India’s MAHASAGAR Vision: Strategic Continuity in the Indian Ocean

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Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi visited Mauritius in March 2025 for a two-day state visit as a guest for the National Day celebrations of Mauritius. Over time, Mauritius has evolved as a vital strategic partner for India in the Indian Ocean. In 2015, PM Modi had articulated the SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the region) vision, which has since become a guiding strategic framework for India’s outlook towards the Indian Ocean. Earlier in 2024, India and Mauritius had also jointly built an upgraded airstrip on Agálega Island, considered to be a vital strategic outpost for the Indian Navy in the Western Indian Ocean.

MAHASAGAR should be seen not merely as an upgrade, but as a continuation of a longstanding strategic vision for the region.

Given the growing synergy between India and Mauritius on issues of maritime security in the Indian Ocean, PM Modi’s March visit to Mauritius was seen as an opportunity to further India’s cooperation in the region. Predictably, during this visit, he outlined a new vision—MAHASAGAR (Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions). During his speech, PM Modi emphasised the need to expand cooperation on key areas of trade for development, capacity building for sustainable growth, and mutual security for a shared future. While MAHASAGAR may seem like an elevation of the erstwhile SAGAR vision, India’s continued efforts to foster cooperation on critical issues of common regional interest in the Indian Ocean demonstrate a vital continuity with this new vision. In other words, MAHASAGAR should be seen not merely as an upgrade, but as a continuation of a longstanding strategic vision for the region.

As a key maritime security actor in the Indian Ocean, a peaceful and stable order in the region is vital for India. However, India’s maritime security outlook in the region appears to be anchored on a continued willingness to engage beyond traditional aspects of the area’s security, and includes developmental challenges faced by the littoral states in the Indian Ocean. This approach of involving aspects of developmental imperatives rightfully captures the complexity of the challenges and compulsions faced by the Indian Ocean littoral states. While security is indeed an important pillar for crafting strategies of cooperation in the region, collaborative thinking at a regional level is equally important. The Indian Ocean region is currently devoid of any major traditional naval-military conflict. This has mandated a shift in the focus of the maritime security agenda in the region towards non-traditional issues, resulting in a collective thinking of Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) efforts, arising from climate change-induced natural disasters. India’s role in framing this agenda has been critical.

India’s positioning of itself as a preferred security partner or first responder seeks to shed off the client-patron dynamic that may be apparent in its engagement as a ‘provider’ of net security.

Furthermore, being a security actor in the Indian Ocean region, India has posited its role as a preferred security partner or first responder as opposed to its previous strategic posture that positioned it as a net security provider. This shift has been cognizant of how India envisions its role in the region. The Indian Ocean is also witnessing a brewing competition for influence between India and China. While India’s role in the Indian Ocean hinges on its physical centrality in the region, China has sought to increasingly expand its political influence in the region, albeit in a transactional capacity. This has naturally fuelled a contest in the strategies and methods of engagements pursued by India and China in the Indian Ocean. While China’s growing engagement in the region continues to be marked by expanding political influence, it also appears to be highly transactional. On the other hand, India has advocated for a benign role for itself in the region, pegged on the commonality of challenges and a shared future. Towards this end, India’s positioning of itself as a preferred security partner or first responder seeks to shed off the client-patron dynamic that may be apparent in its engagement as a ‘provider’ of net security.

The MAHASAGAR vision is poised to further enhance India’s role in fostering cooperation in the region. It also seeks to abridge India’s growing keenness to play a key role on two fronts. First, it projects India’s ambitions in actively shaping the maritime security architecture in the Indian Ocean, and second, it demonstrates India’s willingness to continue cooperating with the Global South on issues of mutual interest. Therefore, in a way, MAHASAGAR knits together India’s approach towards its evolving maritime security outlook as well as its approach towards the Global South.

A calibrated expansion of the ambit of geography of India’s cooperation to play an important role in the Indo-Pacific appears to be at play.

Whether the MAHASAGAR vision adds to India’s strategic intent of pursuing multifaceted engagements in the Indian Ocean certainly merits scrutiny. Through this new vision, three key objectives are being pursued. First, this new vision holds potential in cutting across new domains of cooperation, such as maritime trade. Second, a calibrated expansion of the ambit of geography of India’s cooperation to play an important role in the Indo-Pacific appears to be at play. Third, this also marks an attempt at coupling cooperation imperatives in the maritime domain with the wider Global South. However, given the steady progress of India’s maritime security outlook and strategy of engaging with the Indian Ocean region, MAHASAGAR seems to be a natural continuity of India’s efforts to foster cooperation in the region. While SAGAR had sought to provide a vital strategic framework primarily facilitating cooperation in the domain of security, MAHASAGAR seeks to craft a strategy of expansion, towards a more holistic outlook, driven by and embedded in issues of mutual interest.

Sayantan Haldar is a Research Assistant with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.

• Indian Ocean
• Maritime Security
• India
• chinese interest in indian ocean
• india maritime security
• india maritime strategy
• india's interest in indian ocean region
• indian maritime vision
• mahasagar vision

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