In 1410, near the Sri Lankan coastal town of Galle, the Chinese Admiral Zheng He erected a stone tablet with a message to the world. His inscription was in three languages — Chinese, Persian and Tamil — and his message was even more remarkable: according to Robert Kaplan’s recent book Monsoon, it “invoked the blessings of the Hindu deities for a peaceful world built on trade”.

So a Chinese sailor-statesman called upon Indian gods as he set out to develop commercial links with West Asia and East Africa. There could be no better illustration of the cosmopolitanism of the Indian Ocean region, centuries before the word “globalisation” had ever been coined.
Zheng He’s travels six hundred years ago stand as a reminder of the economic potential of the vast waters of the Indian Ocean, which wash the shores of dozens of countries large and small that straddle half the globe, account for half of the planet’s container traffic and carry two-thirds of its petroleum. But far more interesting, perhaps, are the strategic implications of the Indian Ocean region. Kaplan’s premise is that the “Greater Indian Ocean”, from the Horn of Africa to Indonesia, “may comprise a map as iconic to the new century as Europe was to the last one” and “demographically and strategically be a hub of the 21st century world”. As an American analyst, he argues that this makes the Indian Ocean “the essential place to contemplate the future of US power”. Perhaps that is what US President Barack Obama was doing in early November, as he flew from India to Indonesia and contemplated the vastness of the Indian Ocean beneath.
From an Indian point of view, though, the strategic importance of an ocean, at whose central point our subcontinent stands, is easier to grasp. The Indian Ocean is vital to us as the place through which most of our trade is conducted; keeping it safe from the depredations of pirates or the dominance of hostile foreign navies is indispensable for our national security. Our coastlines represent both points of engagement with the world and places of vulnerability to attack from abroad (as we saw most recently on 26/11). What should we be doing about it?
One way of dealing with the Indian Ocean is to see it through a security prism, and that, I am sure, our defence ministry and our Navy, in particular, are already doing. The invention of an “Indian Ocean naval symposium” that brought together over 50 countries to talk about the Ocean is testimony to that. Another way, though, is to see the Indian Ocean’s potential for constructive diplomatic action. I am a believer in doing this through a sub-regional organisation that India did a great deal to start, and needs to do a lot more to sustain.
We belong to an unusual and perhaps undeservingly unknown international association that brings together 18 countries straddling three continents thousands of miles apart, united solely by the fact that the Indian Ocean washes their shores. That is the Indian Ocean Rim Countries’ Association for Regional Cooperation, cursed with the unwieldy acronym IOR-ARC, which unites countries as disparate as Australia and Iran, as dissimilar as Singapore and Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. I can’t think of many other groupings in which Madagsacar can exchange experiences in such a small forum with the United Arab Emirates, and both with India.
Regional associations have a wide variety of uses, and it’s fair to say they have not all been successful. Many would argue we haven’t fully exploited the potential of Ibsa (India-Brazil-South Africa), or that Bric, despite annual meetings of the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China, remains little more than a clever idea of an analyst at Goldman Sachs. So why try and make much of IOR-ARC?
For one thing, there isn’t another ocean on the planet that takes in Asia, Africa and Oceania (and could embrace Europe too, since the French department of Reunion, in the Indian Ocean, gives Paris observer status in IOR-ARC, and the Quai d’Orsay is considering seeking full membership). For another, every one of Huntington’s famously clashing civilisations finds a representative amongst the members, giving a common roof to the widest possible array of worldviews in their smallest imaginable combination (just eighteen countries). When IOR-ARC meets, new windows are opened between countries separated by distance as well as politics. Malaysians talk to Mauritians, Arabs with Australians, South Africans with Sri Lankans, Iranians with Indonesians. The Indian Ocean serves as both a sea separating them and a bridge linking them together.
We haven’t made much of it so far. IOR-ARC has been treading water, not having done enough to get beyond the declaratory phase that marks most new initiatives. The organisation itself is lean to the point of emaciation, with just half-a-dozen staff in its Mauritius secretariat (including the gardener!). I visited the rather forlorn-looking headquarters in Port Louis and was concerned at the staff’s perception that the member states had not yet accorded adequate priority to the association.
And yet the potential of the organisation — as a forum to learn from each other, to share experiences and to pool resources on a variety of water-borne issues — is real. IOR-ARC was, in many ways, India’s brainchild. To let it languish is not just to write off another bureaucratic institution; it is to give up on our leadership of a region that, whether we like it or not, is indispensable to us. To engage with it and seek to revive it will take time, effort, energy and some resources — not more than 21st century India can afford. IOR-ARC could be the diplomatic arm of a two-pronged strategy to make Indian Ocean security and political, economic and cultural cooperation two sides of the same glittering coin.
This is why we should not write off its immense possibilities. India must pledge itself to energising and reviving this semi-dormant organisation.
The brotherhood of man is a tired cliché; the neighbourhood of an ocean is a refreshing new idea. We all stand to benefit if 18 littoral states can find common ground in the churning waters of a mighty ocean.

Shashi Tharoor is a member of Parliament from Kerala’s thiruvananthapuram constituency