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30 September 2015

India's Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier

September 26, 2015
http://www.epw.in/commentary/indias-unsinkable-aircraft-carrier.html


An exploration of what the Andaman and Nicobar Islands mean to India--as a nation and as a state. This article suggests that the manner in which it has been visualised as a peg in the country's geopolitical strategy reduces the possibilities its location and history provide to India. It further argues that it would be self-defeating to view these islands merely from a geopolitical angle and not factor in the many histories of the people who inhabit it at present.

Itty Abraham (itty123@gmail.com) is a scholar of international relations and nuclear histories based at the National University of Singapore.

I have been searching for the origin of the term “unsinkable aircraft carrier” for some time now without much success. The term appears to be of World War II vintage, probably of American origin; but I have yet to identify the original usage or author. Etymology aside, the phrase “unsinkable aircraft carrier” is now associated with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (ANI), the 750-km long archipelago that is a Union Territory of India, but whose northern tip lies much closer to Myanmar than Kolkata and whose southernmost point is just a few score kilometres from Indonesia. It was here, between 1942 and 1945, that the Japanese set up an occupation government, and planned their invasion of India and the defence of their Southeast Asian territories. In his Concise History of Southeast Asia (1961), the historian Nicholas Tarling identifies ANI as part of Southeast Asia, albeit without explanation. And, as the 2004 tsunami made clear in an entirely different way, the environmental challenges faced by the ANI have much more in common with Phuket and Aceh than Vizag or Kozhikode. Go a step further and it is not unreasonable to propose that the ANI are Southeast Asian lands that happen to belong to India.

ANI as “unsinkable aircraft carrier” is au courant due to rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific maritime zone. Furious building activities in the South China Sea, contested for now mostly via legal challenges and diplomatic sparring, are the most obvious cause for this perception of rising tensions. That latent tensions can become much more, in a flash, was made clear when riots broke out in May this year against Chinese-owned factories in Ho Chih Minh City over the presence of a Chinese oil rig in what were understood to be Vietnamese waters. To these genuinely alarming developments we can add ongoing territorial disputes between Japan, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan and China over islands that are claimed by more than one party and often by more than two. All these states are increasing their naval budgets.

Joining the Indian Ocean with the Pacific is the fabled Malacca Straits, the major chokepoint of the Indo–Pacific maritime theatre. A narrow seaway that carries no less than a quarter of the world’s trade and oil annually, it was once threatened by pirates. It is now increasingly fragile, ecologically, due to congestion, wrecks, oil spills and man-made haze. The southern end of the Nicobar chain commands the eastern entrance to the Malacca Straits, a geo-strategic windfall for Indian military planners that is now being converted from potential into tangible value.

Even as it becomes increasingly clear that the ANI are an extraordinary asset for regional order management, there is little to show that official thinking has moved much beyond the “unsinkable aircraft carrier” and similarly confident but ultimately empty metaphors to exercise better this potential. As an editorial in this journal argued (“India’s Ocean?,” EPW, 21 March 2015), “there seems to be no strategic clarity… regarding the purpose… as distinct from the consensus over its desirability.” Top officials have announced that an underwater cable will finally be laid between the mainland and the islands in order to give the ANI better internet connectivity and that increasing international tourism is a high priority. These welcome, long overdue and relatively modest steps notwithstanding, they carry with them their own contradictions and unintended consequences. Drawing the ANI closer to Delhi’s geopolitical embrace may end up turning this endangered archipelago into the latest battleground of the Asian Great Game, as veteran journalist Bertil Lintner has recently argued.

Indian Geopolitics

All Indian strategic thinkers begin from geopolitics, yet there is no explicit tradition of modern geopolitical thinking in India. That geopolitics has shaped Indian military and security thinking is hardly surprising; indeed this finding is over-determined given the country’s origin in a territorial partition. No better example of the lingering legacy of colonial geopolitics for a post-1947 foreign policy can be found than in the treaties swiftly signed between a fiercely independent and newly non-aligned India and the feudal monarchies of Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim. The Himalayan kingdoms were the first to realise that while the regime in Delhi may have changed, little else had. To stabilise India’s borders in those early years, Nehru would even send arms to neighbouring Burma to use against its restive northern tribal populations, fanning an internal conflict that has yet to abate.

If the practice of Indian geopolitics— summed up as northward and mountain-focused—was well established institutionally, India’s first self-consciously geopolitical writer broke with that longstanding common sense to great effect. K M Panikkar would be the first to describe himself as India’s leading geopolitical thinker, and, for once, there is no small degree of truth to his claim. An Oxford-educated historian, Panikkar would have an extraordinarily rich career, moving from humble lecturer at Aligarh Muslim University to founding editor of the Hindustan Times to Dewan of Bikaner, all before independence; these would be followed by postings as ambassador to China, France and Egypt, and, vice chancellorships in independent India. Or, if you prefer, one can trace his intellectual trajectory from English liberal to Indian royalist to Chinese Communist appeaser to Hindu conservative. But his first claim to fame were the many books he wrote, none more important than Asia and Western Dominance published in 1953, the intellectual “event of the year” as recalled by the eminent historian Romila Thapar, then a young student in London.

