By: Aishwarya Dutta
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2018 Shangri-La address provided a broad framework for India’s Indo-Pacific vision. The speech asserted India’s geographic definition of the Indo-Pacific as being “from the shores of Africa to that of the Americas,” providing a comprehensive physical boundary for its initiatives. One of the major highlights of India’s Indo-Pacific vision, as was evident from Modi’s speech, was the importance of partnerships and the benefit of collaborations highlighting a shift from “isolation to active engagements.” Thus India showed a clearer interest in deepening engagements with the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Indo-Pacific region, reinstating its agenda for a Free, Open and Inclusive Indo-Pacific.
For these smaller nations or island states, New Delhi perhaps wished to position itself at the forefront and to play a crucial role in stabilizing a hostile and unstable environment laden with security issues through cooperation and ingenious solutions in an era of new great power competition. India is also granting development assistance to the SIDS countries. It was not until China began to shift the security contours in the Indian Ocean that New Delhi started to look toward its neighboring island states and even beyond that. In this article we would try to understand India’s changing focus and its relations with four vital small island states- Seychelles, Mauritius, Maldives and Sri Lanka, in the Indo-Pacific.
In 2016 India created a new division within the MEA, called the Indian Ocean Region Division (IOR), which brings together the island nations of Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka for better coordination of initiatives and policies in the Indian Ocean. The division created a noticeable shift in India’s foreign policy approach, acknowledging the importance of the maritime domain in its foreign policy arrangements. The islands in the Indian Ocean are located closer to prime sea-lanes, thereby providing trouble-free access and influencing over important chokepoints and waterways. Securing the maritime neighborhood in western Indian Ocean has gained high importance. Some of these island nations provide immensely critical sea-lanes (trade routes) that connect eastern Africa and the Gulf with Southeast and East Asia and beyond. Preceding the creation of the IOR Division, Maldives and Sri Lanka were part of the South Asia neighborhood while Mauritius and Seychelles were under the Africa Division. Thus, the IOR Division is a necessary and indispensable effort to view the island states through a maritime prism as opposed to a continental South Asian one.
India and Seychelles signed several MOUs/Agreements including: Renewable Energy Cooperation, MOU for Cooperation in the field of Hydrography, Bilateral Air Services Agreement, MOU on cyber security (2018); MoU on Small Development Projects, MOU between the Foreign Service Institute India and the Department of Foreign Affairs of Seychelles; Cultural Exchange Programme for the years 2018-2022, to name a few.
Maldives occupies an important spot under India’s “Neighbourhood First” Foreign Policy, which aims to bring stability and prosperity in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Also, both Maldives and India are key players in maintaining safety and security of the IOR, thus contributing to India-led Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR) vision. Despite all the controversies which arose between the two states a few months back, Maldives has accepted the fact that India is an indispensable partner that they can’t lose.
With diplomatic relations dating as far back as 1948, India and Mauritius have been involved in several high-level political engagements with the two countries’ leadership based on mutual respect and trust. Since 2005, India has been among the largest trading partners of Mauritius. Apart from providing grants, investing in several projects and also giving aid from time to time, India has also signed a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation and Partnership Agreement (CECPA) with Mauritius in 2021(Mauritius being the only African country to have such an agreement with India). There are several Indian Public Sector Undertakings in Mauritian land like Bank of Baroda, Life Insurance Corporation to name a few. The key reason for the special ties between both the countries is the fact that Indian origin people comprise nearly 70% of the island’s population of 1.2 million.
Despite the existence of two maritime agreements of 1974 and 1976 there are certain irritants between India and Sri Lanka. The major issue is the current status of Katchchativu, a small barren island in the Palk Bay area. Through the 1974 agreement, India agreed to Sri Lanka’s sovereignty over Katchchativu but with some safeguards to its Indian fishermen through Article 5. But the article was vague enough for the Sri Lankan government to argue that the agreement did not give any fishing rights, but only the rights to dry their fishing nets, to rest, and to the right of pilgrims to visit the island for religious purposes. After the civil war in Sri Lanka in 1983, the Indian fishermen found it difficult to operate their fishing activities. The Sri Lankan Navy became unfriendly to Indian fishermen owing to their inability to distinguish between genuine fishing vessels and boats used for smuggling goods for Sri Lankan Tamil militants. Consequently, indiscriminate firing and killing of Indian fishermen became common. Despite various uproars, the humanitarian aspect of the problem was overlooked by both countries. Various options like issuing identity cards to Indian fishermen and letting the islet, in perpetuity, to India have been explored, but not converted into action.
The maritime domain is significantly new in India’s strategic thinking and driven by the leadership at the top. It is no surprise that despite creating the IOR Division in the MEA, New Delhi failed to view the region as a whole. While India placed Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, and Sri Lanka under the IOR umbrella, it left out the western islands of Comoros and Madagascar, the only two other islands in the Indian Ocean, until December 2019, which reflects India’s tendency to be reactive in its approach rather than to have a coherent, vision-oriented framework. This, of course, continues to change and develop within New Delhi’s foreign policy discussions.
While both Maldives and Sri Lanka now have a much warmer relationship with India, the political shift in Malé and Colombo was a loud wake-up call for India. New Delhi found itself in need of a better relationship with its island neighbors, as well as challenged to offer better alternatives to Beijing-led initiatives. As India examined its options in the wake of a dramatically altered neighborhood led by an increasing Chinese presence, the potential of maritime partnerships became clear in India’s choices. By 2018 the Indo-Pacific had provided excellent opportunities for New Delhi to re-emerge as a key security player aimed at securing its strategic interests in the Indian Ocean. At this point the government finally took steps to provide a vision statement for the Indo-Pacific (as presented in Modi’s keynote address at the Shangri-La Dialogue in 2018). As India announced its Indo-Pacific vision, partnerships became the central pillar of New Delhi’s strategy in realizing this vision.
