Opinion | How INSV Kaundinya Is Reviving Memory

By coming to life from images on ancient coins, carvings and murals, this stitched ship has become tangible proof of India’s long-sidelined maritime legacy.

Much is justifiably made of India’s recent foray into space, but heritage is also important to rejuvenate a nation’s soul. Culture and knowledge spread in ancient times over land and sea, and the notion that India sat still as merely a trading destination not as an active explorer itself is unacceptable and contradicted by evidence. The recent discovery of 2,000-year-old graffiti in Tamil Brahmi script in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt is one proof of voyaging Indians.

But before the ‘stitched’ ship INSV Kaundinya was launched with fanfare last year, not many Indians knew or realised that India had a long maritime legacy. Most history textbooks skimmed over it for much of the 20th century, going only so far as to note the excavation of a large Indus-Saraswati era shipyard and port in Lothal in Gujarat. Most students presumed it was to service foreign trading ships and that ancient Indian traders themselves mostly used land routes.

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Back in 1912, historian Radhakumud Mookerji wrote Indian Shipping: A History of the Sea-borne Trade and Maritime Activity of the Indians from the Earliest Times, which remains the most magisterial work on this now-neglected aspect of India’s heritage. But the Leftist historians who commanded the heights of Indian academia from mid-20th century ensured that voices like Mookerji’s were silenced and key questions were left unasked and uninvestigated.

Like, would the world’s oldest shipyard be found in a country and civilisation that supposedly had no significant ancient maritime history? Clearly not. Yet, despite Lothal being excavated in the 1950s, and later (but still ancient) ports also being unearthed throughout the 20th century — such as Arikamedu, Kaveripattinam Sopara and Bharuch — and even Muziris in the 21st century, there was no recent effort to elaborate on this intriguing aspect of India’s ancient history.

Nor did anyone care to join the dots when deep-sea or ocean-going ships were noted in ancient seals, temple carvings and cave murals from around India. Even mention of ‘sataritram navam’ — hundred-oared boat/ship — in the Rig Veda did not catalyse widespread contemporary interest in exploring this aspect of India’s heritage. Only former Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik opened a maritime museum in 2013 showcasing his state’s immense sea-faring legacy.

Judging by the perilous journey of the INSV Kaundinya from Porbandar to Muscat in 2025, there must be many Indian shipwrecks from the past 4,000 years buried under sediment on the sea-floor. Unfortunately, no ancient shipwrecks have been found off even the western coast either yet even though there is plenty of other evidence of brisk trade between India and Sumer/Mesopotamia and later Egypt and Rome. Modern technology may address that lacuna soon.

Till then, the INSV Kaundinya stands as the most eloquent testament to not only India’s expertise in shipbuilding but also the importance of pushing the boundaries and rekindling interest in a legacy that had been forgotten and then relegated to the sidelines despite growing evidence of its ancient prevalence. Why did post-colonial India not have the bandwidth or will to consider dispelling the narrative that it was largely a passive, unadventurous civilisation?

That Sanjeev Sanyal, a senior government economist with a passion for history recreated a stitched ship based on observation and intuition — wholeheartedly backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi — and sailed on it across an age-old trade route was more than fortuitous, it was serendipitous. Because the past decade has seen an unprecedented rekindling of interest in India’s ancient legacies as well as a reawakening of the spirit of adventure, endeavour and daring.

In another era, had anyone (much less a senior sarkari functionary like Sanyal) even thought of such a “crazy" idea, his bosses would have dismissed it as a frivolous indulgence at a time when a “developing nation" like India had greater priorities such as roti, kapda and makaan or building steel mills and factories. Economics not history was paramount, never mind that nations cannot truly advance without pride any more than trees can grow without roots.

But, as Sanyal recounted at an event organised last week by Khola Hawa called ‘Recovering Bharat’s Past, Bengal’s Heritage in Kolkata, between 2022 and 2025 an idea actually materialised into a stitched ship. That the Indian Navy, a private shipbuilder and an expert in the lost art of ship ‘stitching’ named Babu Sankaran collaborated to execute that idea shows how far India has come from the dismal days of subsistence economics and soul-sapping acceptance of inferiority.

The INSV Kaundinya truly encapsulates the long arc of India’s shipping legacy as it came to life from 4,000-year-old paintings of ships on potsherds and models found in Lothal, images of a stitched barge on the 1st century CE eastern gateway of the Sanchi stupa, a ship on a Satavahana period coin (2nd century CE) and a mural in Cave no 2 of Ajanta (5th century CE). Its creation and successful journey to Oman and back is therefore a “revival of memory" as Sanyal puts it.

Equally important is that Sanyal, a fit and youthful-looking quinquagenarian, himself sailed on the ship along with Indian Navy sailors, despite the cramped quarters, physical strain and total lack of modern conveniences on board except a GPS transmitter—to avoid being mowed down by a gargantuan oil tanker or freighter on the shipping channel that has remained extremely busy from antiquity to now. Walking the talk is as crucial as the ability to dream big.

Sanyal’s follow-through from concept to execution carries a message to Indians of all ages: always push the boundaries and never consider any idea too outlandish or any task impossible. The INSV Kaundinya’s journey with 18 men aboard chronicled on his phone camera also brings home how daring and tough our ancient ancestors were, undertaking journeys of discovery, conquest and trade on ships buffeted or becalmed on the whims of the weather gods.

The next journey that INSV Kaundinya has set its sights on, provided its keel and stitched wooden structure have survived the Arabian Sea foray unaffected, will be a longer one, from Odisha to Bali in Indonesia. That journey used to be undertaken from as far back as 2,400 years ago by hardy east-coast seafarers (apparently of both sexes!) who set off on Kartik Purnima to ride the north-east monsoon winds to south-east Asia and return on the reverse winds.

There is plenty of material evidence of considerable maritime and shipbuilding activity along India’s eastern coastline from the 2nd millennium BCE onwards, so a 2026 recreation of the ‘Bali Jatra’ — which is now just a symbolic festival in Odisha — by INSV Kaundinya will revive this memory too, for the generations of Indians who have never been encouraged to know about India’s incredible sea-faring legacy for much of the last century. The tide has turned.

The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.

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