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Indian Navy — searching for a role and rationale
Strategic Forum Indian Navy - searching for a role and rationale The Indian Navy has consistently received a smaller percentage of the national defence budget than either the Indian Army or the Indian Air Force. In this article the author traces this neglect to India’s colonial heritage and summarizes the arguments for increasing the Navy’s role in India’s defence strategy.
One of the basic problems underlying the development of the Indian Navy is the formulation of a convincing strategic purpose and policy. For instance, the growth of the Indian Army and Indian Air Force since independence was essentially a response to threats perceived from Pakistan and China. In the case of the Navy, no similar irnmediate threats could be defined. The antiquated Chinese Navy did not operate beyond the South China Sea, and there was no Pakistani naval power worth mentioning. There was a brief spell in the mid-1960s when some pointers were made to the growth of the Indonesian Navy under President Sukamo. During the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war, Sukamo is alleged to have offered to heip Pakistan by opening up a naval front in the Bay of Bengal. More recently, references have been made in the Indian parliament and media to the need to counter the movement of superpower naval forces into the Indian Ocean. There is no demonstration, however, as to how the Indian Navy would deal with this situation. Naval spokesmen have instead generally endorsed the Government of India’s official demand that superpower navies should be withdrawn and that the Indian Ocean be maintained as ‘a zone of peace’. The inability to define a clear-cut naval threat to India has affected the Indian Navy’s ability to draw a sizeable share of the annual Indian defence allocations. Until the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war, the Navy received less than 5% of the defence budget. After 1965 there were significant increases in the resources allotted to the Navy so that, by the time of the 1971 Indo-Pakistani
MARINE POLICY October 1981
war, the naval share had reached about 10%. This compared with the Army’s 70% share and the Air Force’s 20%. During this inter-war period of 6 years, the Indian Navy acquired a modest fleet of various types of vessels almost all of which were purchased from the USSR. They included F-Class submarines, Osa missile boats, Petya destroyer escorts, and Poluchat landing craft. By the late 1970s several Nanuchka Natya corvettes and minesweepers were also obtained, while three Kashin destroyers were placed on order. These Soviet vessels were added to several aging UK warships obtained before or just after independence in 1947. Two major exceptions to the ‘Buy Soviet’ policy of the Indian government were the manufacture of Leunder frigates since 1965 at Bombay’s Mazagon Docks in collaboration with Vickers and Yarrow of Britain; and the earlier purchase from the UK in the mid-1950s of a used and refurbished aircraft carrier, the HMS Hercules (renamed the INS Vikrunt after joining the Indian Navy). The modest modernization of the Indian Navy since 1965 has therefore implied the conversion of a UK equipped service to a Soviet equipped service.
Pakistani war The naval acquisitions in the late 1960s - despite the fact that no credible seaborne threat had been defined- proved fortuitous in the crisis year of 1971, when the Indian Navy fought for the first time in the war with Pakistan in December. The Navy operated in both the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.
Its Eastern Fleet, headquartered in Vishakapatnam, blockaded and attacked Pakistani vessels in Chittagong, Khulna and other harbours of the former province of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), while the Western Fleet, headquartered in Bombay, attacked and destroyed oil dumps and shipping in Karachi harbour. These operations in the eastern and western theatres of the war were carried out with remarkable efficiency and contributed substantially to the quick defeat of the Pakistani forces in 1971. Yet it must be noted that the successes of the Indian Navy in 1971 had much to do with the neglected and weak Pakistani Navy and the general demoralization of Pakistani armed forces during the year-long Bangladesh crisis. Subsequently, with the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan, the problem of defining a naval threat to India arose again. A reduced Pakistan with only a short coastline, with only one major port city, and with a navy that has not been substantially upgraded since 1971, could not be projected as a serious naval threat to India. Likewise, the dramatic growth of the Iranian Navy under the Shah (which might have been advanced as a possible justification for Indian naval expansion) was suddenly terminated with the triumph of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution in 1979. The Indian navy has not, however, ever seriously disputed the non-existence of a major, direct and immediate seabome threat to India. Even before 1971, its claim to a greater share of the resources allocated to the Indian Ministry of Defence was largely based on such general concepts as sea power and maritime functions. It was not based on the growth of neighbouring navies. The Indian Navy’s demand for expansion has usually revolved around three interrelated arguments. First, was the need to exercise limited sea power and to devise a maritime policy in keeping with India’s size and importance in the international community. Whether India liked it or not, it was a growing regional power and this carried with it an important naval dimension, given the location of the Indian peninsula in the middle of the
331
Strategic forum
