India’s Arab memory

We all know the Arab world as a vital source of oil and gas for our energy security, an important trade and investment partner and home to some six million of our compatriots who send back billions of dollars of vital remittances that help fuel our growing economy.

But the Arab world also offers an instructive example of something rather special in international relations: a context in which people-to-people connections are fundamental to the success of the relationship.
My personal contacts with the Arab people have left me with a deep sense of appreciation of the historic, cultural and civilisational ties that bind India and the Arab countries. Our ties predate our emergence as nation states. The Arabian Sea has connected us since the days when primitive dhows crossed its rather tranquil waters to India, bringing traders, smugglers, missionaries and migrants to our shores. Our own intrepid sailors travelled resolutely in the other direction for centuries too. Our trade certainly precedes recorded history. There is evidence, for instance, of trade links between the Harappan civilisation and that of Dilmun in the Gulf. The ongoing excavations in and around the Red Sea coast continually produce fresh evidence of ancient contact. India has long loomed large in the Arab imagination, a place of alluring beauty, a source of silk and spices, and a fraternal land for travellers and traders alike.
The early years of the 20th century saw a revival of these historic links. Indian soldiers participated (under the British flag) in the arduous military campaigns in Egypt and Palestine in the First World War and in the bloodier battles in Iran, Syria, and Iraq during the Second World War. The post-First World War years, marked as they were by the beginning of the end of Western colonialism, witnessed much interest in the fortunes of the Arab and Islamic world within India’s own freedom movement. The Khilafat struggle, led by Mahatma Gandhi and calling for the restoration of the Ottoman Caliphate at the end of the First World War, perhaps best exemplified this: it served as a major unifying force within the Indian nationalist movement, even if its thrust was soon rendered irrelevant by the ascent of Kemal Ataturk to power in Turkey. One of India’s great nationalist leaders, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, president of the Indian National Congress in the crucial years leading up to Independence, was born in Mecca and studied at the famous Al-Azhar University of Egypt. The leaders of our freedom movement closely monitored developments in Egypt and other countries, a trend that was also noticeable after we gained freedom. The struggle of the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria and President Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal and the Suez Crisis of 1956 were two important historical developments that found resonance in India’s support for Arab peoples.
Many Arabs, especially from the Gulf countries, lived and worked in India, developing close relations with the country. Before the post-1973 oil boom dramatically increased Arab incomes and widened educational possibilities, many Arabs, again especially from the Gulf, were educated in India. I have come across Arabs of a certain age from Kuwait, Bahrain, the Emirates and Oman who learned English at schools in India, picked up smatterings of Hindustani and habits (such as drinking Indian tea) which they have preserved in Arabian adulthood.
Direct knowledge of India is not, of course, necessary for Arabs to enjoy the popular Indian cinema of Bollywood, which consolidated its hold on Arab viewing publics when the political isolation of Egypt after its peace with Israel in 1977 meant that Egyptian films were banned in many parts of the Arab world. Though that ban has long since been lifted, Indian cinema remains popular. I recall meeting the owner of the major cinema theatres of Oman and being told the principal fare on offer was Hindi movies; asked if that reflected a considerable Indian presence in his country, he replied that over 90 per cent of his audiences were Arab. An Indian diplomat serving in Damascus informed me a decade ago that the only publicly displayed portraits in that city that were as large as those of the then President Hafez al-Assad were posters of the Indian megastar Amitabh Bachchan. Such extensive familiarity continues to predispose many Arabs favourably towards India.
A crucial element in consolidating Indo-Arab relations has been the presence of a large, growing and highly successful Indian expatriate community, particularly in the Gulf.
When, in recent years, the Gulf region, awash in newfound prosperity after its discovery of oil and the raising of its price, took up the massive expansion of its infrastructure and welfare institutions, India came forward with its human resources, initially blue-collar but increasingly progressing to professionals. The numbers were significant, with Indian workers often exceeding the population of the host countries themselves. It was said in the early 1980s that the largest ethnic group in Bahrain was not Bahrainis but Keralites from India. In the UAE, it is unofficially estimated that 90 per cent of the population is expatriate, and more than 70 per cent of those are Indians. With Gulf Arabs thoroughly accustomed to seeing Indians in their midst, India’s presence in the Arab imagination is not just historical or commercial, but involves a far more intimate mutual dependence affecting every sphere of daily life.
In view of the large Indian population in the region, a number of issues come up from time to time relating to the welfare of the Indian community, particularly expatriate workers. Many heartrending stories have been told about the working conditions of some of the Indian blue-collar workers on construction sites and their residential conditions in labour camps. Though they are undoubtedly there of their own free will, and suffer these difficulties in order to send savings back home, we need to do what we can, in co-operation with the host countries, to ease their conditions of life and work.
The fact remains that there is no aspect of the Gulf economy which has not been touched by an Indian contribution. The people of India in the Gulf and the Arab world have contributed immensely to the economic development of both India and the countries they reside and work in. Win-win is clearly the word.

The writer is an MP from Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram constituency