Indian Navy celebrates Navy Day on December 4. It commemorates the day in 1971 when the Osa missile boats struck Karachi and sank three Pakistani ships. But it’s also a day to reflect on the challenges that our Navy faces
The latin Quo vadis means, ‘Whither goest thouIJ’ It’s the question St Peter asked of a resurrected Jesus Christ, who replied, “Romam vado iterum crucifigi” (“I am going to Rome to be crucified again”). A similar question needs to be asked about India’s maritime military strategy, which was hurriedly scripted in a document by the Navy in 2007, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh affirmed India’s strategic interests, extending from Aden in the West to the Straits of Malacca in the East, and assured naval Commanders that funds would not be a constraint for the force’s expansion. The Government even approved a large acquisition list.
The programmes, many delayed with cost overruns, are maturing, though infrastructure and support facilities are lagging. INS Sindhurakshak sank in Mumbai’s congested naval dockyard, and Union Minister for Defence AK Antony tersely directed the Navy to be more careful with expensive resources.
The Navy has begun using the GSAT 7 satellite for Internet-centric operations with linked data transfer and communications to warships, and it has acquired nuclear submarines with underwater endurance, latest tankers for distance support, BrahMos firing platforms and Boeing P8 I maritime reconnaissance planes with US supplied AGM-84 Harpoons and Mk 48 Torpedoes. Soon, INS Vikramaditya with the powerful MiG-29Ks will join the fleet. The Navy can call itself an expeditionary Blue Water Navy and deserves congratulations. Forty six ships are on order in Indian yards and more have been approved by the Defence Acquisition Council. This is the icing on the cake.
Admiral Arun Prakash, a US Naval War College graduate, and Andrew C Winner, Professor of Strategic Studies at the NWC, speaking at the Woodrow Wilson Center in July, acknowledged that India’s maritime military strategy document was based on US’s famous strategist Alfred Mahan’s philosophy of big platforms and control of trade routes. It succeeded for America because that country faced no land threats and had a mature economy. Winner questioned how the Indian Navy could issue such a voluminous document on its own.
Of the recent nine naval chiefs, six, including current Admiral DK Joshi and dozens of officers, are graduates of the NWC, where Mahan’s strategy is taught. They cannot be faulted for following it, but the strategy may not be suited for a poverty-ridden India with land threats. Rear Admiral Raja Menon of the US’s Sandia National laboratories and convener of India’s net assessment for the National Security Council, writing in a leading newspaper on July 29, criticised the Government’s decision to spend vast amounts on a Mountain Corps for the North-East, and argued the money could have been utilised for the Navy.
India’s maritime community has given little thought to how Portugal’s Prince Henry the navigator (1394-1460), funded expeditions with emissaries for trade and diplomacy; and Vasco da Gama’s foray to Calicut in 1498 is a classic example. An Arab-Gujarati mariner, Ibn Majid, navigated Vasco from Malindi. The Portuguese came as traders and by Aphonso de Albuquerque’s arrival (1453-1515) became colonisers, by employing trade and diplomacy with minimum military to gain access and influence in the Indian Ocean Region.
Robert Kaplan in Monsoon highlights Albuquerque’s strategies as he requisitioned the services of Tomoji, a privateer of the Vijaynagar, to capture Goa from the Adil Shahis of Bijapur and set up capital there in 1508. The Portuguese established bases in Malacca in 1511, Hormuz and Socotra in 1515, Colombo in 1518 and Java in 1521. The strategy of establishing naval linkages for influence as part of expanding maritime power has been propounded by maritime theorists, and China’s String of Pearls is a strategy Portuguese maritime teachers have passed on to the Chinese in Macao.
Admiral DK Joshi has said that nations were approaching Indian Navy for exercises and co-operation, which needs to be followed as an option of influence and diplomacy. The Indian Navy is regarded as a professional force and can offer much by way of training teams, exposure and goodwill visits with medical aid to nations in the Indian Ocean with floating hospitals.
India’s maritime strategy needs course correction to include these soft-power aspects of diplomacy. The Government has announced it will appoint 27 additional attachés. The Navy has appointed a naval attaché to Qatar which seeks maritime co-operation on the lines Singapore has done in India’s ‘look East’ policy. Shan no Varuna is the Navy’s motto: May lord Varuna be benevolent to India’s Navy and its maritime strategy.
(The writer is a retired Commodore of the Indian Navy and an expert in maritime strategies)