On a day in May 1879, a ship called the Leonidas landed 464 Indians at Fiji. They had signed, or made a mark on, a labour contract. The local pronunciation of the English word agreement was girmit, and the people who signed one became girmitiya. Between 1879 and 1916, about 60,553 Indians made that voyage. Indenture was abolished in 1920. Their descendants are roughly 37% of Fiji's population today.
That is why the second India-Fiji Bilateral Joint Working Group (JWG) on defence, held in New Delhi on 28 September 2026, is not a routine entry in a diplomatic calendar. Most of India's defence relationships are built on shared interests. This one is built on a shared population.
What the meeting covered
The JWG was co-chaired by Shri Amitabh Prasad, Joint Secretary (International Cooperation) in the Ministry of Defence, and Mr Mason Smith, Permanent Secretary for Defence and Veterans Affairs of Fiji. Mr Smith also called on Defence Secretary Shri Rajesh Kumar Singh.
The agenda ran across military training and capacity building, service-to-service engagements, maritime security, cyber training, defence industry collaboration and institutional cooperation between the two armed forces. India recorded the importance it attaches to Fiji and the Pacific Island Countries in its vision of a free, open, inclusive and secure Indo-Pacific.
The concrete item was a visit: the Fijian delegation travelled to Kochi on 29-30 September 2026 to inspect facilities at Southern Naval Command and formalise advanced naval training cooperation and professional aviation training modules. Southern Naval Command is the Navy's training command, which is the correct place to send a delegation that wants training slots rather than equipment. The delegation also visited DPSU Bhavan at the World Trade Centre in New Delhi, where it was briefed on Indian defence manufacturing including augmented and virtual reality simulation facilities, and Mr Smith laid a wreath at the National War Memorial.
The convergence nobody mentions first
Fiji's military is small. The Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) is, by any conventional measure, a minor force. Judged by what it actually does, it is one of the most experienced small militaries in the world.
Fiji has been contributing to United Nations peacekeeping since its first mission in Lebanon in 1978 — UNIFIL — which it joined within eight years of independence. It currently provides more than 330 uniformed personnel across seven UN peacekeeping operations, with its largest deployments in West Asia; its long-running commitment to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) concluded in December 2025, and it continues to serve with the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) in the Sinai. For a country of under a million people, that is an extraordinary per-capita commitment.
India, for its part, is among the largest cumulative troop contributors in the history of UN peacekeeping. So the substantive military overlap between the two countries is not equipment, doctrine or a shared threat. It is blue helmets: the same missions, the same training requirements, the same pre-deployment standards. This is exactly the terrain on which India's peacekeeping-focused engagements work — the logic visible in Exercise Khaan Quest and its UN peacekeeping framing, and in the recognition won by Major Abhilasha Barak as a UN military gender advocate. Training cooperation between India and Fiji has a natural currency because both send soldiers to the same places under the same flag.
FIPIC, and why India runs a Pacific forum
India has no territory in the Pacific, no treaty ally there, and until recently very little trade. It nevertheless convenes a grouping of Pacific states.
The Forum for India-Pacific Islands Cooperation (FIPIC) was launched in November 2014. Its first summit was held at Suva, Fiji, in 2014; the second at Jaipur in 2015; the third at Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, on 22 May 2023. It brings India together with 14 Pacific Island Countries: the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Its declared agenda spans trade, investment, tourism, education, health, agriculture, renewable energy, disaster management and climate change. FIPIC foreign ministers met again on the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly in September 2026, four days before this defence JWG.
Three reasons explain why a country with no Pacific presence builds one.
Votes. Fourteen states is fourteen votes in the General Assembly and in every UN body that elects by ballot. For a country pursuing Security Council reform and seats on specialised agencies, a bloc of fourteen is not a small thing.
Climate. Pacific Island states are the most exposed countries on earth to sea-level rise, and they are the most effective moral voice in climate negotiations. India's own negotiating position benefits from standing with them rather than apart from them.
Contest. The Pacific has become a theatre of strategic competition, with China, Australia, the United States, Japan and France all expanding their engagement. India's participation is modest by comparison and is not, realistically, a bid for primacy. It is a bid not to be absent.
