The bitter lessons of Indian history have shown that the neglect of the seas was paid for dearly by the loss of sovereignty with the traders arriving by sea ultimately becoming the masters. Whilst strong maritime powers flourished and prospered, neglected maritime powers declined and when revived, took decades if not centuries to rebuild their navies to protect their national interests.

The Indian Ocean has been the centre of human progress, a great arena in which many races have mingled, fought and traded for thousands of years. Today the bulk of the energy trade emanating from West Asia and the Arabian Gulf travels across its waters.

At the hub lies the Indian subcontinent, itself the site of ancient cultures in the Indus valley.

For almost a thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire, the western side of the Ocean surpassed the Mediterranean in wealth and power. There was also much turmoil, as conquering armies spawned in the remote steppes of Asia swept down to overthrow old empires and impose new dynasties. With the collapse of classical civilizations in Europe, there was a thousand years of almost total ignorance of the Europeans about the Indian Ocean and the lands encompassing it.

In the very first decades of the 15th century, Chinese admiral Zeng led a series of amazing maritime expeditions through the Straits of Malacca into the Indian Ocean.

Nothing at that time compared with the Chinese surface navy. Yet within a decade, the overseas ventures had been scrapped by high officials in Beijing, anxious not to divert resources away from meeting the Manchu landward threat in the north and about how a seaward-bound open market society might undermine their authority.

Similar orders inhibited Indians from making journeys overseas ostensibly to stem the brain drain of Indian mathematicians and philosophers migrating to Baghdad. Like the Chinese, the Indians too became insular, looking inwards strategically.

Whilst China's great fleets and Indian shipping were being dismantled by quasi-religious imperial orders, Western Europe was beginning to venture into the 'new' worlds full of ancient peoples and cultures for glory, wealth and to spread the 'faith'. Any place vulnerable to Western naval and military power was at risk.

The Portuguese under Admiral Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in early April 1498 and in Malindi embarked an elderly 'Moor of Gujarat', a Gujarati sea captain, on his flagship the 'San Gabriel' to pilot the fleet of three caravels to the Malabar coast.

The Portuguese admiral fulfilled his destiny on 18 May 1498 when his ships anchored off Calicut and a tectonic geopolitical shift occurred in the Indian Ocean. From the 16th century onwards, the control of its warm waters passed to the European and patterns of Indian Ocean life and commerce which had held good for many centuries were shattered and changed irrevocably never to be the same again.

The Dutch, the French and the British followed the Portuguese, all battling for colonial space and domination of the Indian Ocean.

With Britain's eventual supremacy, the Ocean became a British lake and remained so until 1957 when they withdrew from 'East of Suez' and the United States Navy moved in to the region to fill the 'vacuum'.

Prior to Independence, the primary missions of the 'brown water' auxiliary Royal Indian Navy was to police the pirate infested Persian Gulf and guard the western approaches to India. However, in WW II its role was expanded and it was to be the spearhead for the intended amphibious landings in Burma.

With independence India inherited a modest collection of five frigates and six minesweepers but since then the Indian Navy has come a long way through perseverance by overcoming many roadblocks, intentional and otherwise.

For the first five decades policymakers did not fully comprehend the roles of a navy, that a capable navy could be deployed without hindrance to achieve broader strategic, diplomatic and operational objectives with minimal political and economic costs.

This limited vision was further reinforced by the threats at that time that were looming large from across the Himalayas; thus the Navy was starved of budgetary funds for its legitimate growth.

Nevertheless, the Navy did develop albeit hesitantly and in fits and starts and slowly but surely continued to transform itself into a multidimensional force capable of undertaking its primary missions in the Indian Ocean. Some serious conspicuous deficiencies remained however, like capabilities for power projection and littoral warfare and the conformist strategic thinking of its senior hierarchy.

These need to be addressed urgently.

Turning points in operational planning occurred with the deployments of naval forces to render humanitarian assistance following the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami; this was a demonstrator of the navy's capabilities and the missions it could achieve if tasked appropriately.

Its efficiency and effectiveness during these operations awakened policymakers to the assurance of sea power attaining national goals particularly in a setting of substantial and expanding overseas interests and the prevailing security environment in the Indian Ocean underwritten by terrorism.

Thus a calamity of biblical proportions had a positive spin-off with its quite unexpected transformation of India from an inward looking insular nation to one starting to look outwardly.

It resurrected Indian maritime thinking and started to liberate it from the domination of constricting continental boundaries. The ghost of Vasco da Gama had, at last been exorcised 500 years after the Portuguese admiral's landing at Calicut.

With this exorcism, India could now seek its true place in the sun.

This, however, requires fresh debate on the balanced development of India's Sea Power to meet head on all the challenges to its sovereignty and independence.

It must address the full spectrum of maritime operations; extending from humanitarian assistance during tsunamis and calamities, to low intensity clashes in an era of violent peace, to deterrence of a nuclear exchange.

The Indian Navy needs to step forward to take advantage of the favorable political environment that has come into being to draw up plans to address its deficiencies as it aspires to venture into the true 'blue waters' further away from its coasts with commensurate capabilities to achieve its missions.

