Opinion | The Yoga Day Warships: Modi’s Message Of Peace And Power

The message to the Indian Ocean, and to those who are increasingly trying to reshape it, is simple: India is here, building fast, and will not be moved

On the morning of 21 June 2026, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood at Kolkata’s Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port and commissioned three warships into the Indian Navy. The same day, millions across the world stretched for International Yoga Day, a tradition introduced to the United Nations in 2014 by India and adopted by 177 nations in a record vote. The two events might, at first glance, seem worlds apart.

They are not. Together, they form the complete architecture of India’s strategic security doctrine.

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Three Warships, Three Doctrinal Statements

Start with the most consequential ship. INS Dunagiri is a stealth frigate, the fifth of the Nilgiri-class under Project 17A, and she is nothing like the warship that carried that name before. The original, commissioned in 1977, was a steam-powered foreign design with a 2,692-tonne hull that lit up enemy radar screens. The new one displaces 6,670 tonnes, is nearly 150 metres long, and is built with radar-absorbent materials that a naval official described, with some satisfaction, as making her “a ghost on the water." She carries BrahMos supersonic missiles, a vertical-launch air defence system, an indigenous sonar suite and an electronic warfare package, and can operate two multi-role helicopters from her deck. Roughly 75 per cent of her is made in India.

The other two address different problems. INS Sanshodhak is a large survey vessel, and her work is seabed mapping, hydrographic charting, oceanographic data collection using underwater drones and remote vehicles. It sounds a bit dry and academic for a warship, doesn’t it? But you cannot run an effective submarine force or lay effective mine defences without understanding the........

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