AHMEDABAD:
The latest terror attack on Mumbai came via sea route, 506-nautical mile from
Karachi, Pakistan. The Mumbai-Karachi sea route came under scanner again with
this incident.
Historically though, for ages, this route has been
known more for international trade and commerce. Even after Independence, there
were ferry services between Karachi and Mumbai.
"The cities and
ports turned international during the British regime. After they conquered
Karachi, the British encouraged this sea route for business as well as cultural
exchange. Gujarat is geographically between these two cities and thus that
connection too developed," said Professor Dwijendra Tripathi, business historian
and a former president of the Indian History Congress.
Tripathi
added that coastal cities of west India were always connected through the sea
route in the past. One can also find information about this in early scripts and
in various travelogues. " Periplus of the Erythraean Sea', a text written
between 1st and 3rd century AD by an anonymous author, gives an account of
various activities on the western coast of India. This is an ancient route and
after the British came to power, they developed Mumbai and Karachi as
international ports."
But with the Partition in 1947, all these links
suddenly snapped. Significantly, before Partition Karachi was part of Bombay
Presidency and the business-savvy communities often travelled across the region.
Gujaratis, Maharashtrians, Parsis and Goans made their way to Mumbai or Karachi
for business in that period.
Author Salman Rushdie has also narrated
his experience in the essay Step Across This Line' on Mumbai-Karachi sea route.
"During my childhood years, my parents, sisters, and I would sometimes travel
between India and Pakistan between Bombay and Karachi always by sea. The
steamers plying that route were a pair of old rust-buckets, the Sabarmati and
the Sarasvati. The journey was hot and slow, and for mysterious reasons the
boats would always stop for hours off the coast of the Rann of Kutch, while
unexplained cargoes were ferried on and off: smugglers' goods, I imagined
eagerly, gold, or precious stones. (I was too innocent to think of
drugs.)"
The Mumbai-Karachi ferry service however, continued till the
1965 Indo-Pak war put an end to it.