Ship Shape

Cmde Anil Jai Singh (retd)

The commissioning of INS Nilgiri on the 3 June 1972 marked a historic moment in the storied tradition of Indian shipbuilding. It was the first major warship (based on the British Leander class design) built in India at the Mazagon Docks Ltd, Mumbai. It also realised the vision of India’s post-Independence naval planners of the Indian Navy becoming a leading blue water navy, with an indigenous ship building capability.

In the five decades since, the country has not looked back and is today, one of only six countries in the world to have built an indigenous aircraft carrier and a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine. The ability to build these complex platforms places India amongst the leading warship builders in the world. However, the same is not true of indigenous commercial shipbuilding where India still has a very long way to go. This striking dichotomy is not peculiar only to India but is also prevalent in many other countries as 90 per cent of the global commercial shipbuilding market is controlled by just three countries--China, Japan and South Korea. While the momentum of warship construction is continuing apace in India, an effort is now being made to revive the commercial shipbuilding eco-system in India to include not only shipbuilding, but also ship repair and ship recycling.

The success of India’s warship building capability has been possible due to the close coordination between the government, public and private industry, the Indian Navy, the Indian atomic energy establishment, and the research and development organisations, both in the defence and the civilian sectors. As India seeks its rightful place on the global high table in an increasingly competitive and perhaps confrontational geopolitical environment, it will have to focus its attention on other dimensions of its maritime power and mitigate any strategic vulnerability to its national interests anywhere across the globe.

Shipbuilding Heritage

India’s documented shipbuilding history dates back to the pre-Christian era. Indian seafarers had trade relations with the ancient Mesopotamia and Rome in the west and with China and other Southeast Asian nations in the east. This tradition of shipbuilding continued till as recently as the 19^th century with Indian master shipbuilders in Mumbai building ships for the Royal Navy. HMS Trincomalee, built in Mumbai in 1817 is presently the second oldest floating warship in the world and is berthed at Hartlepool in the UK. The decline of India’s rich shipbuilding tradition began with the first Industrial Revolution in the 19^th century when the transformation in shipbuilding from wood to steel and from sail to steam took place. The British ensured that the Industrial Revolution passed India by with the country reduced to being a mere source of raw materials for industries in Great Britain and thereafter a lucrative market for its finished goods.

It was only after India became independent that the visionary leadership of the Indian Navy, realising the importance of the maritime domain, envisaged a powerful navy for the country, and began encouraging the existing shipyards to focus their attention on building warships. The first Indian-built warship was a small anti-submarine warfare corvette, INS Ajay, commissioned in 1965. However, it was the Nilgiri that triggered indigenous warship construction from which the country has never looked back. Nilgiri was followed by five more Leander class ships, each one an improved version of its predecessor and suitably adapted to meet the IN’s requireme