The changing geopolitical realities of the 21st century have warranted the Navy’s rising profile in India’s strategic landscape.
The Defence Ministry’s recent interest in a second indigenous aircraft carrier under Minister Rajnath Singh ought to be seen as an indicator of the rising profile of the Indian Navy (IN) in the defence policy debates. The operational deployment of naval ships to the South China Sea, the recurrent success of the Indian Navy’s anti-piracy operations in the Western Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden as well as its routine engagement in friendly naval exercises indicate the ambitious regional profile of an erstwhile neglected service. The IN has clearly shed its tag as the “Cinderella” service, projecting itself as a preferred security partner in the wider region as part of the Act East policy and the SAGAR vision. At this juncture, a historical evaluation of the drivers of IN’s growing capabilities would allow us to better understand the outgrowth of the maritime consciousness in India. The historically-rooted analysis highlights relevant variables shaping the Indian naval strategy, weapons acquisition, and force posture, including the external strategic environment, organisational imperatives, and budgetary constraints.
The IN has clearly shed its tag as the “Cinderella” service, projecting itself as a preferred security partner in the wider region as part of the Act East policy and the SAGAR vision.
In the historical context, the primacy of military threats from Pakistan and China in the continental theatre since independence led to an outsized importance of the armed forces. Concomitantly, the absence of any concrete threat to India’s core national security interests in the maritime theatre allowed the policymakers to neglect the naval buildup. The organisational imperative of furthering the sectoral interest has dictated the competing claims by each service over the optimal strategy, force posture, and weapons systems. It does not help that the lack of significant expertise and the absent civil-military dialogue on the part of the ruling political class, in general, have led to an inability to adjudicate among competing inter-service claims and push through tough adjustments. Finally, the significantly higher capital outlays involved in naval ship acquisition have made relevant the trade-offs involved in attaining security at a cheaper cost. This logic of fiscal stringency and trade-offs has, in turn, shaped the trajectory of naval acquisition.
As early as 1947-48, Indian naval planners and the British Vice-Admiral-in-charge William Edward Perry had envisaged an ambitious expansion plan of the IN. While the British Admiralty insisted on integrating the Indian naval assets in the wider commonwealth naval strategy, the Indian navalists envisaged an independent role for the IN in the region. The fiscal stringency and Indian policymakers’ focus on the Northern borders, however, led to a shrinking of the ship acquisition plan in the early 1950s. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 further contributed to the British reluctance to provide India with further ships. Curiously enough, in a reflection of the Cold War imperatives of British naval officers who commanded the IN until 1958, the primary strategic focus of the IN lay in countering the Soviet submarines’ potential challenge to the open Sea Lines of Communication in the Indian Ocean, leading to the development of anti-submarine warfare capabilities. The budgetary constraints and foreign exchange reserve depletion led to the IN getting the short end of the stick in the 1950s, even though an aircraft carrier was purchased from Britain in 1957. The sub-optimal decision to allot scarce resources to a carrier was driven by the Indian Navy’s organisational obsessions and Nehru’s concern with national prestige. The 1962 War with China further shifted the Indian strategic attention to the Northern land borders.
In the mid-1960s, however, a perceived shift in the external strategic environment in the Indian Ocean opened some scope for debate. During the 1965 War with Pakistan, Indonesian President Sukarno threatened to seize the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, leading to talks of a potential Rawalpindi-Beijing-Jakarta nexus in future. Second, the British retrenchment strategy by way of its naval withdrawal east of Suez provided the Indian navalists with the talking point of an impending strategic vacuum in the IOR that the IN ought to fill. In 1967, the Swatantra party leader, N Dandekar, argued in the Parliament for an Eastern naval fleet of 1-2 carriers and a base in the Andamans. Dandekar’s threat perception of China and Pakistan, however, did not account for the loss-of-strength gradient for the former and India’s existent naval preponderance vis-á-vis the latter.
