The following presentation, excerpted below, was published in "Purbasa East meets East - Synergising the North-East and Eastern India with the Indo-Pacific".
There are perhaps few better places than Odisha to
discuss India’s growing role in world affairs. After all this was the
historical site of the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka’s war against the Kalingas. It
was after that conflict that Ashoka adopted his dhamma-his faith-grounded in
Buddhism. Edicts to spread his philosophy were commissioned and displayed as
far as today’s Afghanistan and Nepal and as far South as Karnataka, and they
appeared in different languages including Greek and Aramaic. Contrary to
popular myth, these were not declarations of Pacifism. Rather, Ashoka’s edicts
called for just and limited warfare, but they also elaborated upon norms
regarding how to manage conflict. He made startling claims not just about
sending missionaries but about links across the Hellenistic world, as far as
today’s Greece and Libya. Indeed, Ashoka’s efforts may represent the first
recorded attempt in history to establishing a liberal international order. In
many ways India’s recorded engagements with the world can be traced to this
region.
Odisha is also proof that economics and security have
always been deeply intertwined in Asia and Indian Ocean Region. European
traders were initially drawn to India between the 15th and the 18th centuries
by textile exports to finance the spice trade from South East Asia. The likes
of Portugal and England established trading outposts- factories- along the East
Coast of India. The first English outpost was in Masulipatnam in Andhra
Pradesh, but their presence expanded to include such places as Pipili and
Hariharpur in today’s Odisha not very far from Bhubaneshwar. The English and
other Europeans tapped into existing networks established by Indian traders
with South East Asia. The first East India Company vessel that arrived in Aceh
found Bengali, Gujarati and Malabari traders already present. Pre- Existing
trade networks already extended across a sizeable Indo- Pacific region, from
Formosa to Vietnam, from Siam to Sumatra, from Malacca to the Malabar and from
Gujarat to Hormuz.
Today we are rediscovering this natural commercial and
political links and the Indian ocean has grown in relative importance. It is
now a major conduit for sea borne International trade- which has seen a
four-fold increase since 1970- between the largest centres of economic activity
in the Pacific and both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Energy flows are
particularly important, with about 40 percent of world oil passing through
strategic checkpoints in and out of the Indian Ocean. The Ocean is also a
valuable source of natural resources, accounting for 15% of the World’s fishing
and significant mineral resources. This region is also important in its own
right, home to two billion people in some of the fastest growing parts of the
World: Southeast and South Asia, East and South Africa and West Asia.
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