India’s expanding maritime ambitions: MAHASAGAR and the push for a new Oceanic order |
India has long stood at the crossroads of some of the world’s most strategic waterways, but in recent years, New Delhi has accelerated efforts to redefine its maritime identity and broaden its influence across the Indian Ocean and adjacent regions. This evolution reached a new milestone earlier this year during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Mauritius, where he unveiled India’s updated maritime vision: MAHASAGAR – an acronym for Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions, and a Sanskrit word meaning “ocean.”
With this, India signaled its intent not merely to protect its maritime interests but to shape a new architecture of security, cooperation and economic integration across a vast maritime expanse. MAHASAGAR follows a decade after Modi introduced SAGAR (“Security and Growth for all in the Region”), and it represents an even more ambitious framework. Where SAGAR took India from “using the seas” to “securing the seas,” MAHASAGAR seeks to transform India into a first responder, an economic partner and a cultural connector across wide swaths of the Indo-Pacific and, potentially, beyond.
India’s geography naturally thrusts it into a maritime leadership role. With a 7,500-kilometer coastline, more than 200 ports, and hundreds of islands scattered across the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, India is inseparable from the Indian Ocean. Nearly 90 percent of India’s trade – including most of its vital energy imports – traverses these waters.
But security threats have also shaped India’s maritime mindset. Over the past two decades, piracy around the Horn of Africa, terrorist infiltration by sea – most infamously during the 2008 Mumbai attacks – and an expanding presence of foreign navies have intensified India’s focus on oceanic security. These........