Taming of the Sea

Pravin Sawhney and Ghazala Wahab

Coincidences can be cruel.

In early November, the Indian Navy celebrated the 10^th anniversary of the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS), an event that in February 2008 marked the navy’s fulsome embrace of a bigger role in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) as the net security provider to the littoral nations.

INS Tarangini during the IONS tall ship race;

Two weeks later, the nation observed the 10^th anniversary of the most shocking terrorist attack on India, when 10 heavily-armed terrorists sailed into Mumbai on November 26 and held the city to ransom for nearly three days. By the time Indian security forces, led by the National Security Guard (NSG), managed to kill nine of them (one was captured alive) and rescue the city (and nation’s honour), nearly 166 people had died and about 300 were injured. 26/11, as the day of the attack came to be known (after the US 9/11 attacks), marked the clipping of the naval aspirations, as the fearful nation wanted its navy to stay close to the Indian coastline to prevent the repeat of that nightmare.

The Indian Navy had to look inwards, work with domestic agencies to make the coastline as impregnable as possible. The IONS-inspired expansive vision had to be put on the back-burner. Over the next decade, the leadership of IONS meandered through the Indian Ocean nations, some enthusiastic and some with conflicting interests, both inside and outside the IOR. This year, the navy reclaimed some of the ownership of its initiative by org