For all its genuine importance, Asia and Western Dominance should be read alongside India and the Indian Ocean, which came out almost a decade earlier. India and the Indian Ocean is an explicit homage to the US naval officer and geopolitical thinker Alfred Mahan, who argued that sea power was the critical determinant of nation state standing in the 20th century. The Malabar-born Panikkar saw much merit in that view and used India and the Indian Ocean not only to remind his readers of India’s rich naval history but also that the country’s descent into colonial rule had begun, not from the northern mountains, but with a sea-borne incursion from the south (the same could be said of China). The “Vasco da Gama” epoch of world history that such an incursion set off was developed much further in Asia and Western Dominance but it is important to remember that Panikkar ended the latter account by arguing that land power—especially when exhibited on the scale of an India or China—would always be able to resist sea power in the end. Panikkar ended his career, now with the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, convinced of the cultural importance of the South over the North of India. For him, the South represented an uncontaminated and unchanging hinterland, namely, all that was worth holding on to, unlike the treacherous coastlines and the much invaded Gangetic plain.

The nuances and reversals of Panikkar’s arguments, and there are many, are hardly remembered today. He survives more as a necessary footnote in naval treatises and entreaties, where he is represented as an early and distinguished proponent of the need for a strong blue water navy as a necessary condition for the long-term security of the nation. Coming to the present, the rarely worn mantle of geopolitical savant has fallen, and rightly, on C Raja Mohan, most notably for his recent study highlighting the current and coming maritime rivalries joining India and China, SamudraManthan. This title is a return to Panikkar in some ways, certainly the “Sardar” is credited in the book as a vital forerunner, but the differences between the two are more marked than the similarities.

For all its Sanskritised title might suggest, Samudra Manthan makes no claim that India has “traditional” geopolitical traditions worth speaking of to guide future actions in, what Raja Mohan calls, the Indo–Pacific maritime zone. Raja Mohan’s concern in this study is both to identify potential hotspots and to propose ways by which they need not lead to anything more fervid. The latent possibilities of India–China cooperation, in other words, is the subtext of the study. What Raja Mohan does not quite say is that this cooperation is possible precisely because the terrain in question is marine, not terrestrial. Possibilities other than a zero-sum trade- off—what bedevils negotiations over Aksai Chin and Arunachal—can be imagined precisely because this is not land. And this returns us to the beginning. How should the ANI be conceptualised in this new regional scenario? As an unsinkable aircraft carrier from where India can watch the high seas for coming dangers or as a frontier of possibility where colonial geopolitics can finally be overcome?

From Conjoining to Enjoining

It is as a frontier of possibility that the ANI have the most potential. However, the most unschooled observer cannot help but notice that while indubitably Indian, the milieu of the ANI is rather unlike the Hindi heartland. Vectors of change called into play by the mainland’s belated recognition of this periphery are designed to turn unlikeness into its opposite. Such recognition sets into motion centripetal forces that assume that the distance between margin and centre must be reduced. This assumption is the primary source of disquiet. The real challenge for the Andaman–mainland relationship is to move away from the dominating geopolitical imaginary of ANI as a strategic platform for regional order while also not forcing the margin to be reduced to a weak facsimile of the social and political economy of the mainland.

There is an uncanny resonance between this proposal and the long-standing debate over the fate of the numerousorang asli (indigenous) communities in the ANI. In a nutshell, this debate asks whether it is better to leave the indigenous to themselves, to live according to their own mores and abilities, or is it the responsibility of a “civilised” government to do what it can to raise the living standards of its people, especially the most vulnerable? Although the official answer is closer to the former option—leave them alone—and government agencies prevent “civilians” from entering the protected reserves of the indigenous, they do not impose such a burden on themselves. Even as the debate continues, representatives of state agencies are very much part of the lives of the indigenous today, for official reasons varying from development and social security to public health and national security, but with consequences that are not always benign.

The underlying spirit of this encounter is visible in the dioramas of indigenous life scattered throughout the state anthropological museum in Port Blair, an institution that appears to have remained oblivious to half a century of ethnological critique. These dioramas leave little to the imagination how impoverished is the conjoined moral and economic condition of the indigenous inhabitants of the Andaman and Nicobar chain. Moreover, tourists from the mainland regularly pass through protected zones where they get a chance to see natives “in the flesh.” This encounter is best understood as a particularly perverse form of auto-tourism where orientalised natives perform primitiveness for gullible and powerful national in/outsiders. The mainland tourist thus finds himself in a natural zoo where space has displaced time, in the manner described by Johannes Fabian. The unequivocally “backward” condition of the native primitive becomes a reaffirmation of the civilisational standing of the mainland visitor, a non-trivial ideological buttress of natural hierarchy and social standing. Yet, other indigenous peoples hail the encroachment of the state and church as having improved their lives unconditionally and immeasurably. As one Nicobarese said to me, before First Contact “we were without clothes … now we can read and write.”