Despite the scorching march of technology in the last century in the maritime domain, the classic constituents of sea power like naval capabilities, maritime infrastructure, trade and shipping, a sea faring populace, et al, did not change; as a matter of fact these constituents have gained further prominence with the passage of time. With the end of the Cold War the prospect of a major conflagration is extremely low; nevertheless, probability of an occurrence of a crisis due to ethnic strife, deprivation, sectarian conflict and ineffective corrupt governance have increased, adversely affecting stability and development is fairly high.

The geopolitics of the Indian Ocean is in flux and changes rapidly with little warning and therefore requires proactive postures. With 40% of the oil and 31% of gas reserves, 65% of the strategic materials and large consumer markets, the region would remain the cynosure of global politics and maneuver.

Regional tensions, the desire to control the flow of energy and the choke points, and the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq being fought by support to the coalition forces from the sea, provide opportunities for extra-regional naval forces to operate in the Indian Ocean with unrestricted flexibility and influence its periphery.

The frequencies of China's forays through the Malacca Strait into the Indian Ocean in the footsteps of Zeng He are increasing.

With the commissioning of the new port of Gwadar on Pakistan's Makran coast at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz and other 'string of pearls' in the Indian Ocean, it is only a matter of time before there is a permanent Chinese presence to challenge the Indian navy in its own 'lake'.

India occupies space in the middle of the 'arc of instability' that extends from the Levant in the west to Mindanao in the east.

With 9/11, terrorism has become an influential component of the global geopolitical calculus and has the potential to threaten the stability of littoral states, and to disrupt trade and shipping as the Cole and Limburg incidents have demonstrated.

Piracy in the choke points and restricted coastal waters of the Indian Ocean, with or without terror affiliation, is another menace that needs to be addressed.

The UN Conference on the Laws of the Seas (UNCLOS) whilst providing a platform for conciliation for matters maritime has also revived latent disputes over 'maritime zones' delimitations.

These could exacerbate into clashes of interests when exploiting marine resources and ensuring freedom of navigation and these could lead to confrontation.

The overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea could be the forerunner for such maritime clashes in the future.

Sea power also reflects a country's status and stature and is an essential component of its comprehensive national power.

A nation lacking maritime capabilities has never become great. 'Rising' Germany in the late 19th century, for example, invested a large proportion of its military budget towards building a 'High Seas Fleet' and entered into the Dreadnought race with Britain prior to World War I to rectify this shortcoming.

Similarly, a classic continental power in the McKinder definition, the Soviet Union with limited access to warm waters invested heavily in the Soviet Navy in the global competition for supremacy.

These examples have a lesson for India; without a strong navy it cannot aspire to occupy its rightful seat on the high table of the comity of nations.

Sea power is also vital to the growth of commerce with protection of transnational shipping and cargo. With rapid industrialization and a changing mercantilist profile, both India's trade and its dependence on imported oil and gas sourced mainly from the Arabian Gulf are increasing exponentially.

Commercial shipping to transport goods and energy require protection; at the source and on passage on the sea lanes to destinations in India.

Increasing movements of inward and outward bound cargoes can only be facilitated by the expansion of its choked ports and up-gradation of the poor maritime infrastructure and, of course, by their security.

These responsibilities call for the building of a 'balanced' navy focused on maritime interests rather than threats, with capabilities to be proactive in any developing situation with reach and sustainability to face the challenges of the new millennium.

Its missions in the next decade and a half out to 2020 would extend from the strategic with the basing of the nuclear deterrent at sea, to policing against terrorism and piracy, protecting maritime assets and enforcing national laws, to the diplomatic including, if necessary, 'gunboat diplomacy' to 'influence' errant nations, to crisis response including humanitarian assistance in calamities with the military capacity to counter poise.

All oriented towards exerting influence in India's 'Arc of Strategic Interest' and weighted to safeguard the country's maritime interests and meet the threats with graduated responses in the environment which is volatile and continually changing.

An outcome of the insular orientation of the navy was its isolationist approach to all matters foreign and thus interaction with foreign navies was minimal, even with the Soviet Navy which supplied the bulk of the navy's punch.

A 'glasnost' occurred in 1992, perhaps as a part of the economic liberalization process unleashed in that year, when the Malabar series with the US Navy commenced.

Since then the navy has exercised with several other foreign navies. However, the engagement has been controlled with limited tactical objectives.

A spin off of the deployments during the Asian tsunami was the active cooperation with foreign navies under operational conditions which facilitated the setting of benchmarks for interoperability during coordinated operations in the future. In a globalizing world this needs to be pursued with vigor to meet common goals and objectives especially in the less than war situations that prevail today.

The navy has fostered the growth of its design bureau but it requires augmentation.

Its indigenous construction programs are impressive. The building yards though need urgent modernization, up-gradation and the institution of current management practices.

A crippling deficiency in the overall shipbuilding scenario is enduring reliance on imported obsolescent weapon systems and C4 ISR2 suites. A navy can never be strong and relevant when it depends on imports of critical equipment and weapons.

India and its navy can ill afford to ignore the lessons of history because ignoring the maritime domain could severely limit the space for political, diplomatic and military maneuver.

Today, India's national interests are congruent with its maritime interests, which with the passage of time are expanding exponentially. Mindsets need to change, and the Indian Navy must grow technologically as well as in platforms to take on the challenges of the new millennium.