When Dubai Was Almost Part of India

In the winter of 1956, The Times correspondent David Holden arrived in Bahrain, then a British protectorate. What he found in the Gulf—from Dubai to Abu Dhabi and Oman—was a region steeped in remnants of British India. From servants called bearers and dhobis to soldiers in Hyderabadi uniforms, traces of the Raj were everywhere. The Sultan of Oman spoke Urdu better than Arabic, and curry lunches were a cherished Sunday ritual.

What few realize today is that nearly a third of the Arabian Peninsula was, in fact, administered as part of the British Indian Empire in the early 20th century. A crescent of protectorates, from Aden to Kuwait, was governed from Delhi, policed by Indian troops, and subject to the Viceroy of India. Indian passports were issued as far west as Aden, which was administered as part of Bombay Province.

This connection, however, was kept largely hidden from the public. Maps showing the true extent of the Indian Empire were secret, and the Arabian territories were omitted from public documents to avoid tensions with the Ottomans or the Saudis.

By the 1920s, with Indian nationalism rising and London eager to redraw imperial borders, the ties began to unravel. In 1937, Aden was separated from India, becoming part of the Colonial Empire. The Gulf states remained linked to India until 1947, just months before India and Pakistan’s independence. British officials debated whether the Gulf might fall under the new nations, but the idea was dismissed.

This quiet administrative shift had enormous consequences. Without it, the Persian Gulf states might have been integrated into India or Pakistan like the other princely states. Instead, Britain retained control of the Gulf until 1971, with the region governed from Whitehall rather than Delhi, even as Indian rupees remained the currency and Indian shipping lines dominated trade.

The end of British rule marked the close of what David Holden called the Raj’s final outpost. Yet, while Gulf states remember their British connection, their governance from Delhi has been largely erased from memory. That amnesia helps sustain the myth of ancient sovereignty, though private recollections—like that of a Qatari elder recalling the privileged position of Indians during his youth—still linger.

Today, Dubai has transformed from a minor outpost of the Raj into a global hub. Few of the millions of Indians and Pakistanis who live and work there know just how close their homelands came to inheriting the Gulf’s destiny.