When economist Sanjeev Sanyal pitched the idea of a stitched ship and was told “don’t drown,” he didn’t just watch it sail. Five years later, he climbed aboard and crossed the Indian Ocean himself
Muscat – In what may become folklore among sailing enthusiasts and historians, sometime in 2020 Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India, made a five-minute, five-slide presentation pitching the idea of a stitched ship. Giving his go-ahead, PM Narendra Modi said, “Karo.” In an afterthought, he advised, “Doobna mat (don’t drown).”
Five years later on January 14, 2026, Sanyal sailed into Port Sultan Qaboos to a rousing reception on the stitched ship INSV Kaundinya, which he had proposed to PM Modi. Flagged off from Porbandar in India’s western state of Gujarat in the presence of Issa Saleh al Shibani, Ambassador of Oman to India, it docked after a historic 18-day transoceanic crossing.
Among others, the reception was graced by Azzan bin Qasim al Busaidi, Undersecretary for Tourism in the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism, and Sarbananda Sonowal, India’s Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways. The ship’s maiden voyage was proposed in the joint statement issued following His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik’s visit to New Delhi in December 2023.
The ship is named after the first Indian mariner known by name. Kaundinya sailed from the eastern coast of India to present-day Cambodia, where he married a local princess and founded the Funan dynasty. Its design was inspired by a 5th-century vessel of which there is no surviving blueprint; only a painting in the Ajanta Caves in Maharashtra, India.
Funded by India’s Ministry of Culture, INSV Kaundinya was constructed using a ship-building technique called ‘tankai’. Prevalent 2,000 years ago along the Indian coastline and across the Indian Ocean, it entailed stitching wooden planks together with coconut coir rope to make the hull and sealing it with natural resins like ‘kundroos’. Stitching – not nailing – the wooden planks together made ships flexible, so when powerful waves hit, the vessels bent, not broke.
Cooked and stitched
The technique involves steaming jackwood to bend planks into the desired shape. This demands unforgiving precision in the duration and temperature of steaming. Preparing the coconut coir to stitch the wood planks together calls for more culinary procedures! The coir is baked in salt and cured before being made into ropes to give it strength.
Construction of the ship in Goa by artisans from Kerala led by master shipwright Babu Sankaran commenced in September 2023. One of the last few craftsmen who knows the tankai technique, Sankaran also helped build the Jewel of Oman – reconstruction of a 9th century Arab dhow – in 2008. The ship’s design – in which naval architect Commander Hemanth Kumar of the Indian Navy had a key role – was validated through hydrodynamic model testing at the Department of Ocean Engineering in IIT Madras.
INSV Kaundinya’s sails bear motifs of Gandabherunda (a mythical two-headed bird, a form of the Hindu deity Vishnu) and the Sun, the bow is adorned with a sculpted Simha Yali (a guardian creature from South Indian lore that protects human beings both physically and spiritually), and a symbolic Harappan-style stone anchor rests on her deck – each element evoking the rich maritime traditions of ancient India.
Though expected to cover the 1,400km distance from Porbandar to Muscat in 15 days, the ship lost the first three out at sea as winds blew in from the west. Designed with square sails, two sailing oars, neither engine nor rudder, the 19.6m long, 6.5m wide and 3.3m tall ship weighing 50 tonnes was blown north towards Mandvi, from where the voyage was once planned to begin, before catching favourable winds.
The Indian Navy crew on the ship’s maiden voyage comprised 13 champion sailors and four officers, skippered by Commander Vikas Sheoran and Commander Hemanth Kumar as officer-in-charge. Also on board was Sanyal – ex-banker, author (Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India’s Geography and The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History among others), named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2010, former Principal Economic Adviser to the Finance Minister and currently a Secretary-rank bureaucrat in the Government of India.
Skin in the game
Sanyal decided to sail the ship which has no creature comforts – no air conditioning, not even beds – owing to “skin in the game”. “For all the research and preparations, the ship is still an experiment and the voyage was risky. If I expect a crew of 17 young men to trust my design and risk their lives on it, then it is fair that I too am willing to do the same,” he said.
