They have a shared history, and now officials want to unite India and the Arab world as two major trading blocs. The Indus and Ganges rivers on the one hand and Tigris and Euphrates and Nile rivers on the other were home to some of the world’s first civilisations. And that, officials believe, matters for the future.

In recent days, India has reached out to its Middle Eastern partners in a major way. Last week, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj went to Bahrain to attend the first ministerial meeting of the India-Arab League Cooperation Forum.