The UK’s handover of Chagos to Mauritius has reopened strategic questions for India in a region where China’s shadow looms large.
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On 23 May 2025, India welcomed the agreement between the UK and Mauritius for the transfer of sovereignty over the Chagos Islands and described it as a milestone in completing the island-nation’s decolonisation ‘in the spirit of international law and rules-based order’. Notably, the development marks the end of British colonialism in Africa.
Over the past decade, India, both at the level of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Ministry of Defence (MoD, has carved out a separate desk, called the ‘Indian Ocean Region’ (IOR) Division. After expansion, it now includes Mauritius, Seychelles, Madagascar, Comoros, and the French Réunion Island, apart from Sri Lanka and the Maldives, underscoring the increasing importance that New Delhi has come to confer on the region.
India has been consistent in the matter, as it had issued a near-similar statement when the UK and Mauritius initialled a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in October 2024. The UK had to renegotiate certain aspects of the MoU when a new government in Mauritius demanded a higher annuity than previously agreed upon. The agreement thus results in the UK retaining possession of the Diego Garcia military base, which is a part of the Chagos archipelago, where the US has been the more active partner since its establishment in the mid-sixties.
The original Anglo-American deal of 1966 over Diego Garcia was for 50 years and did not involve Mauritius. It was further extended for 20 years in 2016, pending contestations. Both Mauritius and native Chagossian residents contested it separately in international fora. The latter also did so in British courts. The Chagossians, who have long protested their forced eviction in the sixties, now feel left out, but that is another story altogether – or, so it seems.
The new agreement, having transferred sovereignty over the entire Chagos Islands, including Diego Garcia, to Mauritius, paves the way for an additional 99-year lease by the UK for continued American use of the military base. The agreement also provides for a 40-year lien for the UK at the conclusion of the lease period.
In the interim, the British government delayed signing the deal between Donald Trump's election as US President and his inauguration. In the interregnum, Trump’s Secretary of State nominee Marco Rubio had expressed reservations about the original MoU, saying that the pact would help China, but relented after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer met President Trump at the Oval Office. Rubio later conceded that the “pact is required for the long-term sustainability” of the US military base in Diego Garcia.
Yet, differences exist within the UK, where the opposition Conservative Party criticised the deal as a ‘costly sell-out’. The reference was to the increased annuity of US$136 million-equivalent a year for the possession and use of Diego Garcia, or US$4.61 billion over the 99-year period, when calculated as a government investment. The annual annuity compares well with Mauritius’ Nominal GDP, which stands at US$16. 52 billion as of 2025. Mauritian negotiators said that they needed the money to set right the economy, which the “previous government had messed up”.
In 2019, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) endorsed the ‘advisory opinion’ offered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the UK to acknowledge Mauritian sovereignty over the Chagos Islands. In the UNGA and other international fora, New Delhi underscored the ‘decolonisation’ aspect of the Mauritian claim. This remained India’s position both when the UNGA referred the matter to the ICJ, and later, when it voted in favour of the ICJ’s advisory opinion supporting Mauritius.
However, the UK and the US, among a handful of nations, contested the ICJ’s ‘non-binding advisory opinion’. From the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), the Maldives had joined the nay-sayers initially, before the government of President Ibrahim Solih gave up certain claims to the shared waters with Mauritius, pending before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
In the UNGA and other international fora, New Delhi underscored the ‘decolonisation’ aspect of the Mauritian claim. This remained India’s position both when the UNGA referred the matter to the ICJ, and later, when it voted in favour of the ICJ’s advisory opinion supporting Mauritius.
It is another matter that the current administration of President Mohamed Muizzu has initiated steps to reverse or recall the Maldives’ earlier position at ITLOS regarding the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) on the Mauritian/Chagos side. As if seeking to add weight to the current government’s claim, some Maldivian veterans, staring with former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and Jumhooree Party founder Gasim Ibrahim, have written to British High Commissioner Nick Low, charging the UK and Mauritius with “sustaining an internal legal fiction that disregards centuries of Maldivian sovereignty over Chagos Archipelago” and calling for “comprehensive decolonisation” – thus dismissing the Anglo-Mauritian Pact.
Outside the region, too, are voices seeking to keep the ‘decolonisation’ issue alive, arguing that the Chagossians’ ‘rightful claims’ and their sovereignty over their islands remain unaddressed. Some had expressed plans to legally contest the government-to-government deal. China has yet to respond to the Anglo-Mauritian pact, and its reaction is eagerly awaited by all stakeholders.
