As the worldview shifts from Euro-Atlantic to Indo-Pacific, the Indian strategic thought reiterates to align its maritime security with that of what Alfred Mahan has asserted “whoever controls the Indian ocean will dominate Asia; the destiny of the world will be decided on its waters.”
The evolution in the Indian naval doctrine asserts towards maximizing the Indian navy’s role in the Indian ocean and has acted upon a strategy to secure itself from traditional and non-traditional threats by having control over the strategically important chokepoints and routes in the IOR such as the Strait of Hormuz, Bab el Mandeb and the Malacca Strait.
The geopolitics in the IOR indicates the emerging interests of the existing and emerging great powers who wish to have influence and control over the resource rich lit toral regions. The U.S wanted to remain as the predominant power in the Indian Ocean, but due to the its perceived threat from the mod ern blue water Chinese Navy, in order to maintain the status quo, has prompted to have a coalition led by the U.S in order to offset the Chinese dominance in the IOR. For that reason, the U.S is pushing India to establish a strategic and strong foothold in the IOR. Being vocal about raising the issue of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, India is aligning itself for a strategic superiority over the Indian Ocean, South China Sea and its littoral regions.
India sees Chahbahar and Duqm ports as strategically important for having access through Gulf of Aden and sitting on the mouth of Persian Gulf it can use these ports for logistic support and trade as well as for power projection in littoral region. In spite of having numerical superiority, being the fifth largest navy in the world, the Indian Navy is lagging behind the world in professionalism. In contrast the Pakistan Navy, despite being numerically smaller has always remained vigilant in defending its maritime border and also has high professional standards over the enemy’s superficial and less professional domain.
In the 1965 war, Pakistan Navy conducted successful maritime operations, a similarity of which is hard to find in the domain of naval warfare. Pakistan Navy apprehended the intentions of Indian Navy and ordered its submarine PNS Ghazi to move its patrol to Bombay harbor to challenge their Indian ships, namely INS Vikrant and INS Mysore to dock out and get destroyed. The fear of Ghazi cramped their operational maneuvers and did not effectively mobilize their surface ships at sea.
Moreover, Pakistan Navy was directed for bombardment at Dwarka radar station. This operation was successful and as a result irreparable damage was caused to Indian Navy including destruction of Indian Radar system. During the 1971 war, PNS Hangor was deployed near the Indian coast. Hangor detected two Indian war ships Khukri and Kirpan and launched torpedoes that sunk Khukri and crippled Kirpan. The sinking of Indian warship by PNS Hangor is the only incident after WWI I wherein any conventional submarine sank a Warship.
The Indian Navy is not only short of high standards but also acks professionalism. A series of safety related incidents indicates their adverse framework to deal with safety issues. Most of the incidents occurred due to fire explosions and flooding involving 38 events since 2007. Among these incidents, two were the biggest of its kind that had took place, one was INS Sindhurakshak incident which led to the death of eighteen Indian naval personnel due to the “re and explosion that sank the submarine at Mumbai’s naval dockyard. Just after six months INS Sindhuratna submarine incident happened, which took two Laval personnel lives caused by breathing toxic gases released by smoking cables. As a consequence, Admiral D K Joshi, the Indian Naval Chief, resigned from service after taking responsibility for the incidents.
In addition, financial scams and allegations of kickbacks have also surfaced in several naval acquisition projects. In 1957, a Case came to light when one of the Indian naval officers whose wife was trapped by an arms middleman, which was a part of greater conspiracy to blackmail the naval officer to not stand in the way of purchase of the aircraft carrier from UK. In 2005, in the Scorpene submarine deal a bribery scandal was exposed in which the Indian officials had received kickbacks for materializing the deal. These indicate Indian Navy’s low professional standards. In the acquisition deal of P81 aircraft in 2009, the Indian Auditor General accused the Defense Ministry of being involved in wrongly favoring US Boeing over a Spanish company.
India always faultlessly dis played the incapability of its Navy which seeks to have hegemony over the Arabian Sea undermining Pakistan’s maritime interests. The history of incidents exposes their incompetency in achieving objectives and failure of its naval strategy in the IOR. Their approach dwells on self-deception, which Indian Navy is going for against Pakistan, always resulting in unwanted con sequences. Indian Navy has numerical superiority and gigantic set of operational concepts described as “Arming without Aiming” by Stephen P. Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta. India consistently blurs reality while trying to test Pakistan Navy’s ability; in doing that it has always faced failure that abundantly reveals the operational and technical failure of their naval ships.
In the aftermath of the URI incident of 2016 on an Indian Army base, the blame was placed on Pakistan without any evidence by the Indian side; tensions were high on both sides and Indian sub marines entered north Arabian sea with hostile intentions against Pakistan but owing to the high professional standards Pakistan naval aircraft P3C detected the Russian made 209 Indian submarine and coerced it to clear the area.
Recently, another Indian submarine was detected on 4 March 2019 by Pakistan Navy who forced it to leave the area immediately. Pakistan Navy showed immense restraint for peace in the region by not attacking the detected Scorpene submarine in PN AOR. This indicates Pakistan Navy’s operational preparedness, its high morale and exceptional professional and superior skills at sea. Another recent of the Indian Navy cowardly act was of INS PRABAL (K-92), a Veer class missile corvette. During her stay at Muscat, a stand-off between India and Pakistan started and the corvette didn’t leave the port fearing possible interaction with PN ships deployed in Gulf of Oman. The Pakistan Navy continuously monitored movement of the ship and entire fleet throughout in the south ern IOR. The ship taking refuge in foreign port and avoiding any interaction is a clear manifestation that Indian Navy never dares to come close to Pakistan Maritime zone.
As Indian maritime interests have increased over a period of time, IOR becomes the epicenter of their naval maritime doctrine. They have started coordination with the U.S Navy and other regional navies to have a benign presence over the littoral regions but this requires dexterous skills which Indian navy lacks. Strategic partnership of Pak-China characterized a new milieu in the context of Indo-US relations. Chinese investment in CPEC also made it stakeholder in Pakistan’s security. The Indian Navy being much bigger in size but low in morale and professionalism has failed to achieve their objectives in IOR. Pakistan Navy is also well aware of its counterpart’s capability and conventional power, even though it is much less in numbers, it still manages sea denial and much more due to its effective employment strategy coupled with superior professional acumen.
