Journal of the Indian Ocean Region

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The oceans as new regions: emerging narratives

and the Bay of Bengal

Anita Sengupta

To cite this article: Anita Sengupta (2020) The oceans as new regions: emerging
narratives and the Bay of Bengal, Journal of the Indian Ocean Region, 16:3, 229-243, DOI:
10.1080/19480881.2020.1820690

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19480881.2020.1820690

Published online: 22 Sep 2020.

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JOURNAL OF THE INDIAN OCEAN REGION
2020, VOL. 16, NO. 3, 229–243
https://doi.org/10.1080/19480881.2020.1820690

The oceans as new regions: emerging narratives and the Bay

of Bengal
Anita Sengupta
Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi, India

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Traditionally geo-political spatial imaginations have been restricted Received 24 February 2020
to the continental expanse with the understanding that oceans Accepted 3 September 2020
formed the shared commons. However, he delimitation of oceanic
KEYWORDS
spaces as ‘natural regions’ is therefore increasingly becoming as maritime regionalism; Indo-
significant today to strategic discourse as continental spaces and Pacific; Bay of Bengal;
subject to similar terminological transformations. This article BIMSTEC
argues that the emergence of a common narrative built around
historical interactions along sea lanes, the re-conceptualization of
ocean spaces and the increasing recognition of the significance of
‘Blue Economy’ calls for a critical understanding of ocean spaces.
In the twenty-first century this has become a structural
component of international politics expanding into a wider array
of policy fields in a way that was seldom evident even in the last
decade of the previous century, when the mapping of oceans
assumed critical political relevance. In this background, this article
examines the emergence of the Bay of Bengal as a ‘new’ region
with associated regional organizations.

Introduction
Metageography ‘refers to a set of spatial structures through which people order their
knowledge of the world: the often unconscious frameworks that organize studies of
history, sociology, anthropology, economics, political science or even natural history’
(Lewis & Wigen, 1997, p. ix). One of the most prevalent is the division of the world into con-
tinents which are accepted as forming the earth’s fundamental geographical structure. In
the more recent Cold War era the tripartite division of the world was accepted as a given.
Similarly, in the 1970s, division of the world into ‘areas’ came into vogue. While these ter-
minologies continue to be used, the notion of dividing the globe in terms of spatial struc-
tures has been critiqued and a number of alternatives proposed.1 This became more
evident when apparently fixed metageographies were challenged by political processes
and disappeared by dispersing into smaller units or merged with larger spaces. The tripar-
tite division into the First, Second and Third Worlds has been replaced by the bipolar ‘North’
and ‘South.’ There is also the approach followed by world systems theorists towards divid-
ing the world into core, semiperiphery and periphery. Then, there is Samuel Huntington
(1997) who has claimed that the emerging world order can be best defined in terms of civi-
lizations, thereby, bringing back into focus older geographical schemes.

CONTACT Anita Sengupta anitasengupta@hotmail.com FE 476 Salt Lake Sector 3, Kolkata 700106, India
© 2020 Indian Ocean Research Group
230 A. SENGUPTA

All of these spatial imaginations are, however, restricted to an elemental type of

space of the globe which forms about a third of the total global area. The rest is
covered by an interconnected body of water, that is, the world ocean: the Atlantic,
Arctic, Indian, Pacific and Southern Oceans. In turn these are interspersed by small
seas, gulfs and bays. Unlike the global division of the earth’s land surface that saw
complementary and conflictual spatial imaginations, till recently spatial imaginations
about world ocean were not in vogue. It was only in the last decade of the last
century that a number of alternatives were proposed including those that explored
reframing of area studies around oceans and sea basins, thereby bringing into focus
a set of historical regions that had largely remained invisible on conventional maps.2
However, as Jerry H Bentley argues,
while sea and ocean basins would not serve as definitive categories of historical analysis
because their contours and characteristics have changed dramatically over time with shifting
relationships between bodies of water and masses of land’ they have been ‘useful for bringing
to focus processes of commercial, biological and cultural exchange with profound influence
on the development of societies. (Bentley, 1999, p. 215)

