march 21, 2015
Indias Ocean?
The right questions are not being asked about the countrys (aggressive) Indian Ocean strategy.
ver since the subcontinent, ensconced between the
mountains in the north and the sea in the south, has been
India, its centre of gravity has remained firmly in the
northern plains, watered by the Indus and the Gangesits
name itself, India, has been given by one of the northern-most
rivers. The Himalayas have been both sentinel and gateway. Yet
the oceans which surround India on the west, south and east
have always brought people and goods from Africa, Arabia and
South-East Asia, acting as bridges for perhaps as long as, if not
for longer, than the passes of the Hindu Kush.
The British colonial dispensation was the first all-India state
to emerge from the Indian Ocean and take its control of these
seas seriously. The viceroy in Delhi was responsible to the British
Empire for controlling the sea lanes between Aden to the west
and the Straits of Malacca to the east. At independence, India
inherited some of the colonial states responsibilities in this
ocean but was soon found wanting.
Over the last decade and more, the Indian state, parallel to its
growing economy and international clout, has sought to ramp
up its presence in the Indian Ocean and claim the status of
primus inter pares within it. It has had a dominant, and domineering, relation with the island states of Seychelles, Mauritius
and Maldives and also, to a large extent, with Sri Lanka. In the
attempt to redefine the Indian Ocean as Indias Ocean, India has
been encouraged by the United States and West Europe which
have found it increasingly difficult to continue to police these
waters the way they did for about four centuries. Indias rivalry
with China has been the pivot on which Indias new interventions have turned, whether it is the Indian Ocean Rim Association or the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical
and Economic Cooperation.
Prime Minister Narendra Modis manifestly successful trip to
Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka (and the very public decision
to drop Maldives from the itinerary) has been a continuation of
this foreign policy vision. Modi delivered some military hardware
and offered some economic and political sops, and received in
return the use of two islands, one each in the Seychelles and
in Mauritius, for India to build military bases on. In Sri Lanka,
the Prime Minister further strengthened relations with the
new dispensation of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime
Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe, which has replaced the
pro-China former President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
Economic & Political Weekly
EPW
march 21, 2015
vol l no 12
Parallel to this new diplomatic foray, there has been a
renewed stress on building the capacities of the Indian Navy to
enable it to play a blue water role. In the past few years the
Indian Navy has sent its ships to patrol the coast of Mozambique
on a request from its government and has been among those
leading the international efforts to stem the piracy which
threatened the shipping lanes emerging from the Suez Canal.
With a long, albeit slow-moving, factory line of ships and submarines lined up for induction, the Indian Navy seems well on
its way to fulfilling this role in the coming years.
Overall, despite differences over the nuances and inflections
of Indias new foreign policy and strategic vision, much of
domestic opinion has been laudatory and supportive. From
nationalist hawks to the drafters of Non-Alignment 2.0, from
the mandarins in South Block to the peak-caps of the defence
services, all have welcomed this break from Indias obsessive
focus on its northern borders and neighbours to a more rounded
view of its world. This congratulatory atmosphere has not allowed
some basic questions to be asked of this new vision and concomitant policies, particularly about the enhanced role that the
Indian state has conferred on itself in the Indian Ocean.
What is the economic foundation for Indias forays into the
Indian Ocean? The British colonialists and the American imperialists needed to guard their trade routes and fuel supplies.
These provided the motive as well as the money to fund their
military adventures. The Chinese today have deep economic
interests in protecting the sea lanes in the Indian Ocean through
which most of their imports of fuel traverse and a large part of their
manufacturing exports are shipped. The Indian states pockets,
while much deeper than two decades ago, are still too small to
finance such a great game. Among all the big players jostling
in these seas, India seems to be the only one whose political and
military ambitions far exceed its economic capability.
Further, there seems to be no strategic clarity, far less a consensus,
regarding the purpose of Indias new military strategic assertion,
as distinct from the consensus over its desirability. Is establishing
hegemony, or at least domination, over the Indian Ocean essential
for Indias territorial unity? Is this necessary for the maintenance
of its economic growth trajectory? Is the spread of Indian goods,
services and capital to the states of the Indian Ocean littoral dependent on its military control of this sea? Prima facie, the answer to
all these questions is no. Can this strategy then be sustainable?
7
EDITORIALS
Neither the present nor previous governments have engaged in
a debate around these questions, nor have the security experts,
analysts and think tanks asked them. It has been assumed that
taking over the role Curzon envisioned for the British Indian state
is a natural progression for independent India; the only lament
has been that the successor state has taken so long to do so!
march 21, 2015
vol l no 12
EPW
Economic & Political Weekly
