On any open field of red laterite several long lines of fighters jogged in from various directions, loudly chanting fight songs. These Africans were dressed in every outlandish manner of cheap hand-me-down, including fake fur coats, old motorcycle and construction helmets, and torn woollen ski caps. Some of the men were even dressed like women, with small coconuts strapped to their chests to indicate breasts. Each man carried a banana stem to use as a weapon. Small boys tagged behind them. The atmosphere was menacing, as if real violence would occur. Then individual fights broke out. Soon there was a vast melee, with battles raging on every front, and the crowd of onlookers rushing out of the way in this direction and that to avoid being trampled by the fighters. Dust flew. After an exhausting hour of combat, the village women in loud khangas marched in from all sides, singing. Soon the fighting died down, a fire was set, and the Persian festival celebrated by Africans was brought to an end.
Later, people gathered at the beach for a picnic. Dhows, like ideograms of the wind itself drawn in rapid ink strokes, went out from the shallows. Small waves broke and it was as if the whole universe reverberated. Beyond a coral reef several miles out lay the entire expanse of the Indian Ocean, stretching all the way to Indonesia. I thought of Oman and India, and the other places in between where I had been. In particular, with the Shirazi festival uppermost in my mind, I thought of an old Persian trader whom I had met many months before in Kolkata.
To his friends his name was Habib Khalili. To Indians in Kolkata, his name was Habib Khalili al-Shirazi—that is, Habib Khalili from Shiraz, in Persia. In Persia his name was Habib Khalili al-Shirazi al-Hindi—that is, Habib Khalili from Shiraz, and more recently of India. Habib Khalili was a tea merchant. He claimed to have forty relatives in Singapore, and more in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi. “My real country is the Indian Ocean,” he had told me, his fingers racing through the noisy night air, as though hankering for prayer beads.
We were in the house in Kolkata where he had been born in 1928, full of potted plants, piles of old newspapers, and the moan of traffic through neoclassical columns and the French windows left open for the sake of the monsoon breezes. By the end of our conversation it was dark enough so I could no longer see his face. He had been reduced to a mere excited voice, leaping up and down like his fingers, a vestige in the flesh of the powerful magnetism of Iranian culture and language, whose veins still reach unto Bengal, on the border with Southeast Asia, and southwest unto Sofala in northern Mozambique.
“There are more Persian graves in the Deccan than there are trees,” he said, referring to India’s southern plateau region. “Fifty percent of Bengali used to be Persian loanwords. With the severing of Muslim East Bengal in 1947, it is now 30 percent. Iran,” he went on, “is a country that has never been conquered, and yet has never been free.” His conversation was like that, jumping without transitions from one issue to another. I could not hold him still.
I did not bother to check his figures: Persian influence in the Indian Subcontinent has always been substantial. Farsi was the official lingua franca in India until 1835, when English finally replaced it, and until the early modern era it was universally understood in Bengal. Sunil Gangopadhyay’s novel about nineteenth-century Calcutta, Those Days, intimates how Persian was a second language.17 In the seventeenth century, many of Dhaka’s artists, poets, generals, and administrators were Shias who had migrated from Iran.18 Mughal rule from the sixteenth through eighteenth century bore a heavy Persian imprint. The Subcontinent, no less than Mesopotamia, illustrated the importance of Iran. And Iran, as the trader intimated, while never colonized, had its affairs constantly interfered with by European powers. Unable to claim formal oppression, Iran developed feelings of oppression that became that much worse.
“My family ultimately traces its roots back to Hebron, in the Holy Land, whose Arabic name is Khalil, ‘dear friend of God.’ My great-great-grandfather was a merchant in Kashmiri shawls. He trekked three hundred years ago from Kashmir to Shiraz, city of Hafiz, ahh,” the trader said, referring to the fourteenth-century poet who was a Sufi mystic—and whose sensuous verses about pagan fire and red wine presaged the chivalric ballads of late medieval Europe. “My great-great-grandfather’s wife’s family was from Madras. Her brother, who had made a fortune in trade, needed a son-in-law for his daughter. So it was that my great-grandfather trekked from Shiraz to Madras to marry his cousin by marriage. He, too, made a fortune. Persians came to India for the same reason Europeans came to America—for opportunity. A portion of the family eventually went to Calcutta from Madras because of the indigo and opium trade. After opium, we became tea brokers.
