Masters of the Sea

(The article was originally published in Indian Express on February 15, 2025 as a part of Dr Madhav’s column titled ‘Ram Rajya’. Views expressed are personal.)

India, together with its Indian Ocean partners like Singapore and Oman, is hosting the 8^th Indian Ocean Conference (IOC) at 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 maintained linkages with India for over five millennia. Both countries are strategic partners and work closely in many areas of development in the region.

Over 71 percent of earth is covered by the waters of five big oceans. Most oceans derived their names from historical narratives. The 16^th Century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, after watching calm waters of Pacific, called it “Mar Pacifico”, meaning, “peaceful sea”. Atlantic and Arctic Oceans got their names from Greek mythology. However, the Indian Ocean derived its name from the historical and civilizational influence that India had 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 “Indo-Pacific” is a geo-strategic construct, where the big power competition is omnipresent. The “Indian Ocean” is a natural region connected by civilization and culture and remained largely peaceful. Vast expanse of the waters of this third largest ocean in the world touch the shores of 26 countries, while for many other “land-locked” countries like Nepal and Bhutan, too, the Indian Ocean remains the only lifeline.

In the first millennium, from merchants like Manigramam Chettis and Nanadesis to the kings like the Andhras, Pallavas and Cholas used the Indian Ocean 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 AD that the ship that took him from Ceylon to Sri Vijaya (present-day Indonesia) had 200 merchants who professed the “Brahminical religion”.

Indian Ocean made India the leading economic power in the first millennium. Its economic decline coincided with the decline of its 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. The result was that in areas like shipbuilding and naval vessels, India remained a laggard power in the last seven decades. It ranks 20^th in the global shipbuilding industry, holding a meagre 0.06 percent 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.

Indian Ocean is a lifeline to more than three dozen nations. From the Persian Gulf to the Straits of Malacca, this vast expanse of waters 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, 80 percent of India’s external trade and 90 percent of energy trade passes through these ocean lines.

Over millennia, the waves of Indian Ocean reached the shores of many countries carrying India’s cultural and civilisational imprint and created a vast sphere of Indic civilisational influence. It took several decades for the governments in India to realise the natural goodwill that the country enjoys in this region, once described as the “British Lake”, and started taking proactive steps to strengthen those bonds through events like the IOC.

The global power axis is relocated to 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 Modi, nurtured the ambition of rising as an influential blue-water power and also the voice of the Global South. Towards that end, Modi government has 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 the European companies, but also of late erected by the Chinese communications behemoth Huawei. This region faces challenges like piracy, sea-born 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.

Admiral Alfred T. Mahan, an influential geo-political figure and a 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 in the last century 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”.