In recent years, India has started to become increasingly more vocal about what it feels is the correct way for the five main territorial disputants in the South China Sea to resolve their differences. What’s particularly interesting is that the rhetoric coming out of New Delhi seems to be growing more specific and pointed as time goes on. Early on Wednesday, the Manila Times reported that that Indian ambassador to the Philippines, Shri Lalduhthlana Ralte, said that India explicitly supported international law and arbitration in resolving these disputes. “Our view with that such kind of disputes [is that], the claimant countries should observe international law and norms that disputes are to be settled peacefully. We should allow ourselves to be subjected to international law,” Ralte said, according to the report.
The ambassador’s comments bookend a string of policy statements by New Delhi that mostly began in 2013. Back then, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, speaking at the East Asia Summit, noted that “A stable maritime environment is essential to realize our collective regional aspirations.” Keen to make his approval known for multilateral processes in Southeast Asia (which I recently expressed some skepticism about), Singh added: “We welcome the collective commitment by the concerned countries to abide by and implement the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea and to work towards the adoption of a Code of Conduct in the South China Sea on the basis of consensus. We also welcome the establishment of the Expanded ASEAN Maritime Forum for developing maritime norms that would reinforce existing international law relating to maritime security.”
Those statements failed to draw much attention. Beijing probably raised its eyebrows at New Delhi’s interest in the South China Sea, but there was little in the prime minister’s statements that suggested a firm backing for a specific resolution mechanism. In early 2014, Shri Anil Wadhwa, Secretary (East) of India’s Ministry of External Affairs, pushed the Indian position a bit further into the realm of clarity. “We advocate that the lines, the channels of trade and communication should be kept open and of course the sea, which, according to UN (United Nations) international law of the sea, is common to all the countries that use it. Definitely we are concerned,” he told journalists at the annual ASEAN-India dialogue in New Delhi. “Our position has always been India stands for freedom of navigation on high seas. We would like to ensure that all countries in the region adhere to the international conventions on the law of the sea in this issue,” he clarified.
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