The phrase India used at the JWG is worth parsing: a free, open, inclusive and secure Indo-Pacific. The first two words are shared with the American and Japanese formulations. "Inclusive" is the Indian addition, and it signals that India's Indo-Pacific is not framed as a coalition against a named state. Whether that is principled or merely convenient is a fair question, but the word is deliberate, and it recurs in India's language across the region — the same formulation that runs through the ASEAN-centred architecture India works within.
What a second working group can and cannot do
It is worth being honest about the stage this relationship is at.
A Joint Working Group is an early-stage institutional mechanism. It is where two defence establishments identify areas of cooperation, agree to exchange personnel and schedule visits. It is not a treaty, not an alliance, and not a defence pact. Compare the pattern with India's second Joint Defence Cooperation Committee with Rwanda — the same stage, the same kind of agenda, the same modest deliverables.
What such a mechanism does deliver, if it survives long enough, is regularity. Defence relationships are built by officers who have trained together, and training relationships take a decade to show returns. A delegation inspecting facilities at Southern Naval Command in September 2026 is not news. A Fijian officer commanding a patrol vessel in 2036 having trained at Kochi is the point of it.
The obvious limit is capacity on the other side. Fiji's defence budget and force size mean the realistic ceiling on this relationship is training, maritime domain awareness, hydrography, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and small-scale equipment transfers. That is not a criticism of the relationship; it is a description of what a partnership with a small island state actually consists of, and India's engagements with Seychelles and Mauritius follow the same shape in a different ocean.
🔑 Revision block
- 2nd India-Fiji Bilateral Joint Working Group on defence: New Delhi, 28 September 2026.
- Co-chairs: Shri Amitabh Prasad, Joint Secretary (International Cooperation), Ministry of Defence, and Mr Mason Smith, Permanent Secretary for Defence and Veterans Affairs, Fiji. Defence Secretary: Shri Rajesh Kumar Singh.
- Agenda: military training and capacity building, service-to-service engagements, maritime security, cyber training, defence industry collaboration.
- Fijian delegation visited Southern Naval Command, Kochi, on 29-30 September 2026 — the Navy's training command — for advanced naval and professional aviation training modules. Also visited DPSU Bhavan and the National War Memorial.
- Girmit = local pronunciation of "agreement"; indentured migrants were girmitiya. First ship Leonidas, 464 migrants, May 1879. About 60,553 Indians migrated 1879-1916; indenture abolished 1920. Indo-Fijians are about 37% of Fiji's population.
- RFMF — Republic of Fiji Military Forces. UN peacekeeping since UNIFIL, Lebanon, 1978. Over 330 personnel across 7 UN operations; UNAMI commitment concluded December 2025; continues with the MFO in the Sinai.
- FIPIC launched November 2014. Summits: Suva 2014, Jaipur 2015, Port Moresby 22 May 2023. 14 Pacific Island Countries.
- The 14 PICs: Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.
- India's formula: a free, open, inclusive and secure Indo-Pacific — "inclusive" is the distinctively Indian addition.
🎯 Practice MCQs
Q1. The term 'girmitiya' derives from: (a) A Fijian word for plantation worker (b) The name of the first ship to carry indentured Indians to Fiji (c) The local pronunciation of the English word 'agreement' (d) A Hindi term for an overseas voyage
→ (c) Girmit is the local rendering of "agreement" — the indenture contract. Those who signed one became girmitiya. The first ship was the Leonidas, which is the distractor at option (b).
Q2. Indian indentured migration to Fiji began and ended, respectively, in: (a) 1879 and 1916 (b) 1834 and 1900 (c) 1857 and 1920 (d) 1890 and 1947
→ (a) Migration ran from 1879 to 1916, carrying about 60,553 people. The system of indenture itself was formally abolished in 1920, which is the date candidates commonly substitute for the end of migration.
Q3. The second India-Fiji Bilateral Joint Working Group on defence was co-chaired on the Indian side by: (a) The Defence Secretary (b) The Chief of the Naval Staff (c) The Foreign Secretary (d) The Joint Secretary (International Cooperation), Ministry of Defence
→ (d) The Indian co-chair was Joint Secretary (International Cooperation), Ministry of Defence. The Defence Secretary met the visiting Permanent Secretary separately, on the sidelines — a distinction such questions rely on.