“My father was a tea exporter. The tea would be packed in wooden chests that were stitched over with cowhide. The boxes of tea crossed India from Bengal to Rajasthan, then by camel into Baluchistan, and to Zahedan in Iran. Northward to Mashad and Ashgabat [now in Turkmenistan] where we had depots. Ashgabat was lost to Russia by the Qajars. The cowhide shrunk in the dry heat, sealing the boxes tighter. That raised the quality and the price of the tea.”
He began talking about the cherry red tea made from Nile water that they drank in Sudan, and about Darjeeling tea that in his mind was of a higher quality than some of the teas in Sri Lanka.
“I would like the whole of the Indian Subcontinent to be reunited. Look at us and Bangladesh: same script, same language, same accent, same food,” he asserted, even as he admitted that India itself was not pure. Interrupting himself once again, he spoke about how the shalwar kameez, unlike the sari, was not Indian in origin but Persian. “We’re all gypsies,” he said. “Where are you going to draw the borders?” He was like a man with dementia, whose disconnected thoughts and memories kept whirling around a single theme that he struggled hard to hold on to.
“Have you been to the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then you know that it is a pagan fire temple, a Hellenistic beauty, a synagogue, a church, and a mosque. To call it one thing separated from any other is to miss the whole point.”
This dense, fluid, interconnected world comprising Africa and the southern rimland of Eurasia is, as the Persian trader intimated, hard to disaggregate geographically and culturally, thanks in part to the monsoon winds. Greater Indian Ocean civilization speaks in a plethora of voices, yet it also maintains the element of an integrated whole. The scholar Vali Nasr adds a component to this in his 2009 book, Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World. Nasr’s thesis says, in effect, that by concentrating so one-dimensionally on al-Qaeda and radicalism, we have missed the real development of this epoch: the emergence of a bourgeoisie in the Greater Middle East and beyond. This, I may add, is happening alongside the destabilizing effects of extreme poverty, environmental devastation, and unresponsive governments in too many places. Hence, the challenges that most people in the Indian Ocean region face are only indirectly, if at all, related to Islamic terrorism and the military rise of China. Precisely because so many of the challenges—and hopes and dreams—of this new middle class are personal and materialistic, there will be increasing calls for better government and, yes, democracy. Iran’s regime will become a thing of the past in this vision, and even in Oman some change will have to come, for its one-man rule, as impressive and relatively liberal as it has been, will not be ultimately sustainable. Indonesia’s moderating democracy could become the lodestar of the Muslim world.
There is no more clarifying example of this middle-class phenomenon than the editorial slant of the Qatar-based Arab television channel Al Jazeera, whose English-language version constitutes a feast of vivid, pathbreaking coverage of the travails of the weak and the oppressed throughout the Indian Ocean region and larger former third world. As I watched Al Jazeera many a night throughout my travels, it became the vicarious equivalent of the conversations I was having from Oman to Zanzibar, of which the one with the Persian trader was the most emblematic. The fact that Doha, Q
atar’s capital, is not the headquarters of a great power—even as it is geographically in the center of the Indian Ocean world—liberates Al Jazeera to focus equally on the four corners of the Earth rather than on just the flash points of any imperial or post-imperial interest. Some in the United States see Al Jazeera as biased, but that only reflects their own biases. Al Jazeera’s reporters cry out for justice, even as they are honestly representative of an emerging middle-of-the-road, middle-class viewpoint in developing nations. To wit, a new bourgeoisie arises, even as its members are insecure, and see in a new light injustice all around them. The vicissitudes of extremism notwithstanding, a replica of the pre-Portuguese Muslim-Hindu trading cosmopolis is now being rebuilt, buttressed by Chinese investment. In this new Indian Ocean world, it is hoped that Sri Lanka will achieve a new stability, putting its ethnic differences behind it as its government is gradually forced to adjust to the rigors of peace. Meanwhile, new trade routes will open between India, Bangladesh, Burma, and China, with the linkages between great and small powers as dynamic as the tensions.
