Admiral. Mihir K.

Roy: Architect of the Indian Ocean Society A personal tribute What do you want admiral, enquired prime minister Indira Gandhi with viceadmiral Mihir K.Roy, Flag Officer in Command (FoC) of the Eastern Naval Command during her visit to the Andamans in 1982. Adm. Roys reply was, madam, we need a separate agency to manage the vast ocean wealth around us. The prime minister followed up the idea and thus came into existence the Department of Ocean Development (DoD), Government of India. Adm.Mihir Roy who passed away on the night of May 20, 2013 at the age of 87 and few weeks ahead of his next birthday, shared this conversation with me more than once. Hence, the credit for the establishment of the DOD should go, wholly or partly, to late Adm. Roy. He deserves to be remembered not only for his distinguished services to the Indian Navy (IN), but for many other reasons. He was the co-founder of the Society for Indian Ocean Studies (SIOS), editor of the Journal of Indian Ocean Studies (JIOR), Nehru Fellow, author of War in the Indian Ocean (1992), president of the Navy League, organiser of several maritime conferences and hosted Indias track-II dialogues with other maritime powers. Above all, Adm. Roy was the crusader for the promotion of maritime studies in India and institutionalisation of the Indian Ocean discipline in the country. SISO was built steadily brick by brick through his efforts. Indian Ocean is the least researched of the other three great oceans. Indian intellectual interest in the IO was also poor, barring the more recent decades. This is not to ignore the extraordinary contributions made by Indian scholars to maritime histroy like K.M.Panikkar, Ashin Das Gupta, Neelakanta Sastri, Sanjay Subramanyam, and to geo-politics by K.B.Vaidya, Satyendra Singh, K.R.Singh, Ashok Kapur, Rahul Roy Chodhury , to name a few. But, historical narratives and strategic analysis do not explain all about the IO phenomenon. The complexity and the sheer heterogeneity of the IO demands addressing many other aspects including: marine biodiversity, climate change, marine resources, maritime jurisdictions, island and archipelagic bodies, coastal zone management, fisheries, socio-economic dynamics of littorals, Indian diaspora, and several other pressing oceanic concerns which demand constant intellectual debates. SIOS and its academic flagship JIOS should take credit for

providing a platform and enabling scholars of various hues and expertise across the world to exchange views on the IO and its dynamics. None other existed before. It is no exaggeration to mention that no other publication on IO except the JIOR, published thrice annually and uninterruptedly, provided a common academic medium for the scholars to interact on the IO subjects. Of course, Indian Ocean Review published by the Australian Indian Ocean Centre (Perth) headed by the distinguished Indian Ocean scholar late Prof.Kenneth McPherson addressed some issues. IOR was a periodical, not a journal like JIOR. Anyway, it is extinct along with its Centre. JIOR continues to survive, thanks to the sustained efforts of Adm. Roy and his colleagues. Superannuated from the Indian Navy, and hence relieved of official obligations, Adm.Roy devoted himself to institutionalise the discipline of Indian Ocean studies. Thus was born the SIOS, in 1987. Of course Adm. Roy was joined by the equally enthusiastic and eminent professors, Nurul Hasan and Satish Chandra, both historians. These founding fathers of SIOS were enterprising enough to avail the prevailing pro-Navy mood of the Indian government. As Adm. Roy states in his book the IN got a spurt from 1982-83 to 1986-87 when submarines, frigates and sea control ships were acquired. (p. 278). Simply, this period marked INs Transition to Eminence, a title appropriately chosen by the official IN historian Adm. G.M.Hiranandani for the first of the three-volume series he authored on the rise of the Indian naval forces. SIOS established four regional chapters at Bombay, Calcutta, Chennai and Hyderabad, the last one being headed by me. Headquartered at New Delhi SIOS is the pioneer and forerunner of maritime studies in the country. Others like the National Maritime Foundation (NMF) followed it much later. Maritime scholar: Adm.Roy was a recipient of the Nehru Fellowship, the prestigious academic award instituted by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Foundation (NMMF), which inspired him to write his War in the Indian Ocean. The book, the first independent work on the role of the IN the 1971 war, is a tell-tale story of the naval operations against Pakistan following her attack on December 3, 1971: the role of the newly created Eastern Fleet in the Bay of Bengal operating from the forward base at the Andamans (islands of good fortune); INs blockade of East Pakistan; sinking of PNS Ghazi, first submarine to be buried in the Indian Ocean; aircraft carrier INS Vikrants bombing of East

