The newly commissioned naval base by the Indian Navy - INS Jatayu - on Minicoy island of Lakshadweep is yet another step towards strengthening India’s presence and asserting its power on the seas, a policy that is moving ahead at an unprecedented speed. All thanks to the Red Sea crisis and the re-emergence of pirates once again near the Arabian Sea till the Gulf of Aden region, the Indian Navy has finally got the opportunity to showcase its role as a net security provider enhancing its capabilities and leveraging peninsular India’s strategic location in the Indian Ocean, albeit after some nudging from its Indo-Pacific and Quad partners. However, this massive upsurge in the Indian Navy’s activities begets the question how much threat is there at the seas in reality and if moves such as opening another naval base at Lakshadweep will facilitate New Delhi's like-minded partners as they plan to sharpen its aim against China while failing to contain it.
The Indian Navy has been exercising its growing stature and prestige by carrying out hundreds of bilateral and multilateral war-games with a number of countries for many decades now. The Navy has been carrying out fierce exercises with countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) under the banner of the ASEAN-India Maritime Exercise (AIME). It does naval drills with the navies of Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar and Brunei among others. It was the Indian Navy that began the MILAN multilateral exercise in 1995 when eight navies participated. In 2024 the MILAN witnessed participation by nearly 50 countries. In 1992, the Indian Navy and the US Navy started the Malabar Naval Exercise, which has grown by leaps and bounds over the years. Now, apart from these two countries, Japan and Australia are also key members of this and therefore it is now a quadrilateral naval drill. All these four countries are together part of the Quad security dialogue too.
So, it would be incorrect to even remotely suggest that the Indian Navy’s prowess has only grown in the last few years. The Indian Navy has been a formidable sea power for several years now, if not decades. While the Houthis or the pirates are both recent as well as temporary phenomena in the seas that the Indian Navy is dealing with, its long-term challenge in the maritime domains is undoubtedly going to be China. And for this, the concern lies not only with Maldives, China’s encircling of India strategy cannot be ruled out when it comes to Colombo or Dhaka too. Let us not forget
The Indian Navy aims to build 170-175 warships by 2035 while the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is steadily moving towards reaching its goal of making over 500 warships in the next seven years. India is now an active player in the US’s Indo-Pacific strategic framework that is purely aimed at establishing a rules-based international order on the seas while taking aim at China which is busy either making territorial claims on the seas or asserting its influence on countries such as Maldives and Sri Lanka by sending its spy ships in the garb of carrying out research on the high waters surrounding India.
After commissioning the Minicoy naval base, Navy Chief Admiral R. Hari Kumar said INS Jatayu will “serve as the eyes and ears of the Navy...and the Nation across the far reaches of the seas to safeguard our national interests - Whatever be the challenge and whosoever be the challenger.” This is clearly evident from some of the recent activities India has undertaken at the behest of the US and the UK that have launched a joint operation against the Houthi rebels that are attacking commercial vessels passing through India’s economic zone, Arabian Sea till Gulf of Aden and beyond towards the Red Sea.
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The main objective behind INS Jatayu, although located less than 130 km from Maldives even as its commissioning is being seen by many as a move to snub the island nation as it has determinedly tilted towards China, is India’s ambition to play a larger role in the Indo-Pacific and thereby to also enable its closest strategic allies the US and the UK use the intelligence gathered from the base that can be used against China. The Navy Chief also said that INS Jatayu acts as a “first responder” and will provide “situational awareness”. He said this naval base will collate all data from the ships passing through that region and it will then be disseminated through the Navy’s Information Fusion Centre. This centre has 67 maritime domain-related linkages with 25 countries, including the United States, Australia, Japan and even Maldives. These are the ways India will help its allies confront China even as New Delhi may not be able to name Beijing as its foremost adversary or stand up against it the way its partners, particularly the US, would want.
[Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs, and views expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this website are personal and do not reflect the opinions, beliefs, and views of ABP News Network Pvt Ltd.]
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