In 1967, the Swatantra party leader, N Dandekar, argued in the Parliament for an Eastern naval fleet of 1-2 carriers and a base in the Andamans. Dandekar’s threat perception of China and Pakistan, however, did not account for the loss-of-strength gradient for the former and India’s existent naval preponderance vis-á-vis the latter.
The British withdrawal east of Suez provided the navalists with an opportunity to further their organisational interests. A Defence Services Staff College-based naval officer study group’s report in 1969 arguing for the IN to fill the vacuum provoked a sharp discussion. While the Times of India editorial (7 May 1969) critiqued the report for failing to recognise the high implausibility of Chinese naval power projection in the Indian Ocean region and the possibility of the superpowers filling the power vacuum, Major General D K Palit scathingly denounced the study group recommendations as emblematic of a neo-colonial mindset. For the Army partisan, the appropriate naval strategy entailed a coastal and shore-based defence of own territories instead of expeditionary power projection. The inter-services debate would continue in the 1980s as Brigadier N V Grant’s critique of the IN’s aircraft carrier obsession in a journal article argued that shore-based aircraft, missile boats, and submarines were more than adequate to serve India’s core maritime interests in terms of protecting long coastline, vital shipping lanes, and the Andaman and Nicobar islands
The inter-services jostling, however, did not constitute the sole determinant of the evolution of the IN’s role in India’s security calculus. In the 1970s, the USS Enterprise incident highlighted the need for developing requisite capabilities for a strategy of sea denial. The naval officialdom’s fixation with aircraft carriers and India’s relatively precarious economic situation meant that Indian policymakers adopted a strategy of balancing the US presence in its backyard by way of diplomatic moves and Soviet assistance. It was not until the late 1980s that naval modernisation picked up pace with the Prime Minister’s Office under Rajiv Gandhi as the primary driver. The IN emerged as a net security provider in the Indian Ocean region with its operational deployments to Seychelles and Maldives and assistance to the Indian Peace Keeping Forces in Sri Lanka.
The end of the Cold War in the 1990s saw a relatively benign geopolitical environment for India. The key security challenge to India in the 90s came from Pakistan in the form of terror attacks, a border war, and the dynamics of nuclear escalation. Consequently, the Navy suffered from relative neglect. During the first two decades of the 21st century, an increasingly globalised India’s reliance on the SLOCs for trade under the neoliberal international order paved the way for a proactive role for the IN. As such, naval modernisation was driven by the need to secure maritime trading routes.
The end of the Cold War in the 1990s saw a relatively benign geopolitical environment for India. The key security challenge to India in the 90s came from Pakistan in the form of terror attacks, a border war, and the dynamics of nuclear escalation.
The structural change in power distribution has now entailed a shift in the IN’s focus. The security and ordering imperatives of protecting the SLOCs still shape the IN’s operational deployments in the IOR, but China’s increasing forays in the IOR are being considered in India’s maritime security calculus. In response, the IN has undertaken collaboration with regional navies in areas as far-flung as the South China Sea. Indian mandarins prefer the regional order maintenance framing for their naval deployments, but the unsaid strategic logic of deterrence and external balancing against China has come to occupy a central place in the Indian naval imagination.
Despite the remarkable phase of economic growth which allows for more fiscal space and clear geopolitical imperative of a proactive naval posture, the path to India’s maritime pre-eminence in the Indo-Pacific is still peppered with debates and doubts. An active land border with China means the continental theatre demands immediate attention with horizontal escalation in the Indian Ocean seen as a sub-optimal strategic choice. The naval modernisation programme faces its own teething set of troubles, including accidents, delays, infrastructure and human resources shortages. Nevertheless, the trendline unmistakably points to an impressive rise of the IN’s profile in India’s strategic landscape. The cultivation of historical sensibility towards the evolution of India’s maritime consciousness allows us to better appreciate the growing centrality of the IN to India’s pursuit of both security and prosperity.
Sanjeet Kashyap is a Research Intern at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Sanjeet Kashyap is a Research Intern with the Strategic Studies Program at the Observer Research Foundation. He is also pursuing his PhD research on the ...
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