The crossing was “physically challenging”, but he was not seasick nor did he have any particular difficulty. “While this was my first open ocean voyage, I am not unused to water sports. I have sailed many times before and have instructor grade certification in both kayaking and canoeing. Moreover, we all trained for months on INSV Kaundinya and I participated in some of the sorties as well. So, I did not have any special difficulty beyond what everyone else in the crew faced.”
In a talk he delivered at the National Museum on January 19, on a lighter note he said he wouldn’t let “someone else have all the fun”. “I have India’s first paragliding licence. When I got married, I was banned from flying. So that one I gave up, but I’m not going to give up every one. This was my payback.”
Asked if there was a particular moment or incident from the voyage that will stay with him, Sanyal said there were too many to recount. “The crew experienced everything from stormy winds to absolute calm, hot days to chilly nights, rolling waves to glassy seas. At times we were in despair as we were blown off course, at other times the ship was cutting through the seas purposefully towards Oman. The warm reception at Sultan Qaboos harbour was indeed special.”
Having visited Muscat earlier, Sanyal likes the setting of the mountains and the sea. “I also like the architecture and look that give the city a unique feel. And then there is the culture, the friendly people and the food. I love coming to Oman.”
Referring to collaborations with Oman on the project, Sanyal said, “Captain Saleh (al Jabri), who skippered the Jewel of Muscat, provided us with a lot of tips on both construction and sailing technique. These were very useful for refining our own ideas for INSV Kaundinya.”
The ship will remain in Muscat for assessment and maintenance before returning to India. Its next voyage may be eastwards, from Konark on the eastern coast of India to Bali, Indonesia.
The ship that began as a scribble
(Excerpts from talk delivered at National Museum on January 19, 2026)
“It was while sitting in the Ministry of Finance at the height of COVID-19 that this idea of actually building the ship began to take shape in my head. So imagine the situation. It is the North Block in New Delhi – a huge colonial-era building and there’s nobody else there. I was a part of the core team that was managing the economy during the lockdown. There were probably five people who had to come to office: the Honourable Finance Minister and three or four of the secretaries and me. I was then the Principal Economic Advisor to the government.
“So we were in the empty building, of course doing work, but there’s nobody else to talk to. Nobody even to make coffee because it’s a lockdown. I was sitting there waiting for maybe a conference call to start because most of the meetings were online. And I began to scribble something on the side and somewhere along the way, I wrote up this proposal to build this ship. Maybe it was just idle mind, devil’s workshop! I don’t know. But somewhere along the way, I had a presentation to make to the Honourable Prime Minister. And one of the liberties I take is that if I have a half-hour slot, I make the relevant presentation in about 25 minutes, and usually present a new idea in the last five minutes. I’ve done it now for long enough that he almost expects it. So that particular presentation was on this idea to build the ship. He looked at me and then he said, do it, but don’t drown.
“With that assurance, I took the idea to the Ministry of Culture, which said, OK, we have the resources to fund it, but your problem is to figure out how to build it, because we don’t know how to build it. I drew a line drawing, but of course, I have no idea how to build a ship either. That is when I began to research the Jewel of Muscat and then I discovered Babu Sankaran.
“I was thinking of the Indian Navy, but I also at that time reached out to the Merchant Navy and shipbuilders and shipyards. Initially they didn’t sound entirely enthusiastic about the idea, understandably so as this was completely out of the box and not really within their skill set. So this is where I was kind of in the middle of managing the economy through probably the biggest economic crisis the world has ever seen.
“It was something that I did on the side maybe to keep myself sane. I will not say I was 100% sure I would succeed. And so there I was in December of 2021, writing the Economic Survey which is published along with the budget. I had a team in which there was a young economic service officer called Gurvinder Kaur. One day she came up to say her husband is in the navy and wanted me to sign my book. So I said, yeah, whatever and in came Hemanth Kumar and I signed his book. Along the way, he mentioned that he’s not in the mainline navy, but he’s actually in the naval architecture wing. So I said, aha, I have my victim. I handed him this idea, not sure how he would react, but it turned out that he was quite enthusiastic. And he has been hooked ever since.”
