march 21, 2015

Economic & Political Weekly EPW march 21, 2015 vol l no 12 7

India’s Ocean?The right questions are not being asked about the country’s (aggressive) Indian Ocean strategy.

Ever 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 fi rmly in the

northern plains, watered by the Indus and the Ganges—its 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 fi rst 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 state’s “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 domi-neering, relation with the island states of Seychelles, Mauritius and Maldives and also, to a large extent, with Sri Lanka. In the attempt to redefi ne the Indian Ocean as India’s Ocean, India has been encouraged by the United States and West Europe which have found it increasingly diffi cult to continue to police these waters the way they did for about four centuries. India’s rivalry with China has been the “pivot” on which India’s new interven-tions have turned, whether it is the Indian Ocean Rim Associa-tion or the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 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.

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 sub-marines lined up for induction, the Indian Navy seems well on its way to fulfi lling this role in the coming years.

Overall, despite differences over the nuances and infl ections of India’s 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 India’s 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 con-comitant policies, particularly about the enhanced role that the Indian state has conferred on itself in the Indian Ocean.

What is the economic foundation for India’s forays into the Indian Ocean? The British colonialists and the American impe-rialists 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 state’s pockets, while much deeper than two decades ago, are still too small to fi nance 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 India’s 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 India’s 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 depend-ent on its military control of this sea? Prima facie, the answer to all these questions is “no.” Can this strategy then be sustainable?

EDITORIALS

march 21, 2015 vol l no 12 EPW Economic & Political Weekly8

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!