‘arc of crises’ in the Indian Ocean. Second, was the need to protect India’s seabome commerce which had increased greatly over the past 35 years. For instance, Indian shipping had increased from 200 000 gross registered tonnage (GRT) in 1947 to 5.5 million GRT in 1978. India’s trade had increased in value from Rs18 billion in 1960 ($4.5 billion at 1960 exchange rates) to Rs130 billion in 1979 ($16.2 billion at current exchange rates). Furthermore, the extension of territorial waters limits from 12 miles to 200 miles, together with increased responsibility to protect offshore mineral resources such as petroleum in the ‘Bombay High’, provide a further justification for naval expansion. Third, was the need to maintain some semblance of a military balance among the armed forces of India, so that strategic perspectives and the growth of military capabilities were not coloured or distorted by the vested interests of one particular service bureaucracy. While the strategic environment may sometimes heavily favour one service, it was also important to guard against misperceptions arising from parochial military training. One of the Navy’s contentions is that military strategy and the military distribution in India was largely the legacy of the British. The British had deliberately favoured the Indian Army and neglected both the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy. Expansion of the Army was considered desirable because of the need to maintain both the internal and the external security of the far-flung British Indian Empire. Since such expansion had to be undertaken without threatening the Empire itself, the Army was broken up into various regimental units on the basis of religion, language, caste and other ethnic divisions. The Air Force and Navy did not seem amenable to such ‘divide and rule’ compartmentalization, although the Indian Air Force was briefly expanded from one squadron to ten squadrons during the second world
Vishakaptnam; one aircraft carrier to each of the fleet headquarters; further development of the naval air wing; the development of docking facilities in the Indian-owned Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal and Lakshadweep Islands in the Arabian Sea; and appropriate and proportionate increases in the strengths of its submarine, frigate, destroyer, and missile boat capabilities. These are not necessarily the grandiose visions of a small section of the naval lobby in India. They are programmes intended to compensate for years of neglect, and Post-independence the tendency, even over the last British rationale based on external and decade, to look upon the Navy as the ‘Cinderella’ of the Indian armed forces. internal security appeared redundant of such programmes in the post-independence era. Indeed, Implementation according to the naval lobby, post- would bring about the desired military independence Indian strategists had balance among the three services, as failed to observe that the main invasion the navy would receive about 20-25% of the Indian subcontinent - that of the of the annual Indian defence allocaWestern powers-had been by sea. Yet tions instead of the present 10%. Nevertheless, there is still the quesno substantial changes were made in the distribution of defence resources. tion of whether India can afford such a and capital-intensive naval This neglect has appeared even more costly glaring over the last decade due to a expansion programme. Here the naval variety of changes in the strategic case rests on devising a coherent commaritime policy. Such environment that seem to demand mercial-military urgent naval expansion. These include a joint policy implies the coordination of commercial and military shipbuildthe oil crisis and the accompanying ing programmes, together with docklarge-scale purchases of sophisticated arms by the Islamic states of the OPEC yard and post construction and expanMiddle East; the military links being sion programmes that would benefit established by Pakistan with several of both types of users. A coordinated these Islamic states; superpower naval effort would produce economies of rivalry in the Indian Ocean; the exten- scale and enable technology sharing. along these lines have sion of territorial waters limits; and the Arguments already been recognized and acknowincrease in India’s seabome commerce. Under these transformed strategic ledged by the Government of India and circumstances, the proponents of naval their impact is evident in various expansion suggest that the Indian Navy policies pursued over the last 10 years. acquire a ‘blue water’ capability cover- However, the Navy has still a long way ing a wide arc of the Indian Ocean rather to go before visions of its maritime role than its present limited coastal defence and military strategy in the commercial role. Conforming to these new percep- growth and defence of India are tions, envisaged but unrealized naval fulfilled. defence programmes include the development of a marine corps; a Southern Raju G. C. Thomas Fleet headquartered in Cochin in addiHarvard University tion to the present Western and Eastern Cambridge, MA, USA Fleets headquartered in Bombay and
war. However, this was done while simultaneously stationing several squadrons of the Royal Air Force throughout India. On the other hand, the Royal Navy commanded the Indian Ocean and therefore there was no urgency to expand the Indian navy. Interestingly, the only modem mutiny by the Indian armed forces against their British rulers was by the Indian Navy in 1946, thus, perhaps, justifying the British decision to keep the Indian Navy weak.
Reports Marine Policy welcomes information on current research research organizations, and short informative articles on Contributions should be sent to the Editor, Marine Policy, Westbury House, Bury Street, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5BH,
332
programmes, overviews of the aims and objectives of important issues, for publication in its ‘Reports’ section. IPC Science and Technology Press Limited, PO Box 63, UK.
