Strengthening Ocean as a Substitute for India's Land Diplomacy

Be it India’s strategic interest in South Asia or Southeast Asia, its foreign policy strategy has been more tilted towards landmass connectivity. Deeper engagements with its nations of south Asia and Southeast Asian countries have been attempted primarily taking up arterial developmental projects.

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Bus diplomacy with Pakistan, Bangladesh, road link with Tibet and linkage with South East Asia also through road- the Ganga Mekong Project-are noteworthy movements in this direction. But what is our success rate? Surely, it will give a sombre picture of our foreign policy choices. Is it not time enough for our policy framers to look beyond land that is to tap the relatively untapped strategic and economic importance of its ocean base?

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is yet to become a potential force primarily due to the growing sense of insecurity among the member countries towards India. Realistic assessment of India’s Look east policy will also depict the fact that India is yet to achieve the desired role and the biggest failure of Look east policy can be seen as failure to involve Japan in building economic relationship. Whatever success it has achieved in South East Asia, it is primarily due to its strategic positioning in ocean.

After the 9/11 blast, when it was reported that Al Qaeda is planning a major maritime terrorism in one of the choke points in the region to inflict major disruption in global trade and energy supplies, security of the ocean had suddenly become a subject of great importance not only for the member-countries of the ASEAN, but also for China, Japan, Australia and the US. It was US navy’s circumstantial engagement in Afghanistan and later in Iraq that provided ample opportunities to India to flaunt his maritime capabilities. US authorities even sought the help of Indian Navy in 2002 to escort their ships on their way to the Persian Gulf area from the Pacific. Joint naval exercise with countries like US, Australia, Japan, and Singapore from time to time has also strengthened India’s naval power credibility.

The US has been trying hard to expand its vital naval influence in South Asia with the help of India just to contain Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean region. As Israel has been expressing concerns over the nuclear proliferation into its neighbourhood by Pakistan and reportedly intended to hide its nuclear arsenal from the radars of US, there is also a possibility that the country may approach India with a proposal to deploy nuclear submarines in the Indian Ocean in a near future. With an attempt to secure a foothold in the Persian Gulf region, China had invested heavily in the Gwadar deep sea port as it provides China a transit terminal for crude-oil imports from Iran and Africa to its Xinjiang province. Additionally, due to its positioning, it can monitor US naval activity in the Persian Gulf, Indian activity in the Arabian Sea and other maritime cooperation activities with India in the Indian Ocean. Considering the immense importance of the ocean, media reports also claimed that during Indo-Pakistan war of1965, there were alleged Indonesian naval threat to the Indian Ocean. There have been reports that Indonesian President Sukarno had wanted the Indian Ocean to be renamed as the Indonesian Ocean.

Given the importance of the Bay of Bengal for the security of Asia, and the Arabian Sea as a passage for oil supplies to enhance global economic prosperity, India's security and economic concerns will impinge heavily on the Indian Ocean in the coming years. Surrounded by Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh and the mainland, the Andaman and Nicobar islands are of particular geo-strategic importance. Port Blair can be developed as a strategic international trade centre. Indian government should explore the possibility of setting up a trans-shipment port in Great Nicobar Island. At present, approximately 61 per cent of India’s export and import containers are trans-shipped through Colombo. Due to the Great Nicobar’s strategic location and easier access to eastern ports like Singapore, international vessels could have saved deviation time and cut cargo interest paid by Indian exporters for loading and offloading in Colombo. India could become a hub of the international cargo business if trans-shipment port will be set up there.

So as a logical conclusion, is it not wise to concentrate on our maritime and naval strength which is our own, instead of knocking the doors of others? In the analogy of Jawaharlal Nehru,”to be secure on land, we must be supreme at sea”. Additionally, prospects of business dynamism in the ocean will particularly sustain interest in India and draw nations towards it in the long run. The need of the hour is to explore the role of the ocean in promoting global maritime trade and security. The concept of ocean as an integrating and stabilising force has to be explored in its entirety.

Maitreya Buddha Samantaray

The author of this article is a Delhi-based security Analyst. He can be reached at samantaray.maitreya@gmail.com