- Lived:
- born 1669 at Suvarnadurg, a sea fort on the Konkan coast south of Bombay (Mumbai) → his whole life within gunshot of the Arabian Sea; died 4 July 1729 at his island capital of Kolaba, off Alibag, undefeated
- Field:
- naval command — Sarkhel (Grand Admiral) of the Maratha navy; master of some 240 miles of the Konkan coast for three decades
- The Big Idea:
- Sovereignty does not stop at the beach. Anyone sailing India's coastal waters — British, Dutch and Portuguese included — needed his paid permit, the dastak, exactly as the Portuguese had made Indian ships buy theirs for two centuries; and for thirty years, no European navy could make him stop.
- In their words:
- The English "had broken faith with him, and henceforth he would seize their vessels wherever he could find them" — his answer to Bombay, around 1704, as the East India Company's own records preserve it; the Company kept his threats carefully, in reported speech, and he kept every one of them.
- If you remember one thing:
- The British called Kanhoji Angre a pirate, which is what a navy calls a navy it cannot beat. He taxed the sea the Europeans had taxed before him, defeated every expedition they sent, and died in his bed with his flag still flying — and today the Indian Navy's establishment in Mumbai answers to his name: INS Angre.