The intertwined tropes of protection and preservation give the impression that an impermeable boundary between what is alleged to be fragile and disappearing and the normal everyday can be imposed successfully from without. In fact, it is far too late to imagine a return to a pristine and uncontaminated past through seclusion and segregation. The relationship between the orang asli and the developmental state has become one of unequal co-dependence, much like the relationship between endangered animal species and village communities around the world. Fragility is a product of this encounter and does not precede it. Disappearance can come about for multiple reasons, from death and escape, to the tyranny of bureaucratic categories and re-inscription of the native self from unconscious primitive to one that seeks self-improvement: “[before] we were without clothes … now we can read and write.” The mutual conjoining that underwrites the urge to protect and preserve soon becomes enjoining: “be like us/do not be like us.” It does not matter which way you proceed. Either way, the mainland “us” becomes the new standard from which all difference is measured. And the ANI are, if nothing else, all about difference.

Frontier of Possibility

The challenge of what we might call the new marine geopolitics is to create frontiers of possibility rather than rewrite prior relations of hostility across new landscapes. For that to take place, a different vision of the relation between margin and homeland and between geopolitical space and strategy needs to be articulated. India’s easternmost territories cannot be reduced to the functional values of an observation platform or an extended economic zone, just as the identity of the ANI must resist becoming a simulacrum of the normative imagined community of the mainland.

For this to happen, new ways of thinking are crucial. Consider the following well-known examples. The dominant representation of the ANI falls within a narrative of anti-colonial resistance dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. This was the moment when Denzil Ibbetson, Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, would write that there was a “new wind” carrying seeds of violence, revolution and sedition blowing through the minds of men. The sound and light show at the Cellular Jail in Port Blair, built in response to this new wind, leaves no doubt that this was the ANI’s greatest moment in Indian national history. But who built this jail and who settled these islands? The ANI had been a prison colony since half a century before, beginning with the aftermath of the Great Mutiny of 1857. It was convicts and descendants of convicts from earlier waves of arrival who built the notorious Cellular Jail and created habitable settlements from dense jungle. Their struggles and sacrifices have been lost against the glamorous arrival of the Sarvarkars and others—Maharashtrian and Bengali revolutionaries—of the early 20th century. A history with different origins and turning points needs to be restored.

In similar vein, the arrival of Japanese troops in 1942 marked the irrevocable end of British rule for the ANI, much as it did for all the colonial empires lying to the east, from Manila to Jakarta. Atrocities were carried out, but those tragic moments do not sum up the occupation period. Subhas Chandra Bose proclaimed an independent India from Port Blair and the possibility of what that meant was experienced in the ANI long before any other part of India. After independence, waves of settlers from different parts of India followed. After 1971 and the formation of Bangladesh, still more displaced people arrived. Descendants of settlers, those who have lived here since 1942 and can often trace their origins to before the building of the Cellular Jail, feel themselves marginalised. It was their sweat and labour that settled this land and built this place. Where does their story fit; how do their sacrifices get counted?

Next, take location seriously. Instead of all flights to Port Blair originating in India, open the airport to international flights from Southeast Asia. This would permit taking advantage of Thailand’s well-developed and very proximate infrastructure centred around Phuket, at least with respect to tourism. While depending on tourism as a long-term economic strategy has its own distinct problems, drawing on nearby Thailand and Indonesia for connectivity, food, resources, expertise, and capital makes more sense and could be accomplished at a much lower cost than seeking to extend an inadequate infrastructure from Chennai or Kolkata. The armed forces will need to have their own autonomous systems for obvious reasons; this condition does not hold true for civilian development.

Finally, see the role of the armed forces in ways that do not reduce to national defence. Given the physical proximity of the archipelago to Burma, Thailand and Indonesia, it is hardly surprising that Coast Guard patrols often encounter fishermen from these countries illegally fishing in waters claimed by India. International criminal gangs are often apprehended in the process of smuggling protected timber and sea cucumbers from the outer islands. Given the numbers of foreign fisherfolk to be found in the Port Blair lockup, local wags claim that these individuals seek actively to be caught by the Coast Guard as conditions in Indian jails are much better than everyday life in Burma and Thailand. But Indian naval vessels are often also the first on the scene in cases of human smuggling, ecological disasters and marine accidents; their presence, expertise, and equipment can often make the difference between life and death on the high seas. There is currently a modus vivendi between the ANI and its regional neighbours that far exceeds the wildest hopes of Narasimha Rao’s “Look East” policy. It should not be lost in the name of upgrading national security.

The more the ANI become an unsinkable aircraft carrier, the more likely it is that the subtle and complex nature of current interactions will be reduced to a simple and misleading calculus of friend or foe. Today’s state of affairs holds promise precisely because it permits outcomes that are more than either/or. Let us hope colonial geopolitics remains on the mainland and is not exported to the new marine frontier. The diverse, plural, polyglot, multi-racial and multi-confessional Andaman and Nicobar islands chain is Southeast Asia’s beachhead in India. Let it long remain so

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