Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the external dimensions of India's naval strategy. India and its Navy had long been marginal to the security politics of post-colonial Asia. This was in contrast to the central role that the armed forces and the economic resources of the undivided Subcontinent played in shaping the outcomes of the Second World War. For a century and a half before the Second World War, the Indian Army was the main instrument of the British Raj in promoting regional stability and providing security to the smaller states all across the region widely referred to as the Indo-Pacific. The collapse of the Soviet Union, India's Look East Policy and the Indian Navy's tentative outreach to South East Asia quickly removed the perception of India as a regional naval threat.