Old connections: not new to India

Global connections are not new to India. For thousands of years, people, goods and ideas have moved in and out.

• The Silk Route linked India with China, Persia, Egypt and Rome, carrying silk, spices, cotton and ideas.
• Traders, conquerors and migrants came to India and many settled, adding to its culture.

The economist Amartya Sen gives examples of this old exchange:

• Panini, the great grammarian who systematised Sanskrit grammar, was of Afghan origin (he came from Gandhara).
• The Chinese scholar Yi Jing learnt Sanskrit in Java (Indonesia) on his way to India: Indian learning had spread across Asia.

Ancient Sanskrit texts even warn against being a kupamanduka: the frog in a well, who lives its whole life in the well and is suspicious of everything outside it. Openness to the world was valued.

Colonialism was itself global. It needed capital from Britain, raw materials from colonies, and markets across the world. It shipped people across oceans: indentured labourers from India to plantations in Fiji, Mauritius and the Caribbean, and enslaved Africans to the Americas.

After independence, India kept a global outlook: it supported liberation struggles in Asia and Africa, led the non-aligned movement, and people, goods and technology kept moving in and out.

So the connections are old; what is new is the scale and speed of today's globalisation.