Disquiet on the Eastern Front: Great Nicobar base key to maritime defences

As we head for the first anniversary of Operation Sindoor next week, we should brace for being inundated by stirring stories of the military performance during those 87 hours. We should stop it, and here’s why. 

I’d see it as being in the national interest to play spoilsport and say that this non-stop jubilation over the past is most unwise. We need to think of wars of the future instead. 

We also need to shift our gaze across our landmass, from west to the east. Everything looks quiet on the eastern front now, but it will change. Remember also what Field Marshal Asim Munir had said in his boastful speech at Tampa, Florida on August 9, 2025. He had said the next time Pakistan will start the war from the east, because that’s where “they (India) have located their most valuable resources.” Open the map now and spread your gaze wider. What do you see across our 3,416-km eastern seaboard? It’s a tiny, 600-km Bangladesh coastline at the head of the Bay of Bengal, followed by 2,227 km of Myanmar coast, then Thailand. South of that, the Andaman Sea takes you across the Malacca Strait into the Pacific. Both Bangladesh and Myanmar — the latter more so — are vulnerable to Chinese presence. 

And if somehow, at some point, the Thai idea of digging a canal across the Isthmus of Kra, about 50 km at its narrowest, where the country’s southern zone tapers into the Malay peninsula becomes reality, it will cut the sailing time from the Pacific to the Andaman Sea by about three days. Further, it would greatly undermine the significance of the Malacca Strait as a strategic choke point. 

The idea might cost $55 billion and makes it seem like a fantasy. But, there is enough juice in it to have survived 350 years since it appeared as a vision in a Thai monarch’s dream. 

It was highlighted in October 2023, when then-Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin’s doodle at the BRI Forum in Beijing was caught by cameras. The doodle marked a canal exactly at the narrowest point of the Isthmus. 

You would then be complacent not to presume that if the project were to ever become a reality, it will be done with Chinese help, and maybe even ownership. It will expose India’s buzzing eastern seaboard, the big metros and industrial zones to China. The Pacific would come alarmingly closer to India. 

Historically, and instinctively, India has seen threats emerging from the west and the north, from Pakistan and China. The east has received less attention. There’s been much talk of the Quad, and also the leverage over the Strait of Malacca. But, psychologically, India has had a benign view of the east. It follows that most of our key operational assets, Army and Air Force look north and west. Even the Navy is focused towards the west (Pakistan). That focus is valid, but the vulnerability in the east now must be plugged. 

Geography has gifted India just the assets it needs to defend itself. In the east, the Andaman and Nicobar islands are designed by gods as unsinkable aircraft carriers. These can harbour and launch ships and submarines, base combat and reconnaissance aircraft. Given the long ranges and refuellers, India can watch the entire Bay of Bengal, the Andaman Sea and beyond.

 

That’s what makes the Great Nicobar Island, our southernmost territory an incredible strategic asset. With Rahul Gandhi going there earlier this week to oppose a multipurpose township-cum-transshipment port, essentially a huge military base, the case for the project has somewhat grandly and erroneously become trapped in the prospect of India choking the Chinese in the Strait of Malacca. 

That is indeed possible but not so plausible. The Strait lies between powerful sovereign nations — Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Also, to block it, India would need to be as reckless as Iran with the Strait of Hormuz because it would hinder friend and foe: Japan, South Korea, Russia included. 

Things will need to be really desperate and dire for India to risk all of that. It’s much simpler therefore to see the island territories —especially Great Nicobar as India’s forward defensive shield. If developed prudently and patiently, these could become to the defence of eastern India what the Himalayas are to the north. That project is on right now. 

Look at it this way. In the next 10-15 years, what is a more likely prospect: India going out to China proactively in the oceans, or the Chinese coming in to threaten us? It could be either direct, or as a distraction if India is caught in a larger conflict with Pakistan. If we take you back to that enlarged map, you might spot some tiny dots just 20 km from Landfall Island, the northernmost point in the Andamans archipelago. Here sits Myanmar’s Great Coco Island. It is just 14.57 sq km but already has an airstrip longer (7,500 feet) than what we have built at Great Nicobar. There have been Chinese visits to Coco (it has four more, way tinier islands in the Little Coco chain) and anybody who rules out a Chinese foothold here, given the chaos in Myanmar, won’t be forgiven by history. The island territories in the east are now an indispensable defensive phalanx. 

The heady talk of the Quad has blurred our strategic vision. It cannot be a realistic aspiration for India to proactively block the Strait of Malacca for the Chinese on behalf of the US and its allies. A more urgent need is to shore up our maritime defences in the east. 

That’s why the islands need to be militarised urgently. India would be stupid not to leverage this gift worth trillions in strategic capital. The political fight over this has been hijacked by the argument over whether India can block the Malacca Strait or not. A more important point is that it gives India the presence to watch anything of interest in and out of it, and now we are building the muscle power to intervene if our security is so gravely threatened. Remember, any shipping going in and out of Malacca must pass through the Six Degree channel, well within India’s Exclusive Economic Zone. To fully understand the value of these islands, we must anticipate threats of the future and stop fighting the wars of the past — least of all, an air skirmish of 87 hours.

Any warfare hits the most sensitive emotional buttons and it is natural for human beings to be obsessed with what’s been already fought, especially if successfully. Serious nations, however, don’t act like mere individuals. They draw lessons from past conflicts and look at the battles that lie ahead.  

In conclusion, we bring back Asim Munir. The best thing about him is that he’s such a big mouth. He’d be a bigger nuisance if he had the smiling cunning and vicious smarts of a Zia-ul-Haq. Unlike Zia, who knifed you in the back silently, Munir boasts. That’s why, as our attention widens to the east, we have to debate two questions. First, what is it that he describes as “what they value the most”. And second, what will be the wherewithal at his disposal to target those assets. 

I might have some guesswork, but I am not about to give anybody ideas in a mere column. All I can tell you is, he isn’t talking about Siliguri as many instinctively presumed, particularly at a juncture when anger and distrust with Bangladesh had been running high on establishment social media. I’d just say, think east, think eastern seaboard, and meanwhile, keep adding muscle and eyes on those islands.

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