India's Foreign Policy

4

SEAWARD SECURITY: MODERNIZING THE INDIAN NAVY

Jyotirmoy Banerjee

Our Navy in History

The Navy has been traditionally treated as a stepchild by our defence establishment. This land-locked mindset, persisting since medieval times, is somewhat strange, since British rule over India owed much to its dominance at sea.¹ Indeed, much of European colonization of Asia, Africa and Latin America had begun from the sea. On land, of course, India has to guard against the 2,912 km border with Pakistan, the 740 km line of control (LOC) with it, and the 4,056 km of the line of actual control with China. But it also has to defend the 7,000-plus km of India’s long peninsula jutting out into the Indian Ocean, plus some 1,280 islands and 2.2 million sq. km of ...