It was partly the increasing significance of ‘Blue Economy’ but also emerging challenges
to maritime security that has led to the search for the creation of global maritime govern-
ance and consequent emerging terminologies that encompass parts of the aquatic space
(for a detailed study see Voyer et al., 2018, pp. 28–48). The delimitation of oceanic spaces
as ‘natural regions’ is increasingly becoming as significant today to strategic discourse as
the continental spaces and subject to similar terminological transformations based on
global politics. This shift in perspective was not just about imaging new geographies
but also about redrawing global arenas, taking note of new international realities.
Among the most prevalent discursive shifts showing this shift in perspective is the idea
of the Indo-Pacific.3 Prosaic definitions of the Indo-Pacific delimit it as a bio-geographic
region of the Earth’s seas, comprising the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the
western and central Pacific Ocean, and the seas connecting the two in the general area
of Indonesia which does not include the temperate and polar regions of the Indian and
Pacific oceans, nor the Tropical Eastern Pacific, till along the Pacific coast of the Americas.
Some strategic analysts on the other hand delimit the Indo-Pacific arena as stretching from
the Indian Ocean, (bound by the east coast of Africa) through the equatorial seas around
the Indonesian archipelago, the South China Sea, all the way to the Pacific Ocean (bound
by the west coast of North America) (Das, 2019).
The term has recently gained prominence in strategic discourse as a substitute for the
more established Asia Pacific with the renaming of the United States Pacific Command
(USPACOM) as the United States Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM). While this
change could be merely symbolic, reflecting the reality of the area that the command
was responsible for anyway, the possibilities of the extension of INDOPACOM to the
east coast of Africa remains a distinct possibility and assumes strategic relevance
(Medcalf, 2015). Echoing similar re-conceptualizations of continental spaces (like the cre-
ation of a single South and Central Asia Division by the US Department of State, propelled
by the need to include and stabilize Afghanistan) in recognition of shifting geopolitical
realities, this renaming recognized not only the increasing connections between the
Indian and Pacific Oceans but also the growing significance of India in American strategic
 JOURNAL OF THE INDIAN OCEAN REGION 231

thinking, as also, a continuing unease about Chinese involvement in the extended region.
Doyle and Rumley (2019, p. 1) argue that there are three dominant frameworks within
which the Indo-Pacific can be discussed: 1. the non-realist interpretation of a shared
oceanic neighborhood; 2. the realist perception of a natural and essential relationship
between the states in the region, and; 3. the non-oceanic representation of oceanic
space (Doyle & Rumley, 2019, p. 1). All of these also converge in the present Indian narra-
tive and is evident in the way it is articulated in India.
The Indian rhetoric/vision of the Indo-Pacific is based on the idea of the inter-connect-
edness of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the importance of oceans to security and com-
merce and India’s role within the broader region. This was articulated by Prime Minister
Narendra Modi during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where he clarified that this
was neither a strategy nor an exclusive club. He described it as a ‘natural region’
ranging ‘from the shores of Africa to that of the Americas’ and argued that it should be
‘free, open, and inclusive’; grounded in ‘rules and norms … based on the consent of all,
not on the power of the few’; and characterized by respect for international law, including
freedom of navigation and over flight. He went on to stress that it was not in conflict with
ASEAN’s unity and centrality to the region (Ministry of External Affairs, GOI, 2018). The
articulation of this idea of the Indo-Pacific is also intended as a strategy to balance
Chinese influence over the oceans and this is implicit in the discourse. The downplaying
of the concept by the Chinese is a clear indication that the focus on ‘openness’ as a
core aspect of the Indo-Pacific is intended towards contradiction of their policies in
stretches such as the South China Sea.4 In response to the Chinese search for more exclu-
sive control, the number of strategic dialogues, intelligence sharing mechanisms, military
exercises, and defense compacts have been initiated by states that propose a more inclus-
ive vision of the Indo Pacific, involving large and medium powers in the Indo-Pacific –
including India – have rapidly multiplied.
This article argues that just as region-ness has implications for states, identity and diplo-
macy in ‘geo-political’ terms, it would have implications in ‘aqua-political’ terms. The emer-
gence of a common narrative built around historical interactions along sea lanes, the re-
conceptualization of ocean spaces and the increasing recognition of the significance of
‘Blue Economy’ calls for a critical understanding of ocean spaces as well as the creation
of a new vocabulary to make sense of these transformations. Much of this recent emerging
re-imagination is about vast geo oceanic systems and the countries, communities and cul-
tures touched by them in both physical and metaphysical sense.5 This article examines a
region on the periphery of one of the geo-oceanic systems (the Indo Pacific) that has
increasingly become significant in geo strategic and economic terms, by studying the
emergence of the Bay of Bengal as a ‘new’ region with associated regional organizations.
Located between South and Southeast Asia at the intersection of two regional blocs, the
SAARC and ASEAN, encircled by ports that are now the focus of the Chinese Maritime Silk
Road and including within it the strategically located Indian Andaman and Nicobar Islands,
it is increasingly gaining salience as a strategic maritime space partly as a segment of the
Indo Pacific but also as a maritime region in its own right. The Bay of Bengal has historically
had a ‘regional’ existence as the repository of cultural and trade linkages that spanned cen-
turies creating a rich tapestry of connections along the littorals on either side. The refram-
ing of these cultural narratives in nationalist terms along with the fact that the Bay is now
intimately linked to a political imagination through India’s Look East and Act East Policies
232 A. SENGUPTA

and the politics of economic corridors like the BCIM (EC) marks it as a dynamic arena for
the study of ‘maritime regionalism’6

