Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent diplomatic itinerary—spanning the Maldives and the coastal state of Tamil Nadu in southern India a few days ago—offers profound insights into India’s evolving Indian Ocean strategy. These visits, occurring within days of each other, are not isolated events but part of a coherent regional vision. Together, they signal how India is leveraging diplomacy, development partnerships, cultural revival, and strategic infrastructure to reshape its role in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) as a civilisational and stabilising power. 

In the Maldives, Modi’s participation in the archipelago’s 60th Independence Day celebrations marked a diplomatic reset. Relations had previously faced turbulence under President Mohamed Muizzu’s “India Out” campaign. But Modi’s presence as the guest of honour in Malé was a powerful symbol of India’s patience, resilience, and regional goodwill. More than symbolic, the visit yielded substantive outcomes. India extended a $565 million line of credit to support the Maldivian economy, accompanied by eased terms for previous debt repayments. These gestures reassured the island nation of India’s enduring commitment as a development partner rather than a geopolitical patron.

The economic packages were complemented by eight bilateral agreements signed across health, tourism, fisheries, digital payments, and trade. Particularly notable was the inclusion of India’s UPI and RuPay platforms into the Maldivian economy—an emblem of India’s push to internationalise its digital public infrastructure. Such financial cooperation adds everyday utility to diplomacy and cements India's influence through practical integration. Infrastructure development also featured prominently, with India reiterating support for key projects like the Hanimaadhoo Airport upgrade—now adorned with Indian murals—and the Dhoshimeyna building, the new Maldivian Defence Ministry headquarters funded by Indian grants. These projects go beyond brick and mortar; they are foundations of trust.

Security cooperation received renewed emphasis as well. India extended the lease of two helicopters and a Dornier aircraft to the Maldivian National Defence Force, reaffirming its role as the Maldives’ first responder in times of crisis. Support for the Ekatha Harbour project, designed to expand MNDF’s coastal operations, reflects India’s nuanced approach: enabling local capacities while safeguarding shared maritime interests. In an ocean increasingly marked by the shadow of Chinese port acquisitions and dual-use infrastructure, India’s model of consent-based, sovereignty-respecting security cooperation stands out.

Modi's Symbolic Gesture

While the Maldives visit was outward-looking and diplomatic, PM Modi's stopover in Tamil Nadu on July 27 served as an inward glance—anchoring India’s maritime identity in its civilisational legacy. At the Brihadisvara Temple in Gangaikonda Cholapuram, Modi paid tribute to Chola Emperor Rajendra Chola I, whose reign symbolised India's golden era of maritime expansion, cultural exchange, and naval dominance across the Bay of Bengal and beyond. This symbolic gesture served not only as cultural revivalism but also as a strategic message: that India’s maritime future is inextricably linked to its past.

Tamil Nadu’s coastline, historically central to Indo-Pacific trade routes, remains vital to contemporary maritime strategy. In this context, the announcement of Mahasagar Point—a new integrated maritime command and observatory complex near Kanyakumari—takes on strategic urgency. Conceived as both a civilian and defence node, Mahasagar Point will serve as a real-time maritime domain awareness hub, integrating inputs from the Indian Navy, Coast Guard, shipping authorities, and disaster management agencies. Its location at the tip of peninsular India makes it ideal for coordinating responses to everything from cyclones to piracy to illegal fishing. Mahasagar Point is not merely an installation—it is a maritime nerve centre for India’s southern seaboard.

MAHASAGAR Initiative 

Importantly, the MAHASAGAR Initiative unveiled this year as a long-term vision to position India as the natural leader of the Indian Ocean world. The MAHASAGAR Initiative represents an integrated framework of strategic, developmental, and cultural objectives across the region. It aims to deepen defence partnerships, build interoperable port infrastructure, expand trade corridors, and strengthen India’s role in multilateral forums like IORA (Indian Ocean Rim Association). Through capacity-building, line-of-credit diplomacy, digital integration, and disaster relief operations, the initiative envisions India not only as a counterweight to external powers but as a responsible stakeholder for the region’s collective security and prosperity.

The MAHASAGAR Initiative also integrates blue economy cooperation—spanning sustainable fisheries, marine ecology, and island resilience—with strategic connectivity. The Indian government has already begun consultations with Mauritius, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia to align their maritime development goals with India’s capacity-building programmes under the MAHASAGAR framework. Significantly, this initiative also intends to involve coastal Indian states—such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Odisha—as sub-national partners in the shaping of maritime strategy, thus blurring the lines between domestic development and regional diplomacy.

These recent moves reinforce the three-pillar foundation of India’s Indian Ocean strategy: security, development, and civilisational outreach. The SAGAR doctrine, first articulated by PM Modi in 2015, has evolved from a diplomatic vision into a grounded policy. India today is not only hosting naval exercises but also enabling regional defence self-sufficiency. It is not merely giving aid but creating enduring infrastructure. And it is not simply quoting ancient texts but invoking historical continuity as the moral basis for regional leadership.

Building Regional Order

Development diplomacy remains India’s strongest soft-power tool in the Indian Ocean. The contrast between India’s low-interest, grant-based infrastructure projects and China’s debt-heavy Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has not gone unnoticed. The Maldivian pivot back to India is partly driven by this contrast. India’s development approach offers sovereignty, transparency, and long-term viability. From solar micro-grids in Mauritius to sanitation systems in the Maldives, India's model is rooted in tangible benefits for local populations.

Culturally, India’s civilisational diplomacy is witnessing a quiet resurgence. The emphasis on Rajendra Chola and the temples of Tamil Nadu is not ornamental—it is a narrative strategy. India is presenting itself not just as a strategic actor, but as a civilisational anchor whose maritime history legitimises its contemporary leadership. Cultural diplomacy is being reimagined not as a soft adjunct to strategy, but as a foundational pillar that binds the strategic to the spiritual, the ancient to the urgent.

As India charts its course in the Indian Ocean, certain challenges remain. Project delivery timelines must be shortened, bureaucratic bottlenecks reduced, and intra-ministerial coordination improved to make initiatives like the MAHASAGAR Initiative effective. Moreover, India must ensure that local communities—whether in the Maldives or along Tamil Nadu’s coast—remain stakeholders in this grand maritime narrative. Inclusion will be key to sustainability.

Nevertheless, the direction is promising. India’s maritime strategy today is broader than countering China; it is about building a regional Indo-Pacific order where cooperation replaces coercion, with the MAHASAGAR Initiative providing a policy architecture and helping India to shift from a reactive to a proactive maritime power.

PM Modi’s back-to-back visits to the Maldives and Tamil Nadu, coupled with the launch of the MAHASAGAR Initiative, offer a consolidated vision of India’s maritime future. This is not a vision driven solely by geopolitics, but by a blend of pragmatic engagement, historical self-awareness, and developmental outreach. In the Indian Ocean, India is no longer content to merely float—it is ready to steer. And it is doing so with a compass calibrated to both ancient currents and modern tides.

(The writer, a political science graduate from Guru Nanak Dev University, India, is a contemporary and strategic affairs analyst. Views are personal. She can be contacted at anubham95@gmail.com).