Tokyo, May 23 (IANS) India’s expanding maritime outreach, including its ‘Necklace of Diamonds’ counter-strategy, logistics agreements with Australia, France and Japan, coastal surveillance networks, naval base arrangements in Seychelles and BrahMos missile sales to the Philippines beginning in 2024 signals the most “proximate and credible structural pushback” to Chinese maritime assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region.
No other Quad members possess India’s geographic and strategic positioning to perform this role, a report has mentioned.
“China’s ‘String of Pearls’ strategy is, at its operational core, a strategy directed at India. The network of Chinese-funded ports at Gwadar in Pakistan, Hambantota in Sri Lanka, Kyaukpyu in Myanmar, and Chittagong in Bangladesh encircles India’s maritime perimeter. Since 2008, Beijing has sent more than 45 naval missions to the Indian Ocean Region, and China now operates at least 13 ports across it,” a report in Japan Forward detailed.
According to the report, the Western discourse on the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) often overlooks a key point – India entered the framework not merely as a junior partner absorbing an external doctrine.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi articulated SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) in March 2015 from Port Louis in Mauritius, two years before the United States formally adopted the FOIP framework.
“The doctrine prioritises trust, respect for international maritime norms, peaceful dispute resolution, and cooperative security in the Indian Ocean. It was, in essence, India’s own rules-based order doctrine, rooted in its immediate strategic neighbourhood,” the report highlighted.
“Over the decade that followed, the Indian Navy advanced SAGAR through anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, humanitarian missions, COVID-19 relief dispatched to Mauritius, Maldives, Madagascar, Comoros, and Seychelles, and a network of coastal surveillance radars installed across IOR littoral states from Sri Lanka to Bangladesh,” it added.
The report noted that in March 2025, India broadened the initiative into MAHASAGAR (Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions), a framework explicitly framed as an inclusive alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
It added that practical implementation followed quickly, with the AIKEYME (Africa-India Key Maritime Engagement) naval exercise with Tanzania in April 2025 bringing together ten African nations, while India’s IOS SAGAR mission carried out joint EEZ patrols with personnel from African and South Asian navies.
India’s refusal to enter a formal security alliance with the US, the report said, is precisely what prevents FOIP from being perceived across the Global South as a Western containment project.
“Analysts argue that FOIP is also often interpreted as a framework for countering China and that emphasising inclusivity is essential to its credibility as a region-wide organising principle. India’s participation, on its own terms, signals to fence-sitting nations across ASEAN, Africa and South Asia that FOIP is not a binary Cold War choice,” it stated.
–IANS
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