From a ‘World of regions’ to maritime regionalism

In a review article, ‘The Emerging Regional Architecture of World Politics,’ Acharya (2007)
cites, from Barry Buzan and Ole Waever’s Regions and Powers: The Structure of International
Security, to note, ‘it is now possible to begin more systematically to conceptualize a global
world order of strong regions’ or a ‘world of regions’ (p. 629). Acharya goes on to note that
he agrees with the basic premise that,
The study of regional orders—including the construction and organization of regions, the cul-
tural, political, economic and strategic interactions that occur both within and between
regions and the relationship between these interactions and the international system at
large is vital to our understanding of how the world works. (Acharya, 2007, p. 630)

However, he argues that he disagrees with the basic premise of the two reviewed books
that ‘regions are defined by powers of various kinds: the sole superpower and its imper-
ium, great powers including ‘core states’ that serve the power and purpose of the imper-
ium, and to a lesser extent, regional powers.’ Acharya argues that ‘regions are constructed
more from within that without’ and ‘power matters but local responses to power may
matter even more in the construction of regional order.’ Regions are increasingly being
framed in non-geographic terms that neither privilege geographical contiguity nor
insist on states inhabiting the same space-place. ‘Newer approaches emphasize the
social construction of regions’ (p. 634) focusing purposeful social, cultural and economic
interactions. There is also a tendency to view regions in ideational terms, expressing col-
lective identities and discourses which are then recognized by others as ‘regionness’
(Soderbaum, 2019).
The author has argued elsewhere that there are three markers of regionalism (for a
detailed discussion see Sengupta, 2017, p. 3). The first marker is a set of common experi-
ences and problems among a number of states that share a distinct geographic space. The
second is a set of political, economic, social and cultural linkages along within a bounded
space where there is intensive interaction (Stubbs & Underhill, 1994). This is generally
identified as regionalization. The third and final marker is the development of an organiz-
ation which determines the legal and institutional framework for the region which is
central to regionalism (White et al., 1997). The first marker is the spatial dimension of
regionalism, the second relates to its scope and the third relates to the level of institutio-
nalization. These three markers are important since they highlight the fact that regions
differ both in terms of recognition of boundaries as well as scope (for a detailed discussion
see Samaddar & Sengupta, 2019, pp. 16–17) and Sengupta, 2017, p. 3). So, ‘regional’ organ-
izations develop both in terms of their membership and scope and often the way in which
the ‘region’ is defined itself may be transformed by them. (for a detailed discussion see
Samaddar & Sengupta, 2019, pp. 16–17) and Sengupta, 2017, pp. 3–7). This transformation
in the nature of ‘world regions’ has been echoed in the reconceptualization of maritime
spaces.
‘Maritime’ regionalism emerged with growing awareness among littorals that ‘marine
resources must be used sustainably and that economic development derived from
 JOURNAL OF THE INDIAN OCEAN REGION 233

maritime domain must be integrated with sustainability, conservation and the heath of the
marine ecosystem. There was simultaneously an awareness of the economic potential of
the maritime environment and a political and economic turn to better govern the marine
potential. As Timothy Doyle (2018, pp. 1–2) argues, this was a global phenomenon that
partly followed the adoption of the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of
the Sea) and ‘partly as a new construction of sea space.’ Doyle goes on to argue that
the Indian Ocean rim, home to nearly half the global population and with its core position
in terms of global trade, industry, labor, environment, security and potential to shape
global geopolitics might lead to the development of a new region of significant impor-
tance in global politics. As Steinberg has argued ‘the sea is no longer separate from the
land’ and to view it as two-dimensional space configured in terms of shipping lane security
could be misleading (Steinberg, 1999, p. 403). He goes on to argue that the changing uses
of ocean spaces in recent times have reflected changes in the material organization of
society and contributed to the social construction of ocean spaces.
The uninhabited ocean space across which extensive trade and interaction occurs is not a
formless void between societies but rather a unique and specifically constructed space
within society. Indeed, noting the unique role that the world ocean has played in integrating
the modern (post 1450) world system Modelski and Thompson proclaim, “The modern world
system is characteristically and importantly an oceanic system”. (cited in Steinberg, 2001,
p. 23)

Oceans have historically been a space both for expanding state control as well as
acknowledging limits to it. Steinberg argues that
the history of the modern world economy can be read as a history of the simultaneous
“opening” and “closing” of the ocean frontier. The formation of mercantilist empires that
claimed exclusive rights to maritime trade routes formed the foundation for modern capital-
ism but their efforts to establish exclusive territorial authority in the ocean was not tenable.
(Steinberg, 2018, p. 2)

