In an exercise straight out of a hilarious early 70s Ted Mark novel, like the one where the US President (a parody of Richard Nixon), undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, was asked by a doctor whether he was attracted to his mother, before another inquired if he had ever acted on it—I too was facing a similar situation, but in a woke mid-2020s fashion. First, I was asked whether I identified as male, and next if I had the necessary hardware provided by Mother Nature. And no, this wasn’t some gender rights imbroglio I unwittingly got into, but a questionnaire from a US-based Impact Startup Fund for their fellowship program, one whose DEI agenda far overshadowed their green credentials.
The rest of the questions were pretty staid: what you’re doing, why, who benefits, and so on. Until my non-bionic Terminator brain’s non-electric eye stumbled upon one for which I had no ready answer. It was like being back in college, sitting for a Corporate Finance paper—a subject I utterly detested, never understood, and had zero interest in then, with zero regrets about it now. If I now have the excuse of dyslexia and ADHD for barely scraping through Accountancy and Statistics, in Corporate Finance, I just slept through lectures, eyes wide shut, often helped by ganja smoked atop the library building beforehand, sometimes in the reading hall.
Thus, when I sat for the finals, I just wrote down whatever came to mind, though I am still convinced that I flunked the paper due to a severe stomach infection I had on that day and not my ignorance. The next year they passed me, hoping to see the last of me, not for any knowledge gained.
Coming back to the form, the question was: "Explain how systemic discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or any other factor has affected the field in which you are engaged?" Honestly, I had no answer. I made myself a cup of coffee and tried accessing any remaining archives in my terminator brain related to Corporate Finance exams, or at least recalled how to get back into that mode. And before I knew it, I had my Eureka moment. Despite the urge to run down the street in Archimedes' style and dress, I settled for returning to my desk with mild euphoria, having cracked the biggest puzzle that has plagued me since I began designing and developing green sustainable boats—why the hell wasn’t anyone interested in the subject?
From the first time I pitched for a government-owned refinery's startup ideation grant to the country’s leading tech accelerator, the result was always the same: utmost disinterest and inevitable rejection. Surely, the problems I presented—like the shortage of rescue boats during recurring annual floods, unsafe medieval boat designs, and the fact that scores, sometimes over a hundred people, drown each year in Indian boat accidents—would resonant with someone? My innovative proposal to use bamboo composites, the most sustainable plant material, should have appealed to climate tech advocates and funds. But no, nothing! After about 20 or 22 rejections, I shifted gears and claimed that I would first design an electric boat motor for the armed forces, with bamboo composite boats only as test beds. That's when I finally got my first grant. Fine, I built both.
The reply to the question is that the root cause of apathy towards boats and water transport lies in faith, more specifically, the most nautical sector-unfriendly religion in the world: Hinduism!
While the ancient Greeks had Poseidon, Christians have St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors, the Chinese have Guanyin, protector of the seas, and the Arabs crossed the Indian Ocean under Allah’s protection, the Hindus—except for the Chola empire and coastal communities like the Kachis, Malabaris, and a sprinkling of Marathas—all believed that crossing the ocean made them lose their caste and religion. Thus, there is no single pan-Indian Hindu sea god, no matter what the online Hindutwawadi revivalists and YouTube experts claim: at most, some local demi-gods.
Even when Ram had to rescue Sita from Ravana in Sri Lanka, instead of building a flotilla of warships to reach the island, he used an unpaid monkey labour force to build a highway across the strait. In all the branches of Hinduism, water is for drinking, bathing, and pouring over the heads of gods. Rivers are all declared holy and hence meant for rituals, immersing ashes of the dead, and performing daily ablutions—you got it, having a crap.
Most riparian and coastal communities, along with their professions like boat-building, ferrying, and fishing, were invariably relegated to lower castes. Even after many converted to Islam or Christianity, their social standing didn’t change even after independence. They may have got some education, quotas and reservations, and a few health facilities, but nothing has been done to modernize their tools of trade or traditional livelihood. Their boats remain as primitive as they were at the dawn of the century, with not a single government program for affecting any positive change, either with modern technology or by upgrading their skill set.
This is not surprising, since post-independence economic policymaking has been shaped by those with an upper-caste, middle-class mentality. For them, both then and now, river and water transport never played any significant role. In fact, in their zeal to improve irrigation during the Green Revolution to boost agricultural production, they collectively destroyed the hydrology of most Indian rivers with an almost compulsive spree of dam and barrage construction and canal digging. As a result, most rivers today are either running dry, have raised beds from accumulated alluvial deposits, and floods are occurring in places that never had them before. Predictably, all riverine connectivity has been cut by multiple dams, with no vessel locks ever built to facilitate boat traffic. What was once a vibrant river transport system across the subcontinent has been relegated to forgotten history.
This same disregard for all things nautical extends beyond rivers to the sea. Despite India’s massive coastline, relatively cheap labour, and domestic steel production, the country has less than 1% of the global shipbuilding market. Meanwhile, South Korea, a country the size of India’s northeastern region, commands 30-35% of the market.
For once, it wouldn’t be wrong to blame the gods for the current state of India’s rivers and maritime industry.
And yes, the US DEI chaps didn't select me for their fellowship either...
To those interested in learning about the absence of Divine (Hindu) presence in India's maritime tradition, I will highly recommend reading Devdutt Patnaik's article on the subject. The above image has been copied for his article as well, needless to say, without his permission.