MARINE POLICY October
1981
One of the basic problems underlying the development of the Indian Navy is the formulation of a convincing strategic purpose and policy. For instance, the growth of the Indian Army and Indian Air Force since independence was essentially a response to threats perceived from Pakistan and China. In the case of the Navy, no similar irnmediate threats could be defined. The antiquated Chinese Navy did not operate beyond the South China Sea, and there was no Pakistani naval power worth mentioning. There was a brief spell in the mid-1960s when some pointers were made to the growth of the Indonesian Navy under President Sukamo. During the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war, Sukamo is alleged to have offered to heip Pakistan by opening up a naval front in the Bay of Bengal. More recently, references have been made in the Indian parliament and media to the need to counter the movement of superpower naval forces into the Indian Ocean. There is no demonstration, however, as to how the Indian Navy would deal with this situation. Naval spokesmen have instead generally endorsed the Government of India’s official demand that superpower navies should be withdrawn and that the Indian Ocean be maintained as ‘a zone of peace’. The inability to define a clear-cut naval threat to India has affected the Indian Navy’s ability to draw a sizeable share of the annual Indian defence allocations. Until the 1965 Indo-Pakistani war, the Navy received less than 5% of the defence budget. After 1965 there were significant increases in the resources allotted to the Navy so that, by the time of the 1971 Indo-Pakistani
MARINE POLICY October 1981
war, the naval share had reached about 10%. This compared with the Army’s 70% share and the Air Force’s 20%. During this inter-war period of 6 years, the Indian Navy acquired a modest fleet of various types of vessels almost all of which were purchased from the USSR. They included F-Class submarines, Osa missile boats, Petya destroyer escorts, and Poluchat landing craft. By the late 1970s several Nanuchka Natya corvettes and minesweepers were also obtained, while three Kashin destroyers were placed on order. These Soviet vessels were added to several aging UK warships obtained before or just after independence in 1947. Two major exceptions to the ‘Buy Soviet’ policy of the Indian government were the manufacture of Leunder frigates since 1965 at Bombay’s Mazagon Docks in collaboration with Vickers and Yarrow of Britain; and the earlier purchase from the UK in the mid-1950s of a used and refurbished aircraft carrier, the HMS Hercules (renamed the INS Vikrunt after joining the Indian Navy). The modest modernization of the Indian Navy since 1965 has therefore implied the conversion of a UK equipped service to a Soviet equipped service.
Pakistani war The naval acquisitions in the late 1960s - despite the fact that no credible seaborne threat had been defined- proved fortuitous in the crisis year of 1971, when the Indian Navy fought for the first time in the war with Pakistan in December. The Navy operated in both the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.
Its Eastern Fleet, headquartered in Vishakapatnam, blockaded and attacked Pakistani vessels in Chittagong, Khulna and other harbours of the former province of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), while the Western Fleet, headquartered in Bombay, attacked and destroyed oil dumps and shipping in Karachi harbour. These operations in the eastern and western theatres of the war were carried out with remarkable efficiency and contributed substantially to the quick defeat of the Pakistani forces in 1971. Yet it must be noted that the successes of the Indian Navy in 1971 had much to do with the neglected and weak Pakistani Navy and the general demoralization of Pakistani armed forces during the year-long Bangladesh crisis. Subsequently, with the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan, the problem of defining a naval threat to India arose again. A reduced Pakistan with only a short coastline, with only one major port city, and with a navy that has not been substantially upgraded since 1971, could not be projected as a serious naval threat to India. Likewise, the dramatic growth of the Iranian Navy under the Shah (which might have been advanced as a possible justification for Indian naval expansion) was suddenly terminated with the triumph of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution in 1979. The Indian navy has not, however, ever seriously disputed the non-existence of a major, direct and immediate seabome threat to India. Even before 1971, its claim to a greater share of the resources allocated to the Indian Ministry of Defence was largely based on such general concepts as sea power and maritime functions. It was not based on the growth of neighbouring navies. The Indian Navy’s demand for expansion has usually revolved around three interrelated arguments. First, was the need to exercise limited sea power and to devise a maritime policy in keeping with India’s size and importance in the international community. Whether India liked it or not, it was a growing regional power and this carried with it an important naval dimension, given the location of the Indian peninsula in the middle of the
331
Strategic forum
