Expert Explains: How the voyage of INSV Kaundinya points to a deepening of Indo-Oman maritime relations and strategic partnership

At another, the voyage also celebrates the deep-rooted maritime, cultural and civilisational ties between India and Oman that stretch back more than five millennia. As the two countries mark seventy years of diplomatic relations, Kaundinya’s arrival in Muscat symbolises a partnership that long predates the modern nation-state, with the Indian Ocean serving as a corridor of commerce, culture and ideas.

Shared maritime heritage

India–Oman relations are anchored in a shared maritime heritage. During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Oman in December, the two sides signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Maritime Heritage and Museums, formally acknowledging that the relationship is not merely strategic or transactional, but civilisational in character. Oman — historically known as Magan — was, from at least the third millennium BCE, a major node in Indian Ocean exchange networks, specialising in shipbuilding, maritime commerce and the trade in copper, frankincense, timber and pearls.

From the time of the Indus Valley civilisation, the exchange networks that were established between India and Oman, have not only been sustained but they have adapted to changing international environments over the centuries. This has proved of great advantage to both the peoples. 

India has been one of the biggest suppliers of cotton to the outside world along with luxury objects and Omani seafarers were one of the earliest to recognise India’s potential.  In turn India gained significantly by building maritime networks with the Magan region which was the main source of copper, vital for the metallurgical industry.

Oman’s strategic location at the junction of international shipping lanes helped greatly in connecting India with the more distant Roman world. It was the Arab-Omani sailors who acted as intermediaries when trade with the Roman world reached its peak in early first millennium This seafaring tradition produced navigators of extraordinary skill such as Ahmad bin Majid, the fifteenth-century scholar known as the “Lion of the Sea”, whose treatise Al-Nuniah al-Kubra remains a classic of navigation and cartography. Over time, Oman emerged as a major maritime power, shaped as much by geography as by its sustained engagement with Indian ports.

People-to-people ties

Maritime commerce fostered dense people-to-people connections. Omani merchants were present in ancient Indian ports such as Arikamedu, Muziris, Sopara and Nelcynda. By the early Islamic period, sizeable Omani communities had settled along the Malabar coast. Arab historian Al-Masudi recorded in the tenth century that nearly ten thousand Arab Muslims, including many from Oman resided on India’s western coast. Conversely, merchant communities from India’s western coast like the Gujarati Jains and Bohras were welcomed in Oman.

Their descendants today form a valued segment of Omani society — living testimony to centuries of mobility across the Arabian Sea. In 1870, A Gujarati merchant — Ramdas Thakersay — arrived in Muscat from the town of Mandvi. Tapping the trading linkages and strong people to people ties, Ramdas’s venture over the time flowered into one of the most powerful business conglomerates in Oman-The Khimji Ramdas Group. Kanaksi Khimji who took this legacy forward was bestowed the honorary title of ‘Sheikh’ by Sultan Qaboos that made him the only Hindu ‘Sheikh’ in the world. 

Cultural imprint of the linkages between India and Oman are abundant. Folklore preserved in the tales of Sinbad in the Arabian Nights reveals a deep familiarity with India in the imagination of the region. Flow of traded goods like horses, dates, spices, textiles, sandalwood, indigo, tea and rice has been accompanied by flow of culture. Pilgrimage for the Hajj has also ensured constant movement of people and ideas.

The strategic dimension

The Indian Ocean has historically been a zone of interaction rather than conquest — until the arrival of European maritime empires. At the turn of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese attempted to impose a violent monopoly over Indian Ocean trade by capturing ports and fortifying chokepoints such as Hormuz, Goa, Diu and Muscat. In resisting this dominance, Indian and Omani rulers forged one of the earliest examples of regional maritime cooperation.

Under the Ya‘aruba dynasty, Oman emerged as a leading force challenging European supremacy. In 1650, Imam Sultan bin Saif expelled the Portuguese from Muscat, inaugurating Oman’s rise as a naval power. Gujarati merchants, Arab sailors and Indian shipbuilders played a crucial role in sustaining Omani fleets. Teak from western India and shipbuilding expertise from Surat underpinned Omani naval expansion, laying the foundations of a strategic partnership rooted in maritime security.

It is therefore unsurprising that Oman became one of the first Gulf Cooperation Council ( GCC) countries with which India developed sustained defence cooperation. Geography has ensured that strategic interdependence remains inbuilt in the relationship.

Partners in a changing maritime order

Today, the Indian Ocean has re-emerged as a theatre of intense geopolitical competition. China’s growing naval presence, expanding partnerships among extra-regional powers, and the vulnerability of energy and trade routes have heightened the strategic value of reliable regional partners. For India, whose trade and energy lifelines traverse these waters, Oman’s location near the Strait of Hormuz makes it indispensable.

Prime Minister Modi’s visits to Oman in 2018 and 2025 reflected this convergence of interests. India’s access to the Duqm port has expanded its operational reach, while recent agreements — including a Joint Vision Document on Maritime Cooperation and a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement — signal a relationship geared to both security and prosperity.

In this context, the voyage of INSV Kaundinya acquires a significance that goes beyond symbolism. It links past and present, heritage and strategy, reminding both countries that their partnership is anchored not only in contemporary geopolitics but in a shared maritime civilisation that has endured for millennia.

Ashwin Parijat Anshu is Associate Professor, Department of History, Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi.