India has emerged as the most 'proximate and credible structural pushback' to Chinese maritime assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region, according to a detailed report in Japan Forward. The assessment points to India's expanding naval footprint — spanning logistics agreements with Australia, France, and Japan; coastal surveillance networks; naval base arrangements in Seychelles; and BrahMos missile sales to the Philippines beginning in 2024 — as forming a coherent counter-architecture to Beijing's regional ambitions.

China's String of Pearls and the Indian Response

The report details how China's 'String of Pearls' strategy is, at its operational core, directed at India. The network of Chinese-funded ports — at Gwadar in Pakistan, Hambantota in Sri Lanka, Kyaukpyu in Myanmar, and Chittagong in Bangladesh — effectively encircles India's maritime perimeter. Since 2008, Beijing has dispatched more than 45 naval missions to the Indian Ocean Region, and China now operates at least 13 ports across it, according to the report.

India's counter-posture — described as the 'Necklace of Diamonds' — mirrors this logic through strategic partnerships, access agreements, and military sales rather than port ownership. Analysts argue no other Quad member possesses India's geographic and strategic positioning to perform this role.

SAGAR: India's Own Rules-Based Order Doctrine

The report challenges a persistent blind spot in Western discourse: that India entered the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) framework merely as a junior partner absorbing an external doctrine. Prime Minister Narendra Modi articulated SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) in March 2015 from Port Louis, Mauritius — a full two years before the United States formally adopted the FOIP framework.

'The doctrine prioritises trust, respect for international maritime norms, peaceful dispute resolution, and cooperative security in the Indian Ocean. It was, in essence, India's own rules-based order doctrine, rooted in its immediate strategic neighbourhood,' the report noted. Over the decade that followed, the Indian Navy advanced SAGAR through anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, humanitarian missions, and COVID-19 relief dispatched to Mauritius, Maldives, Madagascar, Comoros, and Seychelles.

MAHASAGAR and the Africa Pivot

In March 2025, India broadened the initiative into MAHASAGAR (Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions), explicitly framed as an inclusive alternative to China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Practical implementation followed swiftly: the AIKEYME (Africa-India Key Maritime Engagement) naval exercise with Tanzania in April 2025 brought together ten African nations, while India's IOS SAGAR mission conducted joint EEZ patrols with personnel from African and South Asian navies.

Strategic Autonomy as a Diplomatic Asset

India's refusal to enter a formal security alliance with the United States is, according to the report, precisely what prevents FOIP from being perceived across the Global South as a Western containment project. 'India's participation, on its own terms, signals to fence-sitting nations across ASEAN, Africa and South Asia that FOIP is not a binary Cold War choice,' the report stated, citing analysts who argue that emphasising inclusivity is essential to the framework's credibility as a region-wide organising principle.

As India deepens its maritime architecture across the Indian Ocean Region, the trajectory points toward a more assertive but non-alliance-bound role — one that may increasingly define the Indo-Pacific's security equilibrium in the years ahead.