Pic courtesy- Wikimedia commons (This article originally appeared in The Strategist, written by Himanil Raina. Himanil Raina is a student of NELSAR and also a freelance writer of geopolitical and international affairs. Due credits is given to him) ‘We cannot afford to be weak at sea … history has shown that whatever power controls the Indian Ocean has, in the first instance, India’s seaborne trade at her mercy, and in the second, India’s very independence itself.’ Jawaharlal Nehru Indian strategic culture has been characterised by a preoccupation with land based threats (PDF), a bias evident from an examination of budgetary allocations to the three services. The Navy has traditionally got the least funding, resulting in it being called the Cinderella Service . This has been due to several factors. First, India has a history over millennia of being repeatedly invaded from the Northwestern plains. Second, the British stymied the growth of the Indian Navy, seeing it as a po