India, with its Indian Ocean partners like Singapore and Oman, is hosting the Eighth Indian Ocean Conference (IOC) in Muscat this weekend. Foreign ministers from around 30 countries in the region will be converging at the conference to discuss the future of this most happening region. Oman, the host, like India, has been a major seafaring nation and has maintained linkages with India for over five millennia. Both countries are strategic partners and work closely in many areas of development in the region.
The 16th-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, after observing the calm waters of the Pacific, called it “mar pacifico”, meaning “peaceful sea”. The Atlantic and Arctic Oceans got their names from Greek mythology. However, the Indian Ocean derived its name from the historical and civilisational influence that India wielded on the countries of the region. “Hind Mahasagar” and “Indian Ocean” have been familiar names for voyagers and explorers of the great oceans for millennia.
Discourse on the “Indo-Pacific” dominates the world today. But the “Indo-Pacific” is a geo-strategic construct, where big power competition is omnipresent. The “Indian Ocean” is a largely peaceful natural region connected by civilisation and culture. Vast expanses of the waters of the third-largest ocean in the world touch the shores of 26 countries. For many other landlocked countries like Nepal and Bhutan, the Indian Ocean remains a lifeline.
From the first millennium, merchants like the Manigramam Chettis and Nanadesis and kings like the Andhras, Pallavas and Cholas used it to establish trade with the Arab lands in the west and ventured into the Philippines and other South China Sea territories in the east. Kautilya’s Arthashastra talked about the functions of officers like port commissioners and harbour masters, highlighting the importance attached to maritime activity in ancient India. Fa-Hien, a Chinese traveller, wrote in 415 CE that the ship that took him from Ceylon to Sri Vijaya (present-day Indonesia) had 200 merchants who professed the “Brahmanical religion”.
The Indian Ocean made India the leading economic power in the first millennium. Its economic decline coincided with its decline in maritime power. In the second millennium, European powers like the Portuguese, Dutch, French and British developed stronger navies and converted the Indian Ocean region into a colony. The British were well-known seafarers. But they never bothered to build a strong blue-water capability for their colony during their two-century rule. This lack of attention to the seas, sadly, continued after Independence, too, with the governments giving greater priority to land-based warfare, completely neglecting the oceans and their potential for the country. Consequently, in areas like shipbuilding and naval vessels, India remained a laggard power in the last seven decades.
It ranks 20th in the global shipbuilding industry, holding a meagre 0.06 per cent market share.
Interestingly, the first to alert India about the importance of the Indian Ocean for its future was a renowned diplomat, K M Panikkar, who served as India’s ambassador to China and France. “So far as India is concerned, it should be remembered that the peninsular character of the country and the essential dependence of its trade on maritime traffic give the sea a preponderant influence on its destiny,” he argued in his book India and the Indian Ocean (1945). Sadly though, his warnings fell on deaf ears. Indian leadership, engrossed in the “continental mindset”, failed to fully appreciate the importance and potential of the Indian Ocean Region.
From the Persian Gulf to the Strait of Malacca, the Indian Ocean is the main trading artery for many countries in the world. Critical supply-chain routes managing almost 70 per cent of the world’s container traffic pass through this region. More importantly, around 80 per cent of India’s external trade and 90 per cent of energy trade passes through these ocean lines.
It took several decades for the governments in India to realise the natural goodwill that the country enjoys in this region, once described as a “British lake”, and start taking proactive steps to strengthen those bonds through events like the IOC. The global power axis has relocated to the Indian Ocean Region in this century. The US and UK, with their Diego Garcia base, and France with Reunion Island, are already active in the region. China, too, joined them, investing heavily in spreading its influence. India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, nurtured the ambition of rising as an influential blue-water power and the voice of the Global South. To that end, the Modi government proclaimed an ambitious SAGAR Initiative — Security And Growth for All in the Region in 2015.
The Indian Ocean is a crowded space today with vessels of all major countries crisscrossing its waters over the surface as well as under the sea. Important next-generation communication networks proliferate in the Indian Ocean through undersea cables managed traditionally by European companies but also of late erected by the Chinese communications behemoth Huawei. This region faces challenges like piracy, sea-borne terrorism, climate challenges, human and contraband trafficking, illegal and unregulated fishing, arms running, poaching and humanitarian challenges like rising seawater levels, evacuations and disaster relief.
Alfred T Mahan, an influential geopolitical theorist and confidant of President Theodore Roosevelt, wrote more than a century ago that “whoever attains maritime supremacy in the Indian Ocean would be a prominent player on the international scene”. Mahan’s comment is an important reminder to all the assembled leaders of the region at the IOC that the “supremacy” of the region must remain in their hands, and they should be the masters of managing the affairs of this “region of peace”.
The writer, president, India Foundation, is with the BJP. Views are personal
