India’s security imagination of the Bay of Bengal: aspiration, sub-optimality, and history

Abstract

ABSTRACT India has consistently demarcated the Bay of Bengal as a security space in standard realist terms which in turn leads to its conversion as a zone of security. The article probes two questions in this context. First, what drives India's insecurity and its imperative to control the Bay of Bengal? Apart from the traditional defence imperative, India pursues an aspirational model of security that is linked to its regional prominence and growing maritime footprint. Second, what are India's security responses in the Bay of Bengal? While realist security theories are often helpful in explaining India's security behaviour, there are several episodes when India's responses are also suboptimal on a realist scale where it does not completely resort to either defensive or offensive realism to attain security. Beyond defending threats and accumulating power, India's security engagements are additionally motivated by the concerns of autonomy, leadership and pre-eminence in this maritime space.