ABSTRACT
While India's growing military and economic capacity may provide a material basis for it to become a major regional power, how it will exercise that power will be a function of its strategic objectives and intentions. Indian strategic thinking about the Indian Ocean derives from several traditions and themes. These include a legacy of geostrategic thinking from its British imperial past; India's strong Nehruvian tradition of nonalignment and strategic autonomy; and claims to an Indian Monroe Doctrine. These streams of thinking are not always either consistent or clear to outsiders (or even insiders for that matter). This partly reflects the fact that India has traditionally been strategically focused on its land borders and, as a result, thinking about its oceanic environment is still evolving in many respects. As one analyst described it, India's approach to maritime affairs as ‘amorphous, syncretic and incremental’. 1
