India’s Arctic Discourse

In this chapter the authors analyse India’s engagement in the Arctic and its scientific and political endeavours until the release of its Arctic policy. This chapter describes the historical overview of the Indian Arctic engagement, from Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s monograph “Arctic Home in the Vedas”, the signing of the Svalbard treaty in 1920, India’s first expedition in 2007, its accession to observer status in the Arctic Council in 2013 and finally to the present day. It discusses the historical evolution of India’s Arctic dialogue by various experts belonging to the scientific, political, strategic and academic fields. This chapter traces the growth of India’s involvement in the region and the development of scientific research. The chapter critically examines the reasons for India’s involvement in the region. The chapter analysed the foreign policy trends for the period as it evolved over the decades from idealism to pragmatism and multi-vector diplomacy, in keeping with overall geopolitical and geo-economic realities. So far, India’s interest in the Arctic has been mainly limited to the establishment of a research station, ‘Himadri’, at Svalbard and the conduct of scientific studies. This chapter has established that India’s Arctic engagement is divided into two distinct fields: geopolitical-geo-economics and scientific. This demarcation is tentative, and the importance of this division is to understand how India’s Arctic engagement and its implementation have been organised. The chapter also described the bifurcation of functions of India’s engagement with the Arctic, with a demarcation between the geopolitical and geo-economics assignments under the Ministry of External Affairs [MEA] and the scientific mission under the Ministry of Earth Sciences [MoES]. While the MoES provides clear visions and goals for the scientific purpose of the Arctic programme, the MEA still needed to advance a separate Arctic foreign policy framework until the release of the Arctic policy. This left it open for interpretation to examine what India’s policies towards the Arctic region could be and what role India would play. The analysis in Chapter 6 justifies India’s Arctic interests from its origin to current engagements, which are of strategic and geopolitical significance. It refers to the implications of Arctic ice melt for India in terms of climate change, access to energy and natural resources, consequences for the Indian Ocean region in terms of realignment of shipping lanes, and other geopolitical considerations.