Indeed, the challenge to America, ultimately, is less the rise of China than communicating at a basic level with this emerging global civilization of Africans and Asians. As for China, I’ve already indicated that it is rising militarily in a responsible manner. It will have its own problems in expanding its maritime influence into the Indian Ocean. And in any case China is not necessarily America’s adversary. But unless America makes its peace with these billions symbolized by the Greater Indian Ocean map, many of whom are Muslim, American power will not be seen as wholly legitimate. And legitimacy, remember, is a primary feature of power in the first place. In an earlier chapter I said that strong American-Chinese bilateral relations going forward are not only plausible but might be the best-case scenario for the global system in the twenty-first century, allowing for true world governance to take shape. But that is true only so far as the bilateral world of nation-states is concerned. As the former third world forges a new kind of unity, driven by mass media like Al Jazeera that abets an underlying cultural synthesis, the Afro-Asian multitudes will increasingly be in a pivotal position to bestow prestige or condemnation on America, China, and other powerful states, depending upon the merits of each particular crisis. They, in addition to being participants, are the supreme audience for power politics in the twenty-first century.
Great-power politics will go on as they always have, with the American and Chinese navies quietly competing and jockeying for position in the First Island Chain, and India and China competing for sea routes and influence. But these activities will be framed more and more by a global civilization, the product of a new bourgeoisie that in and of itself constitutes a moral force with which to be reckoned.
Hundreds of millions of Muslims and others, quietly elevated into the middle classes, are seeking to live peaceful, productive lives, even as they confer legitimacy on the great power or powers whose actions help them in what my Persian friend and the novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah both say man is ultimately on earth to do—“to trade.” Trade is what Zheng He did, and while the Chinese navy celebrates his Indian Ocean exploits, America, too, could learn much from this Ming Dynasty explorer, who saw military activity as an expression not only of hard but of soft power as well: to help protect the global commons and a trading system for the benefit of all. Only by seeking at every opportunity to identify its struggles with those of the larger Indian Ocean world can American power finally be preserved.
* Twenty-five percent of Swahili is composed of Arabic words, with a smattering of Persian (Farsi), Cushite, and Hindustani.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Perhaps the most unforeseen pleasure of this project was my introduction to various academic works that constituted an inspiration in the course of my journalistic research. These are books whose standard of excellence and level of detail I cannot hope to attain. Let me name just a few; the rest are in the various footnotes scattered throughout the text: Janet L. Abu-Lughod’s Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (1989), C. R. Boxer’s The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415–1825 (1969), Richard M. Eaton’s The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 (1993), K. M. Panikkar’s Asia and Western Dominance (1959), John F. Richards’s The Mughal Empire (1995), and André Wink’s Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, volume 1 (1990).
My assistant, Elizabeth Lockyer, is without peer, and took the lead in arranging the maps for this book. My editors at Random House, Kate Medina and Millicent Bennett, played a crucial role in making this exploration possible and in shaping the manuscript. Thanks, too, to Frankie Jones and Lindsey Schwoeri. The Atlantic Monthly published several chapters of this book in abbreviated form, and in this regard I am grateful for the editorial help and fact-checking of James Bennet, Justine Isola, and Scott Stossel, and especially that of James Gibney. I also published an essay on the Indian Ocean in Foreign Affairs, and I thank the editors there—James F. Hoge Jr., Gideon Rose, and Stephanie Giry—for their expert help and the prominent placement they awarded the piece. Once again I thank my agents, Carl D. Brandt and Marianne Merola, for looking after my career and interests the way they have.
