Bedanga Chutia
Bedanga Chutia <bedanga987@gmail.com>
(The writer is a commentator on global affairs and the pursuit of justice.)
The world often overlooks the smallest dots on a map until they become the hinges of history. On September 11, 2025, as Narendra Modi welcomed Mauritius's Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam in Varanasi, the announcement of a USD 680 million package for infrastructure, digital expansion, and capacity building appeared, at first glance, as yet another gesture of South-South solidarity. But the agreements that followed-expanding space surveillance links, strengthening naval cooperation, and accelerating joint development on Agalega Island-suggest something far weightier. This was not benevolent aid; it was a calculated move in the contest for mastery of the Indian Ocean, where trade, security, and sovereignty now converge with unusual intensity.
Mauritius, to the casual eye, may be a mere speck in the southwestern Indian Ocean. Yet its geography lends it extraordinary leverage. It sits astride the sea lanes that link Africa to Asia and the Middle East-arteries through which nearly 80 per cent of the world's seaborne oil trade flows. To its north lies Diego Garcia, the crown jewel of Anglo-American military infrastructure, from which bombers once flew into Iraq and submarines continue to patrol the Indo-Pacific. To its west and east stretch the fault lines of African instability and Asian ambition. And on its own territory, at Agalega, India is lengthening an airstrip and building port facilities that promise to transform the island into a permanent strategic outpost. In this light, Port Louis becomes not a marginal actor but a pivotal partner, with sovereignty claims that brush against the very core of global military order.
For New Delhi, the calculus is plain. China's Belt and Road has already left its imprint on the region, from a naval base in Djibouti to investments in the Maldives, Seychelles, and East Africa. Beijing's "string of pearls" strategy threatens to encircle the subcontinent, challenging India's natural primacy in its surrounding waters. By deepening its embrace of Mauritius, India seeks to unstring those pearls-substituting Beijing's infrastructure loans with its own blend of security, development, and cultural kinship. The Agalega project, coupled with enhanced maritime domain awareness through satellite cooperation, positions Bharat as the first responder across a broad swath of ocean: counter-piracy patrols, humanitarian relief, or surveillance against illicit trafficking. What emerges is the outline of a maritime India that complements, rather than substitutes, its continental concerns on the Himalayan frontier.
Hovering over all this is the unresolved question of Diego Garcia. Legally part of the Chagos Archipelago, the island was detached from Mauritius by Britain in 1965 and leased to the United States for military use. Today it houses one of the most significant American bases outside its homeland: a platform for nuclear submarines, long-range bombers, and intelligence satellites. Yet the edifice rests on contested ground. In 2019 the International Court of Justice advised that Britain's continued administration of Chagos was unlawful, and the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to support Mauritius's sovereignty. India, positioning itself as a champion of decolonisation, backed Port Louis. Yet it must tread carefully: Diego Garcia is indispensable to the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue depends on unimpeded American access. Thus, India walks a diplomatic tightrope-endorsing Mauritius's rightful claims while avoiding any rupture with Washington.
The implications ripple outward. For the United States, India's expanded presence in Mauritius is both reassurance and risk: reassurance because New Delhi shares Washington's concerns about China's encroachment, and risk because a more vocal Mauritian campaign over Chagos could complicate American basing arrangements. For China, the story is double-edged. On the one hand, Beijing delights in sovereignty disputes that tarnish Western legitimacy; on the other, India's special relationship with Port Louis makes it harder for China to extend its influence there. Britain, still clinging to the Chagos lease decades after decolonisation, finds itself increasingly isolated, its post-Brexit diplomatic bandwidth stretched. And Africa, watching closely, interprets the India-Mauritius embrace as a signal that New Delhi is willing to contest Beijing's monopoly of infrastructure diplomacy on the continent's doorstep.
Yet the path ahead is strewn with hazards. Mauritius itself must manage a delicate balancing act: it welcomes Indian security guarantees but also courts Chinese investment. Within the country, voices of unease grow louder over Agalega's transformation, with critics warning against militarisation and loss of sovereignty. Regionally, the Western Indian Ocean is no sanctuary of stability: Madagascar's recurring political upheavals, Mozambique's insurgencies, and fragile island states like Comoros all present risks that could test India's readiness. And above all, India's tightrope with Washington could snap if its support for Mauritius's claims over Diego Garcia is interpreted as undermining the very base that anchors America's Indo-Pacific strategy.
Longer-term, however, a pattern becomes unmistakable. India is constructing a triangular network of strategic footholds: Andaman and Nicobar in the east, Lakshadweep in the west, and Agalega in the southwest. Together they form an arc of surveillance and projection that stretches across vital sea lanes from the Malacca Strait to the Mozambique Channel. This marks a profound shift in India's strategic imagination. For decades, New Delhi was consumed by its continental frontiers with Pakistan and China, leaving its maritime dimension underdeveloped. Now, under the pressure of China's blue-water ambitions and the lure of Indo-Pacific opportunity, Bharat is recasting itself as a maritime power-one that not only defends its coastline but also aspires to provide security across the ocean's expanse.
This ambition resonates with the rhetoric long voiced by American strategists: that India should serve as a "net security provider" in the Indian Ocean. Yet the difference is striking. Where Washington framed this as a burden to be delegated, New Delhi now articulates it as a sovereign project, interwoven with the language of decolonisation and Global South solidarity. By supporting Mauritius's claim over Chagos, India links its maritime strategy with its identity as a postcolonial democracy, speaking both to Western partners and to audiences in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. What was once mere rhetoric now acquires geographic anchors, naval assets, and political partnerships.
Seen in this light, the Varanasi agreements are far more than the signing of cheques or the exchange of pleasantries. They crystallise the arrival of Bharat as a serious maritime actor, capable of shaping not just its own periphery but the architecture of the wider Indo-Pacific. They signal to Beijing that the Indian Ocean is not an open playground, to Washington that India's partnership is indispensable though not subordinate, and to smaller states that New Delhi can be both patron and protector. Most of all, they remind the world that small islands can alter the trajectory of great powers and that the Indian Ocean-once treated as a backwater-has become the central stage of twenty-first-century geopolitics.
India's outreach is not philanthropy; it is a strategic gambit, leveraging development, sovereignty, and security in a complex chessboard of maritime power. By advancing Mauritius's claims while navigating U.S. interests, India reshapes the Indian Ocean order with subtlety and foresight. What may appear as a small-island partnership is, in reality, Bharat's boldest stride toward true maritime prominence in a multipolar world