Every July, the anniversary of the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling in Philippines v. China gives states with an interest in the South China Sea an occasion to restate their position — and every year, India’s Ministry of External Affairs does exactly that, in careful, consistent language. On the tenth anniversary of the ruling in July 2026, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal reaffirmed that India’s position is “clear and well-known”: that maritime disputes must be resolved peacefully and in accordance with UNCLOS, and that the 2016 award remains a significant milestone and a basis for peaceful resolution among the parties concerned. India was among the states associated with a joint statement, alongside the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, the Philippines and several European states, underscoring these points.
India Is Not a Claimant — So Why Does Its Position Matter?
India has no territorial claim in the South China Sea and is not a party to the underlying dispute between China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. What India has, instead, is a direct and substantial interest in the legal principle at stake: freedom of navigation and overflight, and the rejection of expansive “historic rights” claims that are not grounded in UNCLOS’s codified maritime zones. A significant share of India’s own trade transits these waters, Indian naval vessels have periodically exercised passage through the region, and India’s own ONGC Videsh has held exploration interests in blocks contested by Vietnam and China — giving India tangible commercial and strategic reasons to want UNCLOS’s rules, rather than raw naval power, to govern the outcome.
The Legal Substance of the 2016 Ruling India Keeps Citing
The Permanent Court of Arbitration’s tribunal held, unanimously, that China’s “nine-dash line” claim to historic rights over most of the South China Sea has no legal basis under UNCLOS, and that any such historic rights, to the extent they ever existed, were extinguished to the extent they were incompatible with the exclusive economic zones and continental shelves that UNCLOS establishes for coastal states. China has consistently rejected the ruling’s validity and declined to participate in enforcement, illustrating international law’s familiar compliance problem: the tribunal had jurisdiction and delivered a binding award, but no mechanism exists to force compliance from a permanent Security Council member absent that state’s own cooperation.
India’s Calculated Legal Restraint
Notice what India’s statements consistently do not do: name China directly, take a position on the competing territorial claims themselves, or commit to any specific action beyond rhetorical and diplomatic reaffirmation of UNCLOS principles. This is a deliberate, and analytically interesting, use of international law as a diplomatic instrument — India invokes a binding legal ruling to signal its broader commitment to a “rules-based” Indo-Pacific order and implicitly caution against unilateral coercion, while avoiding the more confrontational posture of directly inserting itself into a territorial dispute where it has no legal standing as a party.
What This Reveals About How Middle Powers Use International Law
For a student of international law, India’s South China Sea posture is a useful case study in how a non-claimant middle power can use the language of legal principle — UNCLOS compliance, peaceful dispute resolution — to pursue strategic objectives (checking any single power’s ability to dominate a critical sea lane) without committing to the costlier, more binary choice of openly aligning against a major trading partner and neighbour. It sits comfortably alongside India’s parallel Indo-Pacific engagements — the Quad, the Act East Policy discussed elsewhere on this site — as part of a consistent strategic-autonomy approach: firm on legal principle, deliberately restrained on bilateral confrontation.
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