ISAS Working Papers

The ‘Look East’ Policy (LEP) is usually identified as the beginning of an effort by India to build relations with its eastern neighbours lying on the other side of the Bay of Bengal rim. Following the LEP, the Bay of Bengal has been witnessing a process of economic, political and cultural reintegration. Historical analysis, however, reveals that, in the pre-colonial era, the Bay used to be a circular space, interconnected by movements of goods, people and ideas. As a consequence of colonialism, this interconnectedness was altered, a sense of otherness developed among the rim nations, while India consolidated a foreign policy focused on the territorial rather than the maritime dimension of the space. This paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach (bridging history, international relations and foreign policy analysis) in a reconstruction and reassessment of the transformation of the Bay of Bengal from a unitary to a fragmented space, as well as of India’s interaction with the same.