CHANDIGARH: Any power that has ruled the world has done so on the strength of its navy. The Indian Navy, seen as the neglected service among the three arms of battle, is now proving to be vital for the progress of India, the only country that has an ocean named after it.
It is in this backdrop that viceadmiral Satish Soni set the ball rolling at a panel discussion on the ‘Shape and Contours of the Indian Navy of the Future’ at the Military Literature Festival here on Friday.
“With the blue economy taking shape and over 90% of trade through sea in a not-so-friendly neighbourhood up North, the enormous responsibility of securing the coastlines rests with the navy,” said Soni.
“Post-26/11, the Indian Navy can raise the threshold of any adversary,” he said.
BEING AMBITIOUS
The recent inauguration of the first phase of the Chabahar port, opening up a transit route between Iran, Afghanistan and India that bypasses Pakistan, also shows the change in perception. Brigadier RJS Dhillon said, “Today, sea lanes are as crowded as Delhi’s traffic lanes. Monitoring is tough. An all-out war is not feasible but to maintain supremacy we need, what US president Woodrow Wilson said in 1918, ‘absolute freedom at all times in peace and war beyond eight nautical miles’.”
Dhillon added, “It’s the Indian Ocean but not India’s ocean. Build combat capability but be ambitious and take on China’s growing influence. We need a relook beyond the Straits of Malacca. Force structuring for the long term and working on economic and industrial modernisation should be the strategy.”
BEST TO INDIGENISE
Lt Gen Aditya Singh, a former commander-in-chief of the Andaman and Nicobar Command, said, “India was troubled by land borders so the attention went there. The spin-off of the neglect is that the navy has been the best to indigenise and is the most self-contained of the three services.”