The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in Washington, D.C., provided me with an institutional home while I researched and wrote this book. I cannot thank CNAS enough for all the help and encouragement that came in so many forms. To name a few people there would seem to slight the many others at CNAS who also assisted me. Nevertheless, let me name the former management team of Kurt Campbell, Michèle Flournoy, and James N. Miller Jr., now all members of the Obama administration, and the new team of Nathaniel Fick and John Nagl, as well as the research assistance of Seth Myers. The Smith Richardson Foundation provided me with financial help for this project, and there I thank, in particular, Nadia Schadlow for helping me through the grant process. I am also grateful to the Aspen Strategy Group for allowing me to participate in the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue.
In Kolkata, Gautam Chakraporti arranged a memorable trip along the Hooghly River for me. In Islamabad and Jakarta, Kathy Gannon and Henk and Emmeline Mulder provided me with the warmth, friendship, and accommodations of their respective lovely homes. In Zanzibar, Emerson Skeens rented me a charming little apartment, and provided much help besides. Lieutenant Colonel Larry Smith literally got me out of jail in Sri Lanka. Brannon Wheeler, my colleague at the U.S. Naval Academy, and Abdulrahman Al-Salimi of the Ministry of Religious Endowments worked together to arrange a series of lectures for me to deliver in Oman, allowing me to visit that country.
Other crucial help came from Jeffrey Anderson, Michael H. Anderson, Robert Arbuckle, Claude Berube, Gary Thomas Burgess, Robin Bush, Jon Cebra, Kingshuk Chatterjee, Eugene Galbraith, Kiki Skagen Harris, Timothy Heinemann, Fauzan Ijazah, Dilshika Jayamaha, Tissa Jayatilaka, Shahzad Shah Jillani, Douglas Kelly, Joanna Lokhande, Edward Luce, Mohan Malik, Harsh Mander, Scott Merrillees, C. Raja Mohan, Kiran Pasricha, Ralph Peters, Indi Samarajiva, Nick Schmidle, Professor Stuart Schwartz, Mubashar Shah, Arun Shourie, SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda, Shashi Tharoor, and Paul Wolfowitz.
I once again thank my loving wife of twenty-seven years, Maria Cabral, without whom much of this would have been impossible.
GLOSSARY
abangan: the population of Indonesians who practice a syncretic version of Islam.
Abu Sayyaf: Islamic separatist group based in the southern Philippines.
Akhand Bharat: Greater India (Hindi).
alluvial soil: earth deposited by a river or other running water.
amphora: an ancient vase or jar with handles.
ASEAN: Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
astrolabe: an astronomical instrument used until the seventeenth century to calculate the positions of celestial bodies, survey, triangulate, and determine local time and latitude.
auliya: protector, saint (Arabic).
Awami League: a center-left political party in Bangladesh.
bamboo
curtain: euphemism for the boundary separating China and other communist states of East Asia from their noncommunist neighbors.
baraza: stone bench, sitting area, meeting place (Swahili).
bhangra: traditional folk music and dance originating in Punjab.
BJP: Bharatiya Janata Party, a Hindu nationalist party.
BNP: Bangladesh Nationalist Party, a center-right political party.
BRAC: Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, a nongovernmental development organization.
bunkering: the refueling of a ship.
burka: a loose, all-enveloping garment with net holes for the eyes worn by some traditional Muslim women in public.
bustee: slum (Hindi).
caliph: successor of Muhammad and spiritual leader of Islam.
canton: a territory or division of a country.
carrack: a Portuguese sailing ship of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
chapatti: an unleavened bread originating in India.
char: a temporary delta island formed by silt.
charpoy: a bed with a frame woven with rope, used primarily in India.
Chindits: a British India military unit serving in India and Burma during World War II. The name is an anglicized corruption of the name of a mythical Burmese lion.
Civic United Front: a liberal political party in Tanzania composed mainly of ethnic Indians and Arabs.
Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power Page 39
