Thinking About the Indian Ocean and the Mausam Initiative

Abstract

The Mausam Initiative has not met the expectations with which it was announced. As a flagship initiative of the Government of India, its programmatic framework remains unclear and the understanding of the Initiative unifocal. Apart from the effort to transcribe it in the UNESCO’s world heritage list, there is little clarity on how the ancient, mediaeval and premodern histories of the Indian Ocean (IO) may resonate with our times and concerns. There is also little thought put to what this can mean in writing a revisionist history of the Indian Ocean World and what that revisionist writing would mean to India’s relations with its IO neighbours. This article will outline briefly the Mausam Initiative as it stands and what a revisionist history of the IO region could suggest. Many of the discussions around this are already present around the IO intellectual and scholarly circuit, dislocating notions of dominance, sovereignty and statecraft. It remains for policymakers to take note of these to nuance the Mausam Initiative and make it an actually effective arm of policy.