Flowers are blooming: the story of the India Navy's secret operation in the Seychelles

The expansion of India's role as a security provider in the Indian Ocean region has aroused much interest in recent years. Many inside and outside India see great potential for India, and particularly the Indian Navy, to play a positive role in enhancing the region's security in the context of India's rise as a major power. Over the last several decades, India has developed good security relationships in the Indian Ocean, particularly with island or small littoral states such as Mauritius, Seychelles and Madagascar in the southwest Indian Ocean, Oman and Qatar in the Persian Gulf, the Maldives in the central Indian Ocean and Singapore in the east. India is now seen as a key security provider to, and even a security guarantor of, several of these states. However, the history of India's strategic role in the Indian Ocean has not been the subject of a great deal of study. This article will examine India's previously undisclosed interventions in the Seychelles in 1986, which acted as a prelude to other interventions throughout the region, including India's foray in Sri Lanka in 1987 and the Maldives in 1988.