With this realization there were efforts to ensure that areas of the sea distant from the land
were open to all and the ocean was not to be constructed as a frontier. While this contin-
ued to be the position till about the middle of the twentieth century, the narrative
changed with the recognition of the potential for extraction of spatially fixed resources
(petroleum, minerals and biological resources) and the increasing movement towards
the recognition of oceans as claimable, governable and amenable to infrastructural devel-
opments. As the ocean presented opportunities it became increasingly clear that new
regulatory frontiers would have to be developed. The UNCLOS recognized that in the
regions of the ocean closest to the shore – the frontier – could be exclusive and under
the control of the land-based states. But even here foreign merchant ships were to be
allowed entry. The high seas would be a space beyond frontiers and between the high
seas and the territorial sea would be exclusive economic zones extending into the conti-
nental shelf. The ‘opening’ and ‘closing’ of maritime frontiers continues and as Steinberg
(2018) argues this has been a cyclical process presenting opportunities for political inno-
vations (p. 3). The transformation of the Asia Pacific to the Indo-Pacific is reflective of this
cyclic process of transformation.
It has been argued that the Indo-Pacific is at one level simply an expansion of the Asia
Pacific notion to reflect the fact that India with its Look and Act East Policy has become an
234 A. SENGUPTA

economic and strategic player in a larger maritime domain (Sooklal et al., 2019). The Indo-
Pacific also reflects the Obama administration’s rebalancing of interests towards East Asia
through the Pivot to Asia policy. Historically the idea of Asia-Pacific was a continuation of
the World War II understanding of global space developed in the context of Japanese air
power and the sea battles after Pearl Harbour. The Indo Pacific centralizes the Indian
Ocean as a region and extends it up to Africa (Siddiqui, 2019).
It was Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who in a speech to the Indian Parlia-
ment in August 2007, brought into focus the confluence of the Indian and Pacific
Oceans as ‘seas of freedom and prosperity’ in a broader Asia. In addition to extending
the region to the shores of Africa, the Indo Pacific as a region brought together the
overlapping memberships of the Indian Ocean Rim Association member states with
members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Organization and Association of
South East Asian Regions. At the Shangri La Dialogue in June 2018, there was also
a call for greater co-operation between India, Japan and Indonesia for creating a
common rule-based regional order. While this is yet to be institutionalized, the idea
has brought geo-political contestation to a new level with China reaffirming its inter-
est in the South China Sea and India attempting to create a more comprehensive
partnership with the South East Asian states by upgrading some of its bilateral
relations to strategic partnerships. This has led to the argument that the logic of
regional co-operation in the Asia Pacific/Indo Pacific region and the emergence of
marine regionalism is transforming the ways in which member states would interact
with each other (Umar, 2018).
The reconceptualization of oceans as new economic frontiers calls for the creation of
new political organizations and institutions. While the ocean space has been variously ima-
gined and constructed in different historical eras, the recent re-imagination of ocean space
as part of a larger infrastructural project has meant that ocean governance today is not just
about sustainable development and sharing of ocean resources but also the creation of a
series of ports as part of a larger project for search of new markets and expansion. As Ertor
and Hadjimichael (2020, p. 3) argue this underines the importance of a critical examination
of ‘the impact of this new shift towards the exploration of new markets via the oceans, seas
and coast while unpacking the approach towards oceans as a new commodity frontier for
further capital accumulation.’
This is clearly reflected by Constantino Xavier and Darshana M Baruah (2018) in their
analysis of the Bay of Bengal when they argue:
The new narrative about the Bay of Bengal is driven by a variety of actors and interests. For
India which has almost one quarter of its population living in states bordering the Bay,
growth and development are increasingly seen to hinge on the degree of connectivity with
the Southeast Asian markets as reflected in its Act East Policy. As the Belt and Road Initiative
increases China’s North South Access route to the Indian Ocean especially via Myanmar, Ban-
gladesh and Sri Lanka, New Delhi is accelerating alternative East West connectivity plans.
(Xavier & Baruah, 2018)

The Bay of Bengal as a ‘New’ region

The Bay had been at the center of Asian Connections for centuries forged by movements
of people and commodities between the eastern littoral of the Bay and the South China
 JOURNAL OF THE INDIAN OCEAN REGION 235

