'India once ruled Dubai': Nithin Kamath’s post revives a forgotten colonial chapter

Dubai, Oman, Yemen were once ruled from Delhi. A post by Zerodha co-founder Nithin Kamath has cracked open a buried chapter of colonial history, exposing how vast swathes of the Gulf and Southeast Asia were once governed as part of British India.

“I didn’t realise that lands from Muscat and Oman, the UAE, all the way to Burma were once part of the British Indian Empire,” Kamath wrote on X, after reading The Shattered Lands by Sam Dalrymple. 

Dalrymple’s research dismantles modern assumptions that British India stopped at the borders of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. As recently as 1928, the Indian Empire encompassed Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. 

These territories were administered by the Indian Political Service, defended by Indian troops, and reported to the Viceroy in Delhi. Under the Interpretation Act of 1889, they were legally part of India.

“The Persian Gulf was the heart of the Indian sphere,” wrote historian Robert Blyth in Empire of the Raj. British control in the Gulf was strategic—buffering British India against French and Russian threats in the 19th century. 

After the Suez Canal opened in 1869, the region’s importance soared. London’s grip tightened through treaties known as the “system of protection,” crafted in Bombay and enforced by Indian officers.

Yet the empire’s true reach was hidden. British maps excluded Gulf protectorates to avoid antagonising the Ottomans. “As a jealous sheikh veils his favourite wife,” one lecturer joked, “so the British authorities shroud conditions in the Arab states.” Lord Curzon even claimed Oman was as much a princely state as Kelat.

Up until March 1947, the Gulf was governed from India. But fearing post-colonial claims, Britain abruptly handed control to the Foreign Office in London, removing all Indian authority before independence. According to Gulf Resident William Hay, it would have been “inappropriate” to let newly independent India or Pakistan deal with Gulf Arabs.

Indian historians largely erased this legacy. “Nationalists presented India as Bharat, ancient and pure,” Dalrymple noted. But the British conquest had nothing to do with Indianness—just trade, strategy, and control.

Kamath, pondering The Anarchy by William Dalrymple, drew a parallel: “As trillion-dollar companies rise, what happens if they turn evil, too?”