Ind part of cultural project to connect Indian Ocean nations

The Union Ministry of Culture has launched a project to rekindle long-lost ties across nations of the Indian Ocean 'world' and forge new avenues of cooperation and exchange.
The 'Mausam: Maritime Routes and Cultural Landscapes' initiative was presented by Union Culture Secretary Ravindra Singh yesterday at the ongoing 38th session of the World Heritage Committee at Doha in Qatar.
One of the main deliverables of this project is nomination of maritime cultural landscapes across the Indian Ocean as a trans-national property on the World Heritage List of UNESCO, a press release here said.
The project, which has been launched by India in partnership with member states, will enable significant steps to be taken to record and celebrate this important phase of world history from the African, Arab and Asian perspectives.

The endeavour of the project is to position itself at two levels.
At the macro level, it aims to re-connect and re-establish communications between countries of the Indian Ocean world, which would lead to an enhanced understanding of cultural values and concerns among them.
At the micro level, the focus is on understanding national cultures in their regional maritime milieu, the release added.
The central themes holding the 'Mausam' project together are those of cultural routes and maritime landscapes that not only linked different parts of the Indian Ocean littoral, but also connected the coastal centres to their hinterlands, the release said.