Sea (Sanyal, 2016). The Bay of Bengal not only linked Sri Lanka, the Coromandel Coast and
Bengal to Burma, Thailand, the western Malay Peninsula and northern Sumatra but also
offered indirect access to the rich markets further west. Both commodities and human
traffic moved so frequently between the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea that
they constituted an integral part of the wider Indian Ocean trading system. The crucial
transit zone here was the Straits of Malacca where three interlocking systems met, one
going past the Cape Comorin, the other east to the archipelago and South China Sea
while the third reached north into the Bay of Bengal. There were varying rhythms of move-
ments within the interlocking systems that had implications for the life of the Bay, but
were also of importance to the larger Indian Ocean system of which it formed an impor-
tant part. The Bay was a maritime highway, witnessing the movements of traders and com-
modities and facilitating economic exchange but also large scale labor migration which
encouraged cultural cosmopolitanism and exchange of ways of life. Part of the British
imperial empire these linkages remained in operation till the middle of the twentieth
century.
Reflecting on these connections in the making of a Bay of Bengal community, Suchan-
dra Ghosh (2020, forthcoming) notes,
The Bay of Bengal network encapsulated the Myanmarese, Cambodian and Thai mainland
polities and the different kingdoms on the upper Malay Peninsula and the northern and
western coasts of Sumatra with of course India’s eastern seaboard and Sri Lanka. Tamil mer-
chants frequented the ports of Southeast Asia and inscribed their presence in the ports of the
Isthmian tract. The network witnessed brisk maritime contacts—commercial and cultural since
early centuries CE. This is well attested by field archaeological, art historical, textual and epi-
graphic sources.

In the post-colonial era, these linkages declined as self-sufficiency replaced trade and
the mental maps of the region were re-drawn to accommodate national boundaries. As
the centuries old connections that bound South and Southeast Asia together collapsed,
the region no longer remained the heart of what was once a global economy. The post
war distinction between Southeast and South Asia, later concretized in the two separate
regional associations ASEAN and SAARC, further divided the littorals on either side of the
Bay. As a flourishing region of trade and exchange the Bay of Bengal disappeared from
geopolitical and geo-economic imaginations though not from cultural imagination.
However, with the increasing importance of the Indo-Pacific region in the contemporary
connectivity matrix, the Bay of Bengal is once again acquiring strategic significance with
its critical position as a bridge between South, Southeast and East Asia. This has partly
been prompted by increasing Chinese presence in the region and the initiation of a
series of developmental and connectivity projects in its western and south-western
regions, recreating the image of the Bay as a pivotal economic space as well as an alterna-
tive to China’s dependence on the Malacca Strait.
The twenty-first century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) was proposed by Chinese president
Xi Jinping in October 2013 during a speech to the Indonesian Parliament. The route of this
Maritime Silk Road goes through cities of Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, Haikou, Beihai,
Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Colombo, Kolkata, Nairobi, Athens and Venice. The maritime
areas of this Maritime Silk Road include the East China Sea, South China Sea, the Indian
Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Indian strategic thinking identifies the Maritime Route as
a repackaging of the ‘string of pearls’ strategy, a position reflected in C. Raja Mohan’s
236 A. SENGUPTA

Samudra Manthan: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific (2012), where he argues that land
competition between China and India will spill now out to the ocean and the Indo-Pacific is
becoming a new geographical space for this contest (for similar idea, see Weimer, 2013,
pp. 5–26). This has deepened maritime competition between India and China as India is
apprehensive about greater Chinese engagements in its neighborhood. China on the
other hand is hampered by the absence of naval bases which circumscribes its capacity
to provide security in the Indian Ocean region as well as protect its energy routes (See
for instance Holmes & Yoshihara, 2008, pp. 367–394).
India would geographically be a part of both the Southern Silk Route and the Maritime
Silk Route (MSR) and this presents both opportunities and challenges. The acceptability of
MSR among a majority of the ASEAN states implies that a refusal by India to join would
place her at a disadvantage with the possibility of exclusion from an emerging geo-econ-
omic trend in Asia. However, as a means of circumventing this India could move toward
partnership with states like Japan or look for greater collaboration with organizations
like the SCO of which she is now a permanent member, While the possibility of neighbors
like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia drifting into the Chinese orbit and accepting Chinese
norms for Asian security would present challenges to India, however recent criticism of
various MSR projects and cancelation of some seem to indicate that the Chinese projects
are now being questioned at various levels.
However, this new ‘geography of logistics’ has prompted analysts like Cowen (2010) to
argue that security will be re-imagined in the context of production and trade,
No longer lodged in a conflict between territorial borders and global flows, national security is
increasingly a project of securing supranational systems. The maritime border has been a crucial
site for experimentation and a spate of new policy is blurring “inside” and “outside” national
space, reconfiguring border security and reorganizing citizenship and labour rights. These pro-
grammes seek to govern integrated economic space while they resurrect borders and sanction
new forms of containment. Forces that disrupt commodity flows are cast as security threats with
labour action as a key target of policy. Direct connections result between market rule created to
secure logistic space and the broader project of neoliberalism. (p. 600)

