Will the Indian Ocean soon become China’s Ocean?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Seychelles President Danny Antoine Rollen Faure | PTI

With China expanding its influence in the Indo-Pacific, India needs to up its game to strengthen its presence in the area.

In the Mahabharata, the story of Brahma disguised as a little fish Matsya – who allows himself to be helped by Manu, a ruler, and in turn later helps him ride the big deluge – is said to not only demonstrate Brahma’s power, but also engender a discussion on the “law of the fishes”, where the weak deserves protection from the strong.

As the Indian Ocean, or the Hind Mahasagar, roils once again in contemporary times, question is whether India can assuage the insecurities of the democratic-minded island people who for centuries have lived in these waters. As China expands its influence in the Indo-Pacific, these tensions are coming to a head.

Monday, Seychelles President Danny Faure and Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed several agreements, including a $100-million credit line to augment defence infrastructure in Seychelles. That is a code for Faure to try and persuade his opposition parties that Seychelles should allow India to build a naval base at the Assumption Island in the western Indian Ocean.

Over the weekend, former Maldivian foreign minister Ahmed Naseem came to Delhi to persuade the Indian leadership to take action in the Maldives “before it is too late”. President Abdulla Yameen, Naseem said, “on orders of the Chinese” had thrown the chief justice and former president Maumoon Gayoom in jail and banished opposition leaders in exile.

With Chinese companies “buying” 16 islands, including those near the strategically located One-And-A-Half Degree channel near the equator (as much as 80 per cent of the Middle Eastern crude passes through three Maldivian channels), the Maldives, Naseem added, is in danger of becoming a Chinese colony.

In Bangladesh, meanwhile, a concerned Delhi has rushed Indian Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba to meet Sheikh Hasina and inaugurate in Chittagong a joint coordinated patrol with the Bangladesh Navy that is expected to scour at least parts of the eastern Indian Ocean.

Lanba is expected to ask searching questions as to why Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, has bought two Chinese submarines.

Considering India will again support Hasina in her bid for power in January 2019 elections in Bangladesh, despite opposition claims that Mujibur Rahman’s daughter is shutting down democratic voices, what will Dhaka’s embrace of the Chinese – which is also augmenting Chittagong port as a possible rival to Kolkata – do to its friendship with Delhi?

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s Hambantota Port is in the news again, with a detailed investigation in The New York Times about $7.6 million in payments made by China Harbour Engineering Company to affiliates of Mahinda Rajapaksa in the run up to the 2015 polls. The Chinese company was given the job to develop the port in Rajapaksa’s constituency in 2007.

China’s ambassador to Sri Lanka, The New York Times said, “broke with diplomatic norms” and even lobbied caddies at the golf course to support Rajapaksa just before the 2015 election.

“… Rajapaksa, who had agreed to Chinese terms at every turn and was seen as an important ally in China’s efforts to tilt influence away from India in South Asia,” the NYT said.

So what does Delhi want to do? As the Prime Minister gets increasingly distracted by domestic politics in the run up to key state elections, does Modi have the nerve to assert India’s primacy in the Indian Ocean?

Certainly, the moment of truth is here.

In the Maldives, if the presidential elections slated for September are won by President Yameen, Delhi can say goodbye to its influence in that part of South Asia. Both the Congress and the BJP have since February 2012, when former president Mohamed Nasheed was toppled in a coup, made so many mistakes that it’s a wonder they understand India’s interests in the Ocean at all.

How can Delhi forget that the Addu island in the Maldivian south was once a British communications base? When it demanded to be the legatee state of the British Raj, Delhi took over both rights and responsibilities. Importantly, the two Dhruv Navy helicopters that Yameen is now demanding that Delhi take back (one has already been returned, while the deadline for the other is end-June) are based at Gan airport in Addu.

Certainly, it was foolish of Delhi to cut down the supply of essential commodities to the Maldives as well as refuse entry to one of Yameen’s MPs in Chennai a fortnight ago. As it contemplates action in the Maldives, Delhi would do well to stay away from hurting ordinary people.

The example of Nepal stares in the face. As Nepal’s PM Oli signed a pact in Beijing last week to build a railway line connecting Tibet with Kathmandu, all India could do was to remain deathly quiet.

The government has already announced that it will work with the US and European Union on the Maldives. Only a few days ago, the EU told Yameen that it will impose targeted sanctions on the Maldives if he doesn’t move towards democracy.

If this is to remain India’s Ocean, Delhi must come up quickly with a strategy in the Hind Mahasagar. Having lost significant parts of the neighbourhood, the Maldives offers Prime Minister Modi the chance to get his mojo back.

The story of the little fish in the Mahabharata tells us that the strong must protect the weak. Will the BJP take a leaf out of the mythology and apply it to contemporary politics?