India’s geographical history tells us a maritime story that converts its very geography into strategy. With a rough coastline of 11,000 km spanning across 9 states, 2 Union Territories, and an EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) of about 2.3 million square kilometres, India sits astride the Indian Ocean’s very routes carrying most of the world’s oil and a huge share of global trade between Africa/Middle East and East Asia. Given the Bay of Bengal in the East, the Arabian Sea in the West, and the Indian Ocean in the South, India’s Naval reach is among the larger blue-water forces in the region. With aircraft carriers like the INS Vikramaditya and INS Vikrant, a growing submarine fleet, nuclear-powered boats, destroyers, and frigates, India has steadily been increasing its presence beyond home waters. India regularly deploys in the Gulf of Aden for anti-piracy work, conducts exercises with partners like the US, Japan, Australia, and France (via Malabar, Varuna, etc.), and maintains a web of logistical agreements that let Indian ships access foreign ports for refuelling and repair.

SAGAR, or ‘Security and Growth for All in the Region’, was called the “blueprint for cooperation” in the Indian Ocean by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Maldivian Parliament, framing India as a net security provider in the region. Similarly, around 90% of India’s trade by volume (70% by value) moves by sea, making ports extremely critical infrastructure. The government, through programmes like Sagarmala, have taken an initiative to modernise port infrastructure and improve connectivity, while also cutting logistical costs. Moreover, a formal approach to “Blue-Economy” policy that treats oceans as an economic asset beyond shipping, through fisheries, aquaculture, coastal tourism, etc., makes India’s stance towards maritime security even more crucial.

China is also expanding its naval footprint in the region through port investments in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and elsewhere, “coincidentally” encircling India by sea. India, already blocked by a hostile Pakistan and China in the Western and Northern regions, will have to resort to maritime routes for help in the face of adversity. This encirclement is often called the “String of Pearls”. Spanning from Gwadar in Pakistan in the West, to Kyakpyu in Myanmar, and Chittagong in Bangladesh in the East, China has secured essential ports that will ideally prove to be beneficial to cut off India’s trade or even let aid arrive in India by sea. India has tried to counter-invest in Chabahar in Iran, and form closer ties with Indian Ocean island states like Seychelles, Mauritius, and Maldives. This has shifted India’s maritime posture from a largely coastal-defence mindset to a more assertive regional power role leveraging geography, a growing navy, and economic ambitions to secure its position as the dominant player in the Indian Ocean region.

The“String of Pearls” did not actually originate in the Chinese strategic doctrine; however, it was coined by American analysts in the mid 2000s in a line of thinking that framed a loose network of Chinese-linked ports as a deliberate encirclement project. What one can not still dispute is the proof of infrastructure itself —Gwadar, built under the CPEC, gives Beijing an Arabian Sea outlet that sidesteps the Strait of Malacca; Hambantota was leased to Chinese state firm for 99 years in 2017 after Sri Lanka struggled to service its construction debt; Kyakpyu feeds an overland oil and gas corridor into China’s Yunnan province, again bypassing Malacca; and Chittagong has grown into a major node of Chinese investment and arms sales in Bangladesh. The clearest case for the dual-use logic in action is Djibouti. It doubles as China’s first formal overseas military base. Around these anchor points, the PLAN or ‘People’s Liberation Army Navy’ has layered in submarine visits to Pakistani and Sri Lankan ports and a steady rotation of ostensibly civilian survey ships, which Indian planners read as seabed-mapping and intelligence-gathering rather than pure science.

India’s answer has been to knit together its own web of access and coordination. The Colombo Security Conclave brought India together with Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Mauritius on maritime and non-traditional security cooperation, functioning as a regional counterweight to Chinese inroads in the same capitals. Some commentators called this India’s “Necklace of Diamonds”, logistics and basing access at Chabahar in Iran, Duqm in Oman, Sabang in Indonesia, and a small foothold on Assumption Island in the Seychelles and Agaega in Mauritius. These were designed to answer China’s pearls with a comparable string of India’s own. That way India gets geography to its advantage. The Nine Degree Channel, separating Minicoy from the rest of Lakshwadeep, and the Six Degree Channel between Great Nicobar and Sumatra, both sit astride the main east-west mechant shipping lane linking Europe and the Gulf to East Asia, giving India two natural vantages from which to watch, and in a crisis, potentially squeeze the traffic that includes much of China’s own oil imports transiting the Strait of Malacca.




