histories to explore the "human angle": the cultural and psychological dimension of the past. She also noted that the book had moved beyond Indo-centricism to cover Indian Ocean communities in Africa too. Further, it had "debunked" the notion that "the sea was peripheral to Indian consciousness", as argued by the Orientalists - a group of colonial scholar-administrators who had studied and translated early Indian texts. She saw in the book a "historical genealogy of globalisation"; a departure from "dichotomies between East and West"; and an emphasis on the trans-national character of culture.

She, however, said that the book did not explicitly deal with "the socio-economic and cultural institutions that nurtured the Indian Ocean network".

Rohan D'Souza, who teaches at JNU, noted that the French historian Fernand Braudel had drawn a distinction between "the world economy" - referring to the global economy in general - and "a world-economy" - referring to "a specific slice of experience". Fitting into this model, this book, Dr. D'Souza argued, dealt with an "organic unity" called the Indian Ocean World. He said that it went beyond nationalist historiography to look at larger, trans-national spaces of people's interaction.

Africa and Aceh

Michael Pearson, contributor to the book and expert in maritime history, said that its points of departure were the space it provided to Africa and Aceh - a break with the usual Indo-centric treatment of the Indian Ocean - and its emphasis on human interaction beyond trade. Mahesh Gopalan, another contributor, said that the book focused on "inter-connections" rather than mere ruptures. He said that the former needed to be further explored in order to move beyond categories like Ancient, Medieval and Modern World.

VIKAS PATHAK

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