Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network

Episode: Dr. Nidhi Mahajan, "Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean"
Host: Regan Gillum
Guest: Dr. Nidhi Mahajan
Date: September 13, 2025
Book Discussed: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean (University of California Press, 2025)

Episode Overview

This episode features Dr. Nidhi Mahajan, whose ethnography "Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean" explores the contemporary dhow trade, focusing on connections across the Indian Ocean, especially between South Asia and East Africa. The conversation covers how Indian Ocean seafaring communities navigate shifting political, economic, and social landscapes, and how practices such as hospitality, patronage, and poetry shape lives lived in perpetual movement across land and sea.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Origins and Inspiration for the Book (02:35–10:31)

• Personal and Academic Journey:
  Dr. Mahajan’s interest began with her experiences traveling to Kenya as a child and formalized through academic study at the University of Michigan and Cornell.

  • “I was really interested in examining the shape of these connections in the contemporary moment and how Indian Ocean trade continued in the margins of states through small scale traders.” (03:24)

• Fieldwork and Key Relationships:
  A chance encounter with dhow sailors in Mombasa fundamentally shifted her research direction, especially through a relationship with a captain pseudonymously called Yusuf.

  • “Upon meeting Yousef, he insisted that to understand the Vahan trade, I would have to be as mobile and itinerant as the Vahan itself.” (08:04)

• Ethnographic Method:
  Embedded, itinerant fieldwork across ports in East Africa, India, the UAE, UK, and Oman, with research grounded in relationships of friendship and patronage.

2. Orientation to the Dhow World (11:43–20:06)

• Definition and Diversity of Dhows:
  The term “dhow” is both a colonial abstraction and a local practical category referring to a range of wooden seafaring vessels in the Indian Ocean.

  • “The label dao... is less a technical term and more an abstract concept... it is more ‘you know it when you see it.’” (12:03)

• Historical Context:
  Dhows have long been intermediaries in Indian Ocean trade, leveraging monsoon winds and now using diesel-powered engines, filling logistical gaps that large container ships cannot access.

• Community and Marginality:
  Dr. Mahajan worked especially with Badala and Waghir Muslim communities from Gujarat, whose seafaring labor is shaped by caste, religious, and gender marginality in India.

  • “Contending with their marginality produced by caste and religious difference in India, they voyage out to sea, capturing profits across the Indian Ocean…” (18:25)

3. Theoretical Framework: Moorings and Voyages (21:26–28:26)

• Concept of Moorings:
  Moorings are points of attachment—physical, social, and conceptual—anchoring lives and capital in motion. They are always temporary, allowing for both past and future movement.

  • “A mooring…is a place, a thing, a practice, as well as an action by which an otherwise floating, mobile vessel might be attached to land until it is unmoored and set sail once again, only to be moored elsewhere.” (22:47)

• Relationship to Capital and Sovereignty:
  The interplay between moorings and voyages mirrors the dynamic relationships between capitalism and sovereignty, as profits and power are extracted through legal and spatial navigation.

  • The book organizes itself as a series of “voyages” across “moorings”—each chapter pairing lived practices (e.g., hospitality, patronage) with specific places.

4. Hospitality and Negotiating Sovereignty (29:20–37:06)

• Hospitality as Practice and Analytic:
  Hospitality on dhows—sharing meals and space—is essential in smoothing tensions and forging relationships in unfamiliar or contested ports, disrupting fixed notions of guest and host.

  • “Arrival in a new port necessitates making connections. These are logistical, personal, operational, and governmental.” (30:14)
  • “Hospitality became a way to upend ideas of the guest and host…they actually have to be made.” (36:10)

• Historical Resonance:
  Narratives of hospitality stretch back to figures like Ibn Battuta, reflecting ongoing practices of relational negotiation over sovereignty in port cities.

5. Geopolitical Arbitrage and the Flexibility of Dhows (38:13–45:34)

• Dhow Trade as Arbitrage:
  Profits arise not just from moving goods but from maneuvering geopolitical conditions—wars, sanctions, shifts in regulation—where container ships become immobile.