Credits: Naval Technology

The Great Nicobar Project and the Malacca Dilemma

The one project which adeptly embodies India’s shift from a defensive to a projecting maritime posture is the Great Nicobar Island Development project. Roughly a 9 billion dollar undertaking, an international container transhipment terminal at Galathea Bay, a dual civil-military airport, a power plant, and a new township are being built on an island which sits closer to Sumatra than the Indian mainland. Officials have described it as a strategic gateway meant to challenge Chinese dominance in the ocean. Just as India worries about the Malacca Strait being squeezed, a large share of China’s own crude oil imports pass through those same waters, and a fortified, radar-watched Great Nicobar sharpens what Chinese strategies themselves call their “Malacca Dilemma”. The project would also let India stop its own transhipment cargo through foreign hubs like Colombo, Singapore, and Port Klang. The strait, which is roughly 890 km long, connects the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, being less than 2.5 kilometres wide. The physical bottleneck is what converts a normal supply-route dependency into the real vulnerability that China faces today. The sheer scale of trade that happens through this route is what makes this strait way more crucial. About $3.5trillion in trade passes through the strait annually. In other words, almost a third of global GDP is dependent on the strait. This contains almost two-thirds of China’s trade volume and over 83% of its oil imports. The strait saw a record 94,301 vessel transits in 2024 while the Port of Singapore itself hit new highs of 3.22 billion gross tonnage and 44.66 million TEU (used to calculate cargo capacity and port traffic) in 2025. This would mean even a partial disruption of the strait would lead to global price and insurance shocks way before any formal closure of the strait. Over multiple decades, China has failed to find an alternative to the strait, still heavily depending on it. Capitalising on this very dilemma that China faces, India could extend its control over the eastern Indian Ocean, using the strait as a diplomatic lever against China.

While the Great Nicobar Project might have diplomatic and security upsides, the project has not been uncontroversial. Nicobarese and Shompen communities, along with environmental groups and the Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, have challenged the felling of forests and the risk to a seismically active, ecologically rich island in multiple courts. It acts as a reminder that India’s own maritime ambitions carry costs that mirror, on a smaller scale, the debt-and-displacement criticisms levelled at Chinese-built ports elsewhere.

The Indo-Pacific Stage

India’s 2015 SAGAR framework, which was expanded in 2025 into MAHASAGAR or ‘Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions’, broadened the pitch from the immediate neighbourhood to the wider Global South while still doing double duty as an answer to Chinese influence. The clearest staging of this role came in February 2026 when Vizag hosted a maritime “trifecta”, the International Fleet Review (IFR) 2026, followed immediately by Exercise MILAN 2026 and the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) Conclave of Chiefs. The fleet review drew ships, aircraft, and delegations from dozens of countries under the theme “United through Oceans”, with President Murmu reviewing the fleet from the indigenous patrol vessel INS Sumedha. China, Pakistan, and Turkiye were absent from the guest list while Iran’s participation underscored India’s careful balancing act in West Asia. Alongside the ceremony, Indian naval capacity was put on display less as a symbol of self-sufficiency than as evidence that India can now not just consume, but also supply regional maritime security. This is the same branding that underpins India’s “net security provider” and “first responder” self-image: mission-based deployments across roughly seven maritime zones, from the Gulf of Aden to the Malacca approaches, paired with the QUAD and the Act East policy to keep the diplomatic architecture as busy as the naval one.

What makes this more than a race for port-building is that each side’s network only works by negating the other’s underlying assumption. China’s entire chokepoint-mitigation strategy assumes the ocean stays a neutral commons where it can transit freely. India’s entire counter-strategy assumes the opposite. The proximity and presence convert into leverage the moment relations sour. Neither side needs to fire a shot to make its point; the infrastructure itself forms the argument. This is what makes the rhetoric more serious than just dismissing it as noise. When a Chinese defence official states that “the Indian Ocean is not India’s Ocean”, it isn’t a throwaway line; rather, it is the ideological mirror of the String of Pearls, denying New Delhi the same proprietary claim over its namesake ocean that Beijing quietly extends to itself over the South China Sea.

 

About the Author: Ryan Sengupta
Ryan Sengupta is a student at Ashoka University studying Politics, Philosophy, and Economics with a Double-Minor in International Relations and China Studies. His research interests lie in security studies, international economy, and geopolitical risk.