While the Chinese vision for maritime connectivity across the Indo-Pacific and connect-
ing it to East Africa and the Mediterranean is consistent with India’s own broader maritime
economic vision, there is apprehension that it is part of China’s attempt to ‘reorder Asia’
and draw the Indian Ocean littorals within its own sphere of interest (for a detailed discus-
sion, see Nataraj, 2015). The MSR includes Chinese proposals to develop the Kunming
Railway connecting China–Singapore and other countries in Southeast Asia, and the oil
and gas pipelines and proposed railway line connecting the Rakhine coast of Myanmar
with Kunming. As the author has argued elsewhere the MSR proposal adds value to infra-
structural initiatives and allows landlocked south-west China to access markets in South-
east Asia. This is also seen as an effort by China to ‘diffuse the tension’ on China’s maritime
periphery after a period of uncertainty over Chinese maritime behavior. It has also been
argued that MSR is a policy against the US Pivot to Asia, which it attempts by ‘softening’
the ASEAN elites renewed interest in reaching out to the US, Japan and perhaps, even
India (Sengupta, 2017, p. 13).
The Maritime Silk Route imagines the creation of a system of linked ports, infrastructural
projects and special economic zones in Southeast Asia and the northern Indian Ocean. As
David Brewster argues, while much of the discussion is focused on ports, infrastructure and
 JOURNAL OF THE INDIAN OCEAN REGION 237

manufacturing facilities, probably of greater significance is the development of new pro-

duction and distribution chains across the region with China at its center. He goes on to
argue that if implemented it could bind countries of the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean
closer to the Chinese economy (Brewster, 2014). Several states in the Bay of Bengal region
including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Maldives have expressed their desire to be part of the
Maritime Silk Route and in principle agreed to Chinese investments in ports and infrastruc-
ture. Brewster (2014) argues that while the Chinese position has been that these invest-
ments are purely economic, it is clear that this economic involvement with the Bay of
Bengal littoral states and control over port facilities would have strategic impact.
However, he goes on to note that these relationships have not been without their pro-
blems. Despite a close defense and strategic relationship Myanmar has never allowed
China to develop a military presence in the country, Bangladesh has opted for inter-
national investors for the Sonadia and other ports and fears of ‘debt trap diplomacy’
has become significant in Sri Lankan nationalist narrative with demands for return
control of the Hambantota port.
In order to counter MSR projects India would be compelled to develop additional
access points and facilities (for a detailed study of the significance of maritime connec-
tivity, see Basu Ray Chaudhury et al., 2018; Scott, 2013). It is in this context that proposals
to expedite Indian involvement in the construction of Chabahar Port on Iran’s Makran
coast assumes relevance. This is also probably driven by this need to develop high-
quality transit points in the Indian Ocean Rim. India would also simultaneously need to
invest more in long-haul vessels to ensure greater power projection and expeditionary
roles. However, there remain contradictions in Indian perceptions of China’s continental
Silk Road and the MSR. Among the BRI projects is the Bangladesh–China–India–
Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM-EC), which proposes to connect India’s North-East
with China’s Kunming province initially through land and eventually through rail connec-
tivity. To begin with, India was lukewarm about the project despite an established track-2
BCIM dialogue. This was due to apprehension about China’s economic domination of
border regions and India’s concerns about the security of its sensitive north-east. The func-
tioning of the BCIM corridor would not only enhance trade and connectivity but also the
possibility for China to upgrade infrastructure in port facilities in Bangladesh and
Myanmar, which are key hubs in a potential MSR. In other words, the BCIM would sup-
plement the MSR providing China with a political opening in the Bay of Bengal, a
region that is now the focus of India’s attention.
The Indian alternative has been to focus on the eastern and western reaches of the
Indian Ocean and the subcontinental landmass south of Eurasia but linked to it. India’s
location in one of the most strategic stretches of ocean space would be leveraged by
the development of a network of Indian Ocean ports to serve as regional shipping hubs
for littoral states with connecting highways and rail routes. As the author argues else-
where, the launching of three new projects, the Spice Route, Cotton Route and the
Mausam Project, are significant here as they tie together countries around the Indian
Ocean (Sengupta, 2016). Sengupta (2016) argues that at on a larger level the aim of
Project Mausam is to re-connect and re-establish communication between countries of
the Indian Ocean, which would lead to enhanced understanding of cultural values and
concerns while at the micro level the focus is on understanding national cultures in
their regional maritime milieu. The aim of the project is not just to examine connections
238 A. SENGUPTA

