Indian Ocean Community |
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was in Mauritius earlier this week to participate in the 9th Indian Ocean Conference. It has been India’s endeavour to foster an Indian Ocean consciousness and on that foundation an Indian Ocean Community. This attempt has not remained confined to Indian governments but has also been promoted by Indian think tanks. Specifically, Indian Ocean Conferences have been organised at the initiative of the India Foundation. Jaishankar rightly commended the efforts of this organisation in his address at the Mauritius Conference.
The Indian Ocean is the third largest body of water in the world. Along with its seas, bays and gulfs it extends from the Arab/Persian Gulf and the Red Sea in the north to Australia and the Southern Ocean in the south and from the east coast of Africa in the west to some of the countries in ASEAN in the east. India is between the Indian Ocean’s Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. In India’s south lies the Indian Ocean. The fact that India gives its name to the Indian Ocean indicates this country’s importance for it. Indeed, India is the only country whose name has been given to an ocean. ASEAN forms the bridge between the Indian and the Pacific Oceans.
The Indian ocean caught the imagination of some Indian thinkers especially in the last decades of the last century. With the end of the cold war and the........