  • “They would often describe what they do as…being the Uber of shipping: wherever you need to go, we’ll take you there.” (38:52)
  • “Geopolitical arbitrage... is made possible through these pivotal stable nodes in the Indian Ocean.” (44:41)

• Risks and Rewards:
  This arbitrage is far from riskless; sailors often face incarceration, the destruction of their vessels, and threats to their lives.

6. Ethnographic Methods, Risks, and Gender (48:08–53:12)

• Researching Itinerancy:
  Fieldwork required following the movement of both vessels and people; long-term relationship-building was crucial.

  • “The people were the mooring…not necessarily the places.” (53:04)

• Embodied and Gendered Risk:
  Mahajan recounts both physical and gendered challenges: walking precarious planks onto ships, negotiating male-dominated spaces, and confronting assumptions about her identity.

• Role of Women:
  Connections with sailors’ families, especially women, provided emotional anchors and practical access across different ports.

7. Poetry as Affective Mooring (53:12–59:34)

• Poetry in the Book:
  Poems written by Mahajan, inspired by the affective world of sailors and their families, are woven between chapters to evoke the emotional undercurrents of seafaring life.

  • “The poems were written by me…written at a time when I was doing the research…trying to take in the emotional world of the sailor and his wife at home.” (54:21)
  • The poetic form draws on the ghazal, capturing distance, longing, and attachment in both worldly and spiritual registers.

• Purpose and Practice:
  Poetry acts as an affective scene-setting device, supplementing ethnographic analysis with emotion and language resonant in the Indian Ocean worlds.

8. Future Projects and Closing (60:17–63:46)

• Upcoming Work:
  Dr. Mahajan plans to rest post-book, co-edit a special issue on feminist Indian Ocean worlds, and possibly expand research on infrastructure and indigeneity on the Kenyan coast.

• Dream Project:
  She mentions a long-term aspiration: writing a novel centered on the Indian Ocean.

Notable Quotes and Moments

• “Upon meeting Yousef, he insisted that to understand the Vahan trade, I would have to be as mobile and itinerant as the Vahan itself…and become moored and unmoored in different port cities.”
  — Dr. Nidhi Mahajan (08:04)

• “The voyage is contingent upon the possibility of a mooring. And for me, the mooring became a way to articulate material and social practices across different ports.”
  — Dr. Nidhi Mahajan (23:40)

• “Hospitality became a way to upend ideas of the guest and host…undo those aspects as stable categories, and actually see them as a constant negotiation.”
  — Dr. Nidhi Mahajan (36:10)

• “They would often describe what they do as…being the Uber of shipping: wherever you need to go, we’ll take you there in one trip.”
  — Dr. Nidhi Mahajan (38:52)

• “The people were the mooring…not necessarily the places.”
  — Dr. Nidhi Mahajan (53:04)

• “The poems became like an affective mooring for me. It was like, what is the sensibility of this chapter?... to capture a whole world without having to analyze it.”
  — Dr. Nidhi Mahajan (57:45)

Important Segment Timestamps

• 02:35 — Mahajan describes her background and inspiration for the study.
• 11:43 — Introduction to dhows, the complexity of their definition, and their role in trade.
• 21:26 — Explanation of “moorings” as a conceptual and material anchor.
• 29:20 — Discussion of hospitality, guest-host negotiations, and port encounters.
• 38:13 — “Geopolitical arbitrage” and how dhows navigate global politics for profit.
• 48:08 — Ethnographic method: doing participant observation “on the move.”
• 53:12 — The function and genesis of poetry in the book.
• 60:17 — Mahajan’s next projects and the importance of rest.

Summary in Brief

Dr. Nidhi Mahajan’s "Moorings" is a rich ethnographic journey tracing contemporary Indian Ocean dhow commerce, anchored in childhood memories, rigorous scholarship, and immersive fieldwork across multiple countries. The episode elucidates how lives, capital, and meaning are continuously made and remade in motion—through practices of mooring, voyaging, hospitality, and arbitrage. Mahajan’s integration of poetry and a keen reflexivity about method, emotion, and ethics makes her book both a conceptual and affective exploration of worlds usually hidden from view.