that linked parts of the Indian Ocean littoral but also the connections of these coastal
centers to their hinterlands. Similarly, the ‘Spice Project’ aims to explore the Indo-Pacific
Ocean World bringing together archeological and historical research to document the
diversity of cultural, commercial and religious interactions in the Indian Ocean – extending
from East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian sub-continent and Sri Lanka to the
Southeast Asian archipelago. This would lead to the aim of connecting with an ‘Infor-
mation Silk Route’ where telecom connectivity between the countries would be made
possible (Sengupta, 2016).
China is seeking access to the Indian Ocean through Myanmar and the Bay of Bengal as
well as advocating the cause of the BCIM corridor and financing major projects in Bangla-
desh and Sri Lanka. India, in contrast, having comprehended the changed geopolitical situ-
ation in conjunction with the security architecture of the Bay has begun to engage and pay
attention to the problems and anxieties of the littorals. It has adopted a strategy of devel-
oping a sense of community among the littorals along the Bay region in addition to its role
as the major security provider in the region via regular patrols through the Sea Lines of
Communication (SLOC) simultaneously encouraging participation through forums such
as the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium and exercises such as MILAN (biennial naval exer-
cise) that has seen participation by the navies of the littorals. India has also created net-
works for Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA), for greater awareness in order to
respond to any maritime challenges, particularly due to the existence of important Exclu-
sive Economic Zones (EEZ) in the Bay region. With the ever increasing strategic importance
of the Bay of Bengal region, there is a growing sense of desire among the littorals that India
should consolidate its relationships across the expanse. At the same time, India should
realize that increased Chinese presence is a given and has to be acknowledged and
accommodated even as she continues to mold a Bay of Bengal community.
It is in this context that the demand for empowering BIMSTEC has gained ground both
within India and among the participant states. The regional multilateral forum was set up
in 1997 and is well situated to tackle the challenges faced by the Bay of Bengal region pro-
vided the member states, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thai-
land remain committed to the cause and invest in the forum by way of time, resources and
initiation as well as implementation of reforms. A conjunction of dynamics has facilitated
circumstances whereby the organization can assume a greater role in integrating the Bay
region. In a globalized, symbiotic world, the states around the Bay region have come to
appreciate that their individual economic and security interest are progressively inter-
twined and dependent on their capacity to collaborate beyond their national confines
by way of regional organizations based on the principles of inclusive regionalism.7 India
on its part has come to realize that the most appropriate way to respond to China’s
efforts at gaining ground in the region is through the intensification of regional connec-
tivity projects and deepening linkages with South East Asia. The smaller nations, on the
other hand perceive BIMSTEC as a multilateral forum by way of which they could
counter the hegemonic practices of China, India and other dominant extra regional
powers. However, in order to function effectively BIMSTEC needs to imbibe an attitude
of collaboration, reciprocity, respect for norms, rules and instill a spirit of liberalism and
multilateralism as an alternative to unilateralism among the constituent member states.
The organization requires larger fiscal investment as well as a greater degree of auton-
omy and decentralization of operations. Infrastructural development and physical
 JOURNAL OF THE INDIAN OCEAN REGION 239

connectivity should be a priority so as to ensure enhanced mobility in both human and

material terms. Multi-nodal schemes that connect coastal ports to the neighborhood,
also including a role for Bhutan, which is non-coastal, along North-East India and Nepal,
should be given priority. If India wishes to assume the role of an informal leader it has
to go beyond the posturing, back it up with greater investment without hampering the
security of the other members (Ramachandran, 2019).
BIMSTEC should also endeavor to collaborate with powers outside the region such as
Australia, the European Union, Japan and the United States as well as other multilateral
institutions such as the Asian Development Bank. However, in addition to connectivity
by way of logistical and infrastructural development, it is imperative to encourage
‘people to people’ interactions for revitalizing the ‘region.’ As Ghosh notes, the Isthmus
of Kra, the much coveted sea link which is now being sought as a part of the BRI, was
once a transnational space with the presence of communities from India Sri Lanka,
lower Myanmar, northern Sumatra, lower Mekong (which includes present day Cambodia
and part of southern Vietnam) and formed a part of the extremely complex trading net-
works that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Chinese coasts. The archaeologi-
cal evidences unearthed from sites of peninsular Thailand also indicate close connections
between both sides of the Bay, a shared tradition that can be revitalized (Ghosh, 2020b).
The region is also beset with matters related to narcotics trade, extremist violence, move-
ment of both people and weapons, environmental exploitation as well as other non-con-
ventional security hazards. As such regional institutions need to keep these in mind while
re-envisaging the Bay of Bengal as a region.
Critics have also argued that in contrast to proactive regionalism where member states
tap unexplored opportunities for combatting challenges BIMSTEC represents reactive
regionalism where there was attention to the organization only with the realization that
uncertainties associated with SAARC or the rise of the BRI were overwhelming and
required focus on an alternative (Ghosh, 2020a, p. 10). Nilanjan Ghosh goes on to argue
that what held the organization back from realizing its full potential was lack of political
will and more recently divergence about thinking on how to treat China and the BRI,
which are constructed both as an opportunity and a threat. Another challenge emerges
from global warming and climate change leading to extreme weather conditions that
has affected the region. However, the region is rich in human, natural and social capital,
provides a product market with a large consumer base and has potential for intra-regional
trade pointing to the potential for a free trade area or free economic zone. Ghosh (2020)
also argues that there is opportunity for exploring regional value chain where the value-
added trade dynamics of Thailand, India and other BIMSTEC nations can be integrated
through backward linkages to participate in value added chains.

