Editorial: Why Are India's Warships in Thailand and Cambodia?

INS Satpura (Wiki Info - Image: Wiki Commons)

By Prashanth Parameswaran

Indian vessels visited the two Southeast Asian nations this week as part of India’s ‘Act East’ policy.

This week, Indian warships visited Cambodia and Thailand as part of a two-month long operational deployment in surrounding waters in pursuit of India’s ‘Act East’ Policy.

According to a June 23 press release by the Indian embassy in Bangkok seen by The Diplomat, the Indian Navy’s Eastern Fleet under the command of Rear Admiral Ajendra Bahadur Singh entered the two Southeast Asian countries as part of a broader operational deployment to Southeast Asia and the Southern Indian Ocean. The ships had been on a 45-day deployment, which included port calls to Jakarta (Indonesia), Fremantle (Australia), and Singapore, where they participated in the bilateral exercise SIMBEX-15 with the Royal Singapore Navy.

The visits, the press release said, were “in pursuance of India’s ‘Act East’ policy.” As I have written before, India’s ‘Act East’ policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a deliberate attempt to signal a more action-oriented policy toward East Asia in contrast to India’s ‘Look East’ policy, first formulated under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao in the 1990s (See: “Modi Unveils India’s ‘Act East Policy’ to ASEAN in Myanmar”).

Read the full story at The Diplomat