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Admiral Krishna Swaminathan, Chief of the Naval Staff, is on a four-day official visit to Mauritius from 10 to 13 August 2026.
The visit covers discussions with senior leadership of the Government of Mauritius on maritime security, defence cooperation, capacity building and military collaboration.
The Indian Navy engages regularly with Mauritius's National Coast Guard through training exchanges, Joint Exclusive Economic Zone surveillance, port visits and hydrographic surveys.
Mauritius has been a regular participant in Indian Navy initiatives including the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium, MILAN, the International Fleet Review, the Goa Maritime Conclave, IOS SAGAR and Exercise AIKEYME.
The Ministry of Defence framed the engagement within the MAHASAGAR vision — Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions.
SAGAR — Security and Growth for All in the Region — was announced by the Prime Minister in Mauritius in 2015 as India's framing for the Indian Ocean: security cooperation, capacity building for smaller littoral states, sustainable use of ocean resources, and a rules-based maritime order. A decade later, again in Mauritius in March 2025, it was expanded into MAHASAGAR — Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions — which broadens the geographic scope from the Indian Ocean Region to the Global South more widely, and shifts the emphasis from India as security provider to mutual advancement including trade, technology and development finance. That both doctrines were announced in Mauritius is not a coincidence. Mauritius sits in the south-west Indian Ocean astride the sea lanes between the Cape of Good Hope and the Malacca Strait, has an Exclusive Economic Zone far larger than its land area, and has close historical and demographic ties with India. It is also where India's only overseas island infrastructure of consequence sits: the airstrip and jetty on Agalega, roughly 1,050 km north of Port Louis, jointly inaugurated in 2024, which extends maritime domain awareness across the western Indian Ocean.
Simple Analogy: SAGAR was India offering to be the neighbourhood's coastguard. MAHASAGAR is India offering to be a partner across the wider Global South — a change of both range and register.
The professional head of the Indian Navy, holding the rank of Admiral; a four-star officer who is a member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee alongside the Chief of the Army Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff, all of whom function under the Chief of Defence Staff and the Department of Military Affairs
A voluntary forum of navies of the Indian Ocean Region for maritime cooperation, launched by India in 2008
The Indian Navy's multilateral naval exercise and congregation of friendly navies, conducted periodically since 1995
Mauritius's maritime security force, the Indian Navy's principal counterpart for training exchanges, Joint EEZ surveillance, port visits and hydrographic surveys
AIKEYME is India's naval exercise with African littoral navies, and IOS SAGAR is the deployment under which personnel from friendly foreign countries sail aboard an Indian naval ship — both instruments of the MAHASAGAR outreach in which Mauritius participates
Mauritius lies in the south-west Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, on the sea lanes running between the Cape of Good Hope and South and South-East Asia. Its dependencies include the Agalega Islands, about 1,050 km north of the capital Port Louis, where India and Mauritius jointly inaugurated an upgraded airstrip and jetty in 2024. To the north-west lie Seychelles and the Mozambique Channel; to the north-east lies the Chagos Archipelago with Diego Garcia. The wider Indian Ocean chokepoints that shape Indian naval planning are the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab-el-Mandeb, the Mozambique Channel and the Strait of Malacca.
MAHASAGAR extends the maritime doctrine beyond the immediate neighbourhood to the Global South, aligning it with India's positioning at the G20 and the Voice of Global South summits
The regional maritime security grouping of India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Mauritius, with Bangladesh and Seychelles also engaged — the institutional counterpart to bilateral naval engagement in the region
Indian Navy hydrographic surveys for partner states are a low-profile but high-value instrument: charting a partner's waters builds both goodwill and India's own maritime domain awareness
IORA, with its secretariat in Mauritius, is the principal regional economic and maritime cooperation body of the Indian Ocean littoral — another reason Mauritius carries weight disproportionate to its size
GS Paper 2 > International Relations > Bilateral Relations; GS Paper 3 > Security > Maritime Security
General Awareness > Armed Forces and Defence Diplomacy
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Maritime doctrines, Indian Ocean geography and naval exercises are regular Prelims and defence-exam material
Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions — India's maritime vision unveiled in Mauritius in March 2025, succeeding SAGAR
Security and Growth for All in the Region — India's Indian Ocean doctrine announced in Mauritius in 2015
Cooperative patrolling of a partner state's Exclusive Economic Zone, one of the Indian Navy's standing forms of engagement with Mauritius
Indian Ocean Naval Symposium — the voluntary forum of Indian Ocean Region navies launched by India in 2008