Indian Navy’s 9-Year Training Push Strengthens Maritime Ties with Mauritius
Over the past nine years, the Indian Navy has trained 516 Mauritius National Coast Guard officers, highlighting its growing focus on capacity building in the Indian Ocean region.
New Delhi: Over the past nine years, the Indian Navy has trained 516 Mauritius National Coast Guard officers, highlighting its growing focus on capacity building in the Indian Ocean region. This training-led approach was also reflected in the recent visit of INS Trikand to Port Louis in Mauritius. The warship’s port call in the second week of March underlined how India is combining long-term skill development with on-ground naval presence to strengthen maritime cooperation with partner countries.
More than 500 officers trained in India is not a figure that tends to appear in strategic assessments of India's rise as a maritime power or in analyses of its competition with China in the Indian Ocean. But those who study how influence actually works — not through coercion or capital alone, but through the slow accumulation of shared experience — will recognise it immediately for what it is.
The port call that INS Trikand made to Port Louis, Mauritius, in the second week of March was another instalment in this same project. The ship arrived as Mauritius prepared to mark its 58th Independence Day and 34th year as a republic, and Indian naval personnel took part in the National Day parade on March 12 – sailors, a band, a helicopter, and the full ceremonial complement. But the more consequential activity happened away from the parade ground.
Mauritius National Coast Guard officers came aboard INS Trikand and trained alongside Indian sailors. Watchkeeping at the harbour and at sea. Firefighting drills. Damage control procedures. The language of these exercises is technical, but the purpose is relational: two services learning to function as one so that when a real emergency unfolds somewhere in the 2.3 million square kilometres of ocean that Mauritius is responsible for monitoring, the responses will be instinctive rather than improvised.
India's investment in Mauritian maritime capacity extends across several domains. The leased interceptor boat C-139, the Dornier aircraft, and coastal surveillance radar systems have improved Mauritius' ability to monitor its waters. Hydrographic surveys conducted with Indian assistance have advanced the mapping of the seabed around the island. The Agaléga Island airstrip and jetty, inaugurated in early 2024, have transformed the logistics of responding to threats in Mauritius' outer islands.
The Indian Ocean carries roughly a third of global maritime trade. Non-traditional security threats – piracy, drug trafficking, and illegal fishing – place enormous strain on island nations that lack the resources to police vast maritime zones alone. India's approach, reflected in its MAHASAGAR vision, is to treat these challenges as shared problems requiring shared solutions.
That approach has a diplomatic track as well as an operational one. India has supported Mauritius over the Chagos Archipelago dispute, which saw a significant development in late 2024 when the United Kingdom agreed in principle to transfer sovereignty of the territory to Mauritius. When Cyclone Chido struck in December 2024, India mobilised relief support rapidly. Prime Minister Modi visited in 2015 and 2025; President Murmu, in 2024. The relationship has been tended at every level.
Taken together, the 516 Mauritius National Coast Guard Officers trained across Indian naval institutions represent a different kind of strategic asset. Not a fleet, not a base, not a trade route. A network of professionals who have learnt to trust Indian competence, speak a common operational language, and reach, in a moment of crisis, for the same instincts.
New Delhi: Over the past nine years, the Indian Navy has trained 516 Mauritius National Coast Guard officers, highlighting its growing focus on capacity building in the Indian Ocean region. This training-led approach was also reflected in the recent visit of INS Trikand to Port Louis in Mauritius. The warship’s port call in the second week of March underlined how India is combining long-term skill development with on-ground naval presence to strengthen maritime cooperation with partner countries.
More than 500 officers trained in India is not a figure that tends to appear in strategic assessments of India's rise as a maritime power or in analyses of its competition with China in the Indian Ocean. But those who study how influence actually works — not through coercion or capital alone, but through the slow accumulation of shared experience — will recognise it immediately for what it is.
The port call that INS Trikand made to Port Louis, Mauritius, in the second week of March was another instalment in this same project. The ship arrived as Mauritius prepared to mark its 58th Independence Day and 34th year as a republic, and Indian naval personnel took part in the National Day parade on March 12 – sailors, a band, a helicopter, and the full ceremonial complement. But the more consequential activity happened away from the parade ground.
Mauritius National Coast Guard officers came aboard INS Trikand and trained alongside Indian sailors. Watchkeeping at the harbour and at sea. Firefighting drills. Damage control procedures. The language of these exercises is technical, but the purpose is relational: two services learning to function as one so that when a real emergency unfolds somewhere in the 2.3 million square kilometres of ocean that Mauritius is responsible for monitoring, the responses will be instinctive rather than improvised.
India's investment in Mauritian maritime capacity extends across several domains. The leased interceptor boat C-139, the Dornier aircraft, and coastal surveillance radar systems have improved Mauritius' ability to monitor its waters. Hydrographic surveys conducted with Indian assistance have advanced the mapping of the seabed around the island. The Agaléga Island airstrip and jetty, inaugurated in early 2024, have transformed the logistics of responding to threats in Mauritius' outer islands.
The Indian Ocean carries roughly a third of global maritime trade. Non-traditional security threats – piracy, drug trafficking, and illegal fishing – place enormous strain on island nations that lack the resources to police vast maritime zones alone. India's approach, reflected in its MAHASAGAR vision, is to treat these challenges as shared problems requiring shared solutions.
That approach has a diplomatic track as well as an operational one. India has supported Mauritius over the Chagos Archipelago dispute, which saw a significant development in late 2024 when the United Kingdom agreed in principle to transfer sovereignty of the territory to Mauritius. When Cyclone Chido struck in December 2024, India mobilised relief support rapidly. Prime Minister Modi visited in 2015 and 2025; President Murmu, in 2024. The relationship has been tended at every level.
Taken together, the 516 Mauritius National Coast Guard Officers trained across Indian naval institutions represent a different kind of strategic asset. Not a fleet, not a base, not a trade route. A network of professionals who have learnt to trust Indian competence, speak a common operational language, and reach, in a moment of crisis, for the same instincts.
