No Mauritian reads about maritime capability without thinking of Chagos. India has supported our claim consistently and without hedging — at the International Court of Justice, at the UN General Assembly, and in every bilateral statement since. That support has never been contingent on anything.

It is worth being clear-eyed about what comes next. The treaty signed in May 2025 has not entered into force, and the delay is not of our making. But sovereignty, when it arrives, is not a document. It is the ability to reach the archipelago, survey it, police its protected areas, service its fisheries, and be present there. That is a maritime task of considerable complexity, some 2,000 kilometers from Port Louis, and we do not currently possess the means to perform it alone. India has already agreed to assist with the development and surveillance of the marine protected area. The Prime Minister has asked India for a naval vessel to carry our flag there.

Partnership, not patronage.

We maintain a free trade agreement with China, a close relationship with France as our neighbor in the region, and standing arrangements with the European Union, the Indian Ocean Commission and the African Union. Our tradition is to be friendly with everyone and subordinate to no one, and it has served a small state well. But friendship is measured by depth rather than breadth. Seven in ten of us descend from people who crossed the ocean from India. Our National Day is the date of Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March.

Diplomatic relations with India were established in 1948, twenty years before we were even independent. And when the practical work of maritime security has needed doing — the hulls, the charts, the training, the aircraft — the same partner has done it, through every government in Port Louis and every government in New Delhi.

We should treat the visit Indian Naval Chief as an opportunity to request an expanded training allocation; survey motor boats and more joint hydrographic deployments; the operationalisation of our National Maritime Information Sharing Centre at Ebene so that we hold our own maritime picture rather than borrowing one; and a serious conversation about what Mauritian presence in Chagos will practically require and how do we build it.

What we make of the visit — whether we remain a recipient or become a capable maritime state in our own right — is a decision that will be taken in Port Louis, not anywhere else.

Diplomat