Conclusions
The recognition of the Bay of Bengal as a ‘region’ re-conceptualizes imagining of South
and Southeast Asia as distinct spaces traditionally divided by a line running through the
middle of the Bay. Both underline the recognition that an inter-oceanic model of govern-
ance can only work in tandem with ‘regional’ associations and organizations already in
place. This means that an oceanic regional system centered around the Bay of Bengal
and the Indo Pacific can only be viable as part of an integrated Eurasian security and
240 A. SENGUPTA

economic system. It is probably this recognition that led to the imagination of a Maritime
Silk Route connecting to a continental system of transport in the Chinese imagining of the
BRI. As Francis A. Kornegay Jr (2015) argues this is the result of globalization encompassing
both land and sea and the necessity of ‘imagining a continental-maritime nexus or inter-
face as an intellectually improvisational tool for unpacking the complexities of regional
and global dynamics’ (p. 148). He goes on to note:
The maritime domain comprising the global commons via sea lanes of communications forms
the connectivity of intercourse linking onshore regional and continental venues of resource
access and exploitation with infrastructures of coastal and inland transport links essential
for reaching overseas markets and vice versa. These realities inevitably inform national geo-
economic strategy, subject to conflicting interpretations regarding great power and naval
intentions as indicative in the ambivalence of Sino-Indian relations—their BRICS membership
notwithstanding—in and around the Indian Ocean. (Kornegay Jr, 2015, p. 148)

Others like Samir Saran (2018) argue that efforts to shift global centrality to the ‘Indo-
Pacific’ remain an insufficient response to China’s spectacular measures to connect Europe
and Asia. Reiterating Halford Mackinder’s position he contends that Eurasia remains the
‘supercontinent’ and the new world order will be defined by who manages it and how
it is managed. ‘It is in this supercontinent that the future of democracy, of free markets
and global security arrangements will be decided.’ Moreover, ‘Having assessed that the
divide between Europe and Asia is artificial,’ China has moved towards the creation of a
network of connectivity projects that have diluted the significance of sub-regions and
upset power arrangements. He argues that an open Indo-Pacific vision is an insufficient
response to China’s relentless pursuit of ‘building infrastructure, facilitating trade and
creating alternative global institutions across Eurasia’ (Saran, 2018).
Both positions however converge on the necessity of moving beyond binary imagin-
ations of space to newer imaginations where oceans emerge as significant to strategic
and economic understanding of the global system as continental spaces.

Notes
1. As Lewis and Wigen note one of the most elementary is the ‘myth of continents’.
2. For a detailed study of the proposed reframing see Lewis and Wigen (1997, pp. 161–168).
3. For a detailed examination of the varying constructions of the Indo Pacific see Doyle and
Rumley (2019, pp. 6–7).
4. See report by Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury (2019), based on special report in Globe Times.
5. See for instance Doyle and Rumley (2019). However, there is a considerable existing scholar-
ship on sea spaces like the Mediterranean. See for instance Cooke (1999, pp. 290–300).
6. The term is borrowed from Timothy Doyle arguments about maritime regionalism. See Doyle
(2018). For a detailed examination of how the Look East and Act East Policies are interwoven
with a new understanding of regionalism see Sengupta (2017).
7. For studies on BIMSTEC, see De (2018); Kundu (2014, pp. 207–224); Wagner & Tripathy (2018);
Yahya (2005, pp. 391–410).

Acknowledgements
This article is part of an ongoing research project on Historic Connects and New Corridors: India’s Asian
alternatives in an era of connectivity, sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New
Delhi. The author is grateful to ICSSR for the support extended for the study. The author is also
 JOURNAL OF THE INDIAN OCEAN REGION 241

grateful to the two anonymous referees for their insightful comments and suggestions and the many
useful inputs.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Note on the Contributor

Anita Sengupta is Senior Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi India. Her areas
of interest include issues of identity politics, migration, gender, borders, critical geopolitics and logis-
tics. She is a regular commentator on debates on Asian affairs. She can be contacted at
anitasengupta@hotmail.com

ORCID
Anita Sengupta http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1996-0453

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