Pakistan harbours, operated by pilots who were not naval aviators (the first IN naval aviator was Adm. Roy himself who commanded Vikrant). But the INs success in the east were checked, atleast apparently, by the arrival of the US Navys Seventh Fleet into the Bay of Bengal. Adm.Roy recalls Mrs.Indira Gandhi walking into the Naval War Room to discuss the implications of the US move with the Navy Chief Adm. S.M.Nanda,, and the latter explaining the possible options of the Task Force which included to wrest aerial supremacy over the skies of East Pakistan or interposing between the (East Pakistan) coastline and the Indian blockading forces. What were the true intentions of American naval fleet at that critical juncture were a matter of intense debate for a long time, a mist that was cleared to a certain extent by Adm. Zumwalts of US Pacific Command. Addressing the Indian Navy Foundation in 1989 at Delhi. Adm.Zumwalt said that he was worried about any mishap that could have happened when ships of the Seventh Fleet, which had not been given any specific task met Indian warships enforcing the blockade of East Pakistan. But the American admiral also enquired with Adm.Nanda what were his instructions to his captains if they encountered the American war ships, and the brave and undaunted Indias CNO of that time replied: his Commanding officers were instructed to invite the Americans on board for a drink! (p.213). S.M.(Charli) Nanda in a JIOR article authored by him recounts the event almost in similar language. Turning to the western coast of the peninsular, INs successful blockade of Pakistans Arabian waters and the missile attacks Operation Trident, Operation Python on Karachi port and bombardment of the Makran coast are discussed in great detail, not forgetting to acknowledge the courage and sacrifices of the naval personnel engaged in these missions. Adm.Roy recounts his role in the western operations. The author of the book personally met prisoner Rear Admiral Shariff of Pakistan Navy and records the following discussion: Asked why his forces did not fare better (in the east), the PNS admiral replied that he had no intelligence and hence his forces were both deaf and blind with the Indian Navy pounding them day and night. Sheriff, imprisoned in an officers quarter in Calcutta, was delighted when he was sent a quran and fruits. Subsequently back in truncated Pakistan he was honoured

with a high military award for valiantly resisting the advancing Indian naval forces, as Adm.Roy informs, with his weak armament and sinking supplies. (p.218). Commenting on the general preparedness and performance during the 1971 war, author quotes official history of Pakistan Navy as admitting: The neglect of Navy over several decades came through clearly in the 1971 war. (p.231). But, what has the late admiral to say on the place marked out for his own Navy by the Indian strategic establishment. Here, Adm.Roy, joining the usual chorus of his naval fraternity, laments: The Indian Navy has hardly been used perhaps due to the continental mindset of Mughal India and compounded, as it were, by the absence of a coherent national maritime policy. (266). He calls for a National Council for Maritime Affairs since sixteen ministries in India dealing with ocean activities but with hardly any coordination either for overall planning or rationalising, funding and budgeting. (p.262). Let us hope his dream would be fulfilled not in the distant future. War in the Indian Ocean is not just a narrative of the Indian Navys historic role and its successes in the liberation of East Pakistan. Its author, as a true maritime scholar, passionately pleads for a holistic perspective by the Indian Ocean littoral states. Thus concluding his nearly three hundred page scholarly work, Adm.Roy recommends: Indian Ocean states must perforce move away from watertight compartments and instead function in a more coordinated and cohesive manner for improving the quality of life for the less fortunate segments of mankind. (p.262) Editor: Adm. Roy, as the editor of JIOR, was a task master, often demanding. He would call me on phone, PV when is your article coming? Impatient about my excuses to slip away, he would cut short, send by next week as our journal has to go the press. Editing is an onerous, even a thankless job. To sound uncivil, it is a barbers job: soliciting articles (customers!), offering incentives (mostly pecuniary), trimming their scripts, plugging the syntactic slips and meeting the publishers deadlines is a tedious process going by own experience as editor of two journals on Indian Ocean. Not withstanding the quality of articles, keeping the journal going and maintaining its periodicity is difficult. Prof.Satish Chandra as chief editor and Adm.Roy as editor of JIOS

ensured its punctuality and quality, a consummate job indeed. Adm.Roy would as a navy man solicit contributions from Indian and foreign maritime experts. In particular, the long interviews he conducted with senior naval officers for the JIOR are a rich source of information for maritime researchers. To cite one such personal interview Adm.Roy conducted not very long ago was with Adm. Sureesh Mehta, in 2007, then CNS. JIOR also carried addresses delivered by eminent maritime scholars invited by SISO. Geoffrey Till, the distinguished maritime scholar of UK Staff college, London was invited to deliver the K.M.Panikkar Memorial Lecture and the same was carried by JIOR issue of August 2004. For students like me seriously interested in maritime affairs, JIOR is a ready reckoner for valuable information. Track II Organiser: Indian Navy, as part of its international naval cooperation, is actively engaged in building bridges with the foreign navies. It would mean interacting with them both at track I and track II levels. Adm.Roy was very active in sponsoring track II dialogues with important naval officials and experts representing major foreign powers, Australia and Japan in particular. The Indo-Japan Dialogue on Ocean Security is by now a regular exercise held alternately in Delhi and Tokyo. Adm.Roy was unforgettably a leading organiser of almost all these joint meetings. He would publish few of the presentations or summaries of these periodic dialogues in JIOR The last and latest Dialogue led by Adm.Roy was held in October last year at IDSA at which I had the privilege of chairing a session, of course at his invitation. Being an outsider to the naval service, I am not competent to recall Adm.Roys various accomplishments as a sailor, for forty two years. Indian Ocean is my major academic interest, and I have seen Adm.Roy through the prism of that discipline, perhaps a too subjective one. I salute him as a tireless institution builder, doyen of Indian Ocean studies in every sense research, conferences, dialogues, publications and addresses. A no ordinary sailor who moulded himself into a scholar. I saw Adm.Roy on October 31 last year at the Indo-Japan Conference mentioned above. That was my last sight of him. I was moved to see the octogenarian sailor dragging himself up and down the dais with great physical effort, unsupported by a stick, to conduct the proceedings. A task master till

the end. I saw him off to the car as he left, with folded hands, never to see him again. Adieu, the admirable Admiral Mihir Roy. P.V. Rao Emeritus Professor of Political Science- UGC Former Director, Centre for Indian Ocean Studies, Osmania University Chairman, SIOS Chapter, Hyderabad Editor, Journal of Indian Ocean Region