Control Malacca or be controlled: Great Nicobar and the Chola lesson for today’s Bharat

History asks every generation a blunt question: do you understand the geography of power, or are you willing to be ruled by those who do?

A thousand years ago, Rajendra Chola I, one of the greatest emperors of his time, answered that question with steel, strategy, and ships. He did what would have seemed impossible in his age: sending an armada across 4,000 km of open ocean to strike the Srivijaya kingdom in Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. This had not been done in the past and could only be replicated about five centuries later by the rising European powers.

The Strait of Malacca was then what it remains today — the beating artery of global commerce. Whoever controlled that narrow channel between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula controlled the flow of the world trade, and by extension global wealth.

By the 10th and 11th centuries, Bharat-China maritime trade had become enormously lucrative. There were two critical sea routes. The first passed through the Strait of Malacca, controlled by Srivijaya. The second ran through the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java, where Javanese influence remained strong.

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Srivijaya gradually gained dominance over both routes after defeating the Javanese and began extracting arbitrary tolls from merchant ships. It also wanted Bharat-China trade to terminate in its ports so that local intermediaries could profit.

This was unacceptable to the Cholas. Rajendra Chola understood a truth modern Bharat often forgets: trade routes are often instruments of power. He could have lived with the inconvenience, or could have sent strongly worded diplomatic protests. Instead, he sent a fleet — first in 1017 and then decisively in 1025.

A look at the expedition shows how even the minute details were planned. It is believed that the Chola fleet was assembled at Nagapattinam on the Coromandel Coast. From there, it seems to have sailed southwards towards Sri Lanka, then moved eastwards using Indian Ocean currents towards Sumatra. Entering the Sunda Strait, it received support and supplies from Javanese allies and local guides, and then advanced northwards into the Strait of Malacca. There, the Cholan fleet launched swift and coordinated attacks on Srivijaya’s ports.

The operation was so sudden, well-coordinated and precise that the Srivijayans had little time to organise their troops and resist. Their major port at Kadaram (present-day Kedah in Malaysia) was decisively struck. The Cholas displayed not only naval strength but extraordinary strategic planning, intelligence gathering, diplomacy and maritime logistics.

In Hindu Colonies in the Far East, historian RC Majumdar explains how the Cholan “conquest of Kalinga and the whole eastern coast up to the mouth of the Ganges was completed” before the naval expedition was sent to South-East Asia. “The naval resources of the whole of the eastern coast of India were thus concentrated in the hands of Rajendra Chola, and it was enough to tempt a man to get possession of the territory which served as the meeting ground of the trade and commerce between India and the western countries on the one hand, and the countries of the Far East on the other,” he writes.

That was no coincidence. It was sequencing: first secure the coast, then go for the sea. There was also a Chinese dimension. The Srivijayans had cultivated close ties with China’s Song dynasty. It was this alliance that helped them defeat the Javanese.

The Srivijayans, however, tried to contain the Chinese with the Cholas — and vice versa. In The Ocean of Churn, author Sanjeev Sanyal writes, “The Sri Vijaya would have been aware that the entry of the Chinese into the Indian Ocean could elicit a response from the Cholas. Thus, they simultaneously sent missions to the Chola kings and made generous grants to Hindu and Buddhist temples in Chola ports. Amusingly, Chinese records show that the Sri Vijaya were playing a double game because their diplomats were deliberately misrepresenting the situation by claiming that the Cholas paid tribute to them.”

The Cholas responded first with diplomacy. They sent envoys to China in 1015. The Chinese emperor received them with exceptional honour and invited them to imperial celebrations. This helped establish direct Chola prestige in China, bypassing Srivijaya’s manipulations.

When Srivijaya continued exploiting trade routes, Rajendra followed diplomacy with military action — first in a minor naval exercise in 1017, followed by a major one in 1025. This remains a timeless lesson: diplomacy without strength is merely polite pleading.

Bharat today faces two decisive maritime vulnerabilities. The first is the Strait of Hormuz. A massive share of our crude oil imports passes through that narrow corridor between Iran and Oman. Every missile strike in West Asia, every confrontation involving Iran, every American deployment in the Gulf sends shockwaves into Indian kitchens through fuel prices.

The second vulnerability is the Strait of Malacca. If Hormuz is Bharat’s energy intake point, Malacca is the world’s economic jugular vein. Nearly one-third of global maritime trade passes through this narrow channel. More importantly, nearly 80 per cent of China’s oil imports transit through it. This is Beijing’s greatest strategic vulnerability — the oft-quoted ‘Malacca Dilemma’. And this should be Bharat’s greatest strategic opportunity.

This is where the Great Nicobar Project becomes indispensable and non-negotiable. The project is not merely an infrastructure proposal. It is as much a geostrategic revamp as it is a civilisational correction. It is Bharat remembering who it once was, and how it can advance its geostrategic interests.

Yet, astonishingly, some of our political leaders have chosen to frame this as an environmental crime rather than a strategic imperative. One prominent opposition leader recently walked through Great Nicobar’s forests and declared the project “one of the biggest scams and gravest crimes against this country’s natural and tribal heritage”.

This is neither moral courage nor environmental activism. If anything, it is strategic illiteracy. Located barely 40 nautical miles from the western entrance of the Malacca Strait, Great Nicobar is a strategic gift most nations would went to wars trying to acquire. A fully developed Great Nicobar can — and should — become a transshipment hub, a forward naval base, an air force operating platform, a surveillance centre and a logistical nerve centre for Indo-Pacific power projection. In simple terms, Great Nicobar allows Bharat to move from watching Malacca to shaping it.

Even the Cholas understood the importance of these islands. Historical accounts suggest that after the successful Malaya expedition in 1025 AD, the Chola fleet stopped at the Nicobar Islands on its return journey.

A thousand years ago, Indian strategic thinking recognised what some of our modern elites refuse to see. Nicobar is not remote wilderness. It is forward geography. Ignoring this is not environmentalism; it is the worst of geopolitical negligence.

Some still pretend China can be managed through summits, slogans and optics. This is fantasy, and betrays a lack of shatrubodh (awareness of the enemy). The China of Rajendra Chola’s era operated within a civilisational framework that allowed strategic accommodation. The China of today, shaped by Maoist statecraft and hardened by expansionist realism, sees Bharat not as a partner but as a rival to be contained. Communist China studies chokepoints. It builds ports. It finances dependencies. It weaponises trade. It thinks in maps. And it strategically works to exploit others’ weaknesses.

Delhi must understand that control of the Malacca means leverage. Leverage creates deterrence. And deterrence creates peace.

Rajendra Chola understood this a thousand years ago. He knew trade routes were not passive spaces of exchange. They were arenas of power. Whoever controls chokepoints controls commerce. Whoever controls commerce shapes history.

Today’s Bharat does not need to come up with a new strategy. It just needs to remember what it has always known, historically and civilisationally, but has refused to acknowledge and follow.

(The writer is the author of the book, ‘Eminent Distorians: Twists and Truths in Bharat’s History’. The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.)