By Iskander Rehman
One of the more enduring aspects of Indian strategic culture is a strong sense of maritime embattlement. Shortly after independence, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru famously attributed India’s past woes at the hands of predatory colonial powers to its maritime weaknesses. During the Cold War, Indian strategists would fret over the potential mushrooming of American submarine pens in Diego Garcia, or over the possible reiteration of the 1971 USSEnterprise incident, when the United States dispatched a carrier task group to the Bay of Bengal in a singularly blunt exercise of naval suasion. More than forty years later, the U.S. presence in the Indian Ocean is no longer viewed by most Indians as a threat. Another, more menacing extra-regional power has stepped in to fill the void, and, in so doing, has ensured the continued survival of the maritime embattlement narrative.
Indeed, a first time traveler to India could be forgiven for believing that India is on the verge of being subjected to a sudden wave of Chinese amphibious landings. Sensationalistic press reports on China's so-called “string of pearls” abound, and wild stories on secret PLAN submarine bases in the Maldives, or large bases on Burmese islands, are commonplace. In reality, most of China’s ventures in places such as Chittagong, in Bangladesh, or Hambantota, in Sri Lanka, appear to be, for the time being at least, primarily economic in nature. Moreover, Indian observers tend to neglect the profoundly nationalistic pride these projects tend to foster within the host countries themselves.
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