Defending his decision, Prime Minister Starmer said that had the UK not acted now, China, for instance, might have exploited the vacuum and sought to establish a military base on Diego Garcia. He explained that although the UK had previously disregarded the ICJ’s ‘advisory opinion’ and the UNGA’s vote, international organisations might eventually begin acting on them.
Starmer cited the example of sovereign rights over the management of the electromagnetic spectrum within national territories and warned that a failure to grasp such complexities could have serious consequences. He was obviously referring to China. However, UK opposition leaders argued that with the agreement with Mauritius signed, the British government had effectively ‘played into China’s hands’.
After welcoming the transfer of Chagos’ sovereignty to Mauritius, India will be watching future strategic developments in the region. In the October 2024 joint statement, both the UK and Mauritius acknowledged New Delhi’s contribution to making the agreement happen.
No one in New Delhi is drawing comparisons between the 99-year-long Diego Garcia pact with immediate neighbour Sri Lanka’s 99-year lease of the Hambantota Port to China. Instead, from the Indian perspective, the continuance of the US military base at Diego Garcia should be welcome.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expanded the scope of his SAGAR outreach into MAHASAGAR—from the sea to the Ocean—broadening the scope of India’s neighbourhood engagement. In effect, it spells out New Delhi’s own version of the ‘Indo-Pacific’, distinct yet parallel to the US-led initiative, in which India is also a partner.
However, Indian strategic veterans still recall Diego Garcia in the context of the deployment of the US Seventh Fleet during the 1971 Bangladesh War, which was seen as an attempt to delay India’s military success. Today, New Delhi is likely to closely monitor further developments in the region that could undermine its position in what it considers its traditional sphere of influence—a status it is still working to reclaim in the post-Cold War era. This comes even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expanded the scope of his SAGAR outreach into MAHASAGAR—from the sea to the Ocean—broadening the scope of India’s neighbourhood engagement. In effect, it spells out New Delhi’s own version of the ‘Indo-Pacific’, distinct yet parallel to the US-led initiative, in which India is also a partner. France, the EU, and even Canada have proposed their own ‘Indo-Pacific’ frameworks. From the extended neighbourhood, Australia launched its maritime initiative much earlier, though it does not carry the ‘Indo-Pacific’ label.
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), a grouping comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the US for the maintenance of “a free and open Indo-Pacific”, and the AUKUS trilateral security partnership between Australia, the UK, and the US are examples of such frameworks. The QUAD is not a traditional military alliance. Of interest would be the likelihood of direct Anglo-American engagement with Mauritius on the security front.
India is already developing an airfield on Agalega Island in Mauritius for joint use. However, a similar effort involving nearby Seychelles, on Assomption Island, did not take off beyond the initial stages, following a change of government in Victoria. In its place, a hotel project is now underway.
Yet, overall, for India, the continued presence of friendly militaries—namely, the US in Diego Garcia and France in Réunion Island, a French overseas territory—remains a welcome proposition. It is unclear what the future may hold for Franco-American ambitions in the region, whose geo-strategic importance will only increase with time. India and France have been regularly conducting military exercises on Réunion Island and have also engaged in joint patrols, especially in response to the increased Chinese presence in the region.
For India, the continued presence of friendly militaries—namely, the US in Diego Garcia and France in Réunion Island, a French overseas territory—remains a welcome proposition.
Today, with strengthened military infrastructure on India’s flanks—both on the Andamans and the Lakshadweep—and friendly militaries on Diego Garcia and Réunion, this part of the Indian Ocean can be visualised as an ‘Indian pond’. Earlier, China asserted that the ‘Indian Ocean is not India’s Ocean’, even while claiming that the South China and East China Seas were ‘Chinese’.
In the meantime, all stakeholders are likely to watch closely for any early signs of Chinese ‘intrusion’ around the Chagos waters, either directly or through proxies. Maldives’ revival of its claims to the contested EEZ with Mauritius needs to be watched, more from a geostrategic standpoint than a domestic politics one.
China’s interest in the region aligns with its ‘Two Oceans’ strategic theory, aimed at controlling waterways. This strategy began with the ‘String of Pearls’ and has since expanded through the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI) and the ‘New Silk Road’. These initiatives are not as economy-centric as Beijing wants the world to believe.
It is these very possibilities that have anchored India’s strategic thinking for the region, and why New Delhi grows increasingly uneasy when Chinese ‘spy ships’ intrude into what had, for the most part, remained a stable and uncontested zone even during the Cold War, but may not remain so in the future.
N. Sathiya Moorthy is a policy analyst and commentator based in Chennai.
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N. Sathiya Moorthy is a policy analyst and commentator based in Chennai. ...
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