‘arc of crises’ in the Indian Ocean. Second, was the need to protect India’s seabome commerce which had increased greatly over the past 35 years. For instance, Indian shipping had increased from 200 000 gross registered tonnage (GRT) in 1947 to 5.5 million GRT in 1978. India’s trade had increased in value from Rs18 billion in 1960 ($4.5 billion at 1960 exchange rates) to Rs130 billion in 1979 ($16.2 billion at current exchange rates). Furthermore, the extension of territorial waters limits from 12 miles to 200 miles, together with increased responsibility to protect offshore mineral resources such as petroleum in the ‘Bombay High’, provide a further justification for naval expansion. Third, was the need to maintain some semblance of a military balance among the armed forces of India, so that strategic perspectives and the growth of military capabilities were not coloured or distorted by the vested interests of one particular service bureaucracy. While the strategic environment may sometimes heavily favour one service, it was also important to guard against misperceptions arising from parochial military training. One of the Navy’s contentions is that military strategy and the military distribution in India was largely the legacy of the British. The British had deliberately favoured the Indian Army and neglected both the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy. Expansion of the Army was considered desirable because of the need to maintain both the internal and the external security of the far-flung British Indian Empire. Since such expansion had to be undertaken without threatening the Empire itself, the Army was broken up into various regimental units on the basis of religion, language, caste and other ethnic divisions. The Air Force and Navy did not seem amenable to such ‘divide and rule’ compartmentalization, although the Indian Air Force was briefly expanded from one squadron to ten squadrons during the second world
Vishakaptnam; one aircraft carrier to each of the fleet headquarters; further development of the naval air wing; the development of docking facilities in the Indian-owned Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal and Lakshadweep Islands in the Arabian Sea; and appropriate and proportionate increases in the strengths of its submarine, frigate, destroyer, and missile boat capabilities. These are not necessarily the grandiose visions of a small section of the naval lobby in India. They are programmes intended to compensate for years of neglect, and Post-independence the tendency, even over the last British rationale based on external and decade, to look upon the Navy as the ‘Cinderella’ of the Indian armed forces. internal security appeared redundant of such programmes in the post-independence era. Indeed, Implementation according to the naval lobby, post- would bring about the desired military independence Indian strategists had balance among the three services, as failed to observe that the main invasion the navy would receive about 20-25% of the Indian subcontinent - that of the of the annual Indian defence allocaWestern powers-had been by sea. Yet tions instead of the present 10%. Nevertheless, there is still the quesno substantial changes were made in the distribution of defence resources. tion of whether India can afford such a and capital-intensive naval This neglect has appeared even more costly glaring over the last decade due to a expansion programme. Here the naval variety of changes in the strategic case rests on devising a coherent commaritime policy. Such environment that seem to demand mercial-military urgent naval expansion. These include a joint policy implies the coordination of commercial and military shipbuildthe oil crisis and the accompanying ing programmes, together with docklarge-scale purchases of sophisticated arms by the Islamic states of the OPEC yard and post construction and expanMiddle East; the military links being sion programmes that would benefit established by Pakistan with several of both types of users. A coordinated these Islamic states; superpower naval effort would produce economies of rivalry in the Indian Ocean; the exten- scale and enable technology sharing. along these lines have sion of territorial waters limits; and the Arguments already been recognized and acknowincrease in India’s seabome commerce. Under these transformed strategic ledged by the Government of India and circumstances, the proponents of naval their impact is evident in various expansion suggest that the Indian Navy policies pursued over the last 10 years. acquire a ‘blue water’ capability cover- However, the Navy has still a long way ing a wide arc of the Indian Ocean rather to go before visions of its maritime role than its present limited coastal defence and military strategy in the commercial role. Conforming to these new percep- growth and defence of India are tions, envisaged but unrealized naval fulfilled. defence programmes include the development of a marine corps; a Southern Raju G. C. Thomas Fleet headquartered in Cochin in addiHarvard University tion to the present Western and Eastern Cambridge, MA, USA Fleets headquartered in Bombay and
war. However, this was done while simultaneously stationing several squadrons of the Royal Air Force throughout India. On the other hand, the Royal Navy commanded the Indian Ocean and therefore there was no urgency to expand the Indian navy. Interestingly, the only modem mutiny by the Indian armed forces against their British rulers was by the Indian Navy in 1946, thus, perhaps, justifying the British decision to keep the Indian Navy weak.
Reports Marine Policy welcomes information on current research research organizations, and short informative articles on Contributions should be sent to the Editor, Marine Policy, Westbury House, Bury Street, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5BH,
332
programmes, overviews of the aims and objectives of important issues, for publication in its ‘Reports’ section. IPC Science and Technology Press Limited, PO Box 63, UK.
MARINE POLICY October
1981