Apparently, sea travel was considered taboo in many Hindu sects, if you believe "A History of Sea Power" by William Oliver Stevens. I found that hard to believe at first, and thought it was a misconception based on the author's early 20th century bias (think the kind of book that uses "Oriental despotism" seriously), so I looked around a bit and found out it was a real belief. A serious enough offense to possibly lose one's varna (i.e. caste), in fact.
What would Indian history be like if Kala Pani did not exist? Would India have been a major sea power? Am I overstating Kala Pani's importance, since many Indians found ways around it (Islam, repentance rituals within Hinduism, etc.)?
Despite not knowing much about this, I feel qualified to have an opinion.
My first thought is that since India did not exist as a single coherent entity, it's quite likely that a concept forbidding sea travel was much more prevalent inland than in coastal areas. I am pretty sure that most of the early Mughal emperors saw the sea only once in their lives (I have read this but can't remember where) and would have had more contact with Europeans and Chinese than sailors.
Of course, this is also a Hindu issue, and the rulers of Hindustan and Golkonda were Muslim for several hundred years, and during the time of global exploration. So this probably would not have had a major effect on the rulers' attitudes to sea travel. My hunch is that they just weren't interested, due to the rulers' lack of proximity to the sea. Where is the incentive to travel by seas? India was a very rich country and took up a major proportion of the silk route. Traders from Europe and China would take routes through India, so spices and tea were easy enough to get from the east, and gold and silver from the west. Add to that the fact that India was the only source of diamonds until they were discovered in South Africa and you have a large number of disincentives to travel. The inflexibility of caste may or may not have also contributed to this inertia.
If there was something that India needed that could only be found overseas or perhaps if someone like Akbar had set up a capital at a port city then things may have been different.
One last thing - a lot of sailors (from memory - 80pc - I think that's from a book called Asians in Britain) who worked on East India Company ships were Indian. So there were plenty of sailors I think.