Revisiting the Chola Mandalam Prospects of Port Prosperity from Chennai to Colachel
Cenkāntal
Ms. Diana Arachi
S
ince centuries, ports have been of utmost geopolitical and social importance in every country. Indologists and ardent readers of history are in many ways still uncovering the historical significance of port cities in trade and cultural exchanges.
Port Power Today, the Chinese Belt and Road (BRI) Initiative seeks to reconnect the conceptual ideas and trade links laid out by the Old Silk Road. Around 70 countries have signed up for the BRI, with another 140 countries engaging in other Chinese infrastructure and investment mega projects. The scale of expansion is rapid and big, yet certainly not the first of its kind. One may argue BRI borrows on the capitalist expansion of the East India Company and aspires to emulate the soft power reach of the Chola empire. Through strategic geographical agreements, China has successfully captured many port cities in Asia and Africa that are crucial to the success of the New Maritime Silk Road. China’s strategic valuation and highly coveted relations with the Pearl in the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka, may thus come as no surprise. In this context, port cities have not only become valuable possessions in a strategic game of chess and debt-trap diplomacy, but also symbols of national pride and geosecurity. Such large BRI infrastructure ambitions have however come at a heavy cost. Freedom of speech, muted media, restrictions on movement, wide-scale systemic human displacement and environmental degradation are but a few externalities.
South Indian port cities, despite their glorious past, have been spared of the extra-territoriality– or so it may seem.Tamil Nadu owns 1,076 km of India’s shoreline. The Chola Mandalam Coast (or Coromandal Coast) stretches across the South Eastern coastline covering many settlements from Chennai to Colachel. While Chennai has become the eight largest Indian metropolis, cementing its role in commerce and education, it also served as the first entry point for Colonial powers and is thus infamously also the Gateway to Century of foreign exploitation. The urban architecture in and around Old “White Towns” of Chennai and Puducherry stand testimony to an era un-proportionally etched in the records of history and firmly promoted by tourism boards. Many other places along the Chola Mandalam however have been in parts or in its entirety lost to nature and from memory. In this respect then, is it worthwhile to revisit the few key locations along India’s East Coast that bear immense potential for an economic and ecological renaissance. The suffix‘Pattinam’ refers to a town near the sea in Tamil. Unfortunately, the grandeur of these old Pattinams is captured in only fragments of historical anecdotes and parts of Sangam literature. Some still recognisable Pattinams include Chennaipattinam or Madrasapattinam or Adiramapattinam for Chennai; Devanampattinam for Cuddalore; Kaveripoompattinam for Poombuhar; Nagaipattinam for Nagapattinam and Thenaipattinam in present-day Kanyakumari District.
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