Small States and the Politics of Maritime Boundaries in South Asia: Case Studies of India–Sri Lanka and India–Bangladesh Maritime Boundaries

How are maritime borders in South Asia created and managed? While the existing literature emphasises the region’s land borders, this article foregrounds the politics of maritime boundaries in South Asia. It traces the political history of maritime border formation through the cases of India–Sri Lanka and India–Bangladesh. This narrative adopts the perspectives of the smaller states, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, to examine the distinct paths they followed to secure legal recognition, despite asymmetries in power. Both states compensated for their limitations by leveraging strong interpersonal relationships at the highest levels, maintaining bilateral momentum, and capitalising on a regional balance that constrained India. However, even these ‘success stories’ reveal the limits of legal demarcation in the face of complex, overlapping lived maritime spaces. Persistent violations, resource overexploitation, and livelihood conflicts among culturally and economically intertwined coastal communities underscore ongoing challenges in maritime governance. Smaller states employ a mix of competition and collaboration in managing maritime issues with their larger counterpart. While they have tightened domestic legislations and emphasised the need for bilateral negotiations, incidents such as arrests and seizures are contained at a low threshold, so as not to jeopardise broader cooperation on maritime matters vis-à-vis the larger state. These cases demonstrate that, despite security concerns, economic incentives, and sovereignty-driven actors on both sides, unequal states can negotiate and resolve maritime boundaries. The interplay of conflict and cooperation illustrates the parameters of marine coordination among unequal South Asian countries.