Q4. The Fijian delegation's visit to Kochi was directed at Southern Naval Command because it is the Indian Navy's: (a) Western fleet headquarters (b) Training command (c) Submarine operating authority (d) Amphibious warfare command
→ (b) Southern Naval Command is the Navy's training command, which is why a delegation seeking naval and aviation training modules was taken there rather than to an operational fleet headquarters.
Q5. Fiji's participation in United Nations peacekeeping began with a mission in: (a) Cyprus, in 1964 (b) The Sinai, in 1982 (c) Somalia, in 1993 (d) Lebanon, in 1978
→ (d) Fiji joined UNIFIL in Lebanon in 1978, within eight years of independence, and has maintained a disproportionately large peacekeeping commitment ever since.
Q6. The Forum for India-Pacific Islands Cooperation comprises India and how many Pacific Island Countries? (a) 8 (b) 10 (c) 14 (d) 18
→ (c) FIPIC brings India together with 14 Pacific Island Countries, from the Cook Islands to Vanuatu. The number is a standard one-line question and the distractors are always the neighbouring round figures.
Q7. The three FIPIC summits held so far were at: (a) Suva, Jaipur and Port Moresby (b) Suva, New Delhi and Nadi (c) Port Moresby, Jaipur and Suva, in that order (d) Nadi, Bengaluru and Apia
→ (a) Suva (2014), Jaipur (2015), Port Moresby (22 May 2023) — in that order. Option (c) offers the right cities in the wrong sequence, which is the commoner trap.
Q8. In India's formulation of a "free, open, inclusive and secure" Indo-Pacific, the word that most distinguishes the Indian position from the American and Japanese formulations is: (a) Free (b) Inclusive (c) Open (d) Secure
→ (b) "Inclusive" is the distinctively Indian addition, signalling that India does not frame the Indo-Pacific as a coalition directed against any named state. "Free and open" is shared language.
Q9. A bilateral Joint Working Group on defence is best characterised as: (a) A treaty creating mutual defence obligations (b) A standing operational command arrangement (c) An institutional mechanism for identifying areas of cooperation and scheduling engagement (d) A body that approves arms transfers between the two states
→ (c) A JWG is an early-stage institutional mechanism — it identifies areas of cooperation, arranges exchanges and schedules visits. It creates no mutual defence obligation and commands nothing.
Q10. Descendants of Indian indentured labourers today constitute approximately what share of Fiji's population? (a) 12% (b) 22% (c) 50% (d) 37%
→ (d) Indo-Fijians are roughly 37% of the population — a large enough share to make the community central to Fiji's politics, and the reason the India-Fiji relationship has a domestic constituency in both countries.
📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)
Questions on India's smaller partnerships follow a shape that rewards preparation and punishes improvisation.
The first form is the regional grouping roll-call. FIPIC's 14 members, IORA's membership, BIMSTEC's seven, the Quad's four. Examiners ask either for the number or for an odd-one-out. The efficient preparation is to learn the number for every grouping first and the membership only for the smaller ones, because the number alone resolves most questions.
The second is summit sequence. Where was the first, where was the latest, and in what order. Distractor sets almost always contain the right cities in the wrong order, as option (c) does above.
The third is the diaspora question. Mauritius, Fiji, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname — the countries with large populations of Indian origin, and the migration systems that produced them. Indenture from 1834, its abolition in 1920, the ships and the destinations. This sits at the junction of history and international relations and is examined from both sides.
A fourth, less obvious pattern is worth flagging: mechanism nomenclature. India runs Joint Working Groups, Joint Defence Cooperation Committees, Joint Defence Committees, Annual Defence Dialogues and 2+2 ministerial dialogues with different partners, and these are not interchangeable. A 2+2 involves foreign and defence ministers together; a JWG is official-level. Knowing which partner gets which format tells you how far a relationship has actually progressed, and examiners have begun to test exactly that.
Preparing for NDA? With any regional grouping, learn the number of members before the names, and the summit sequence before the declarations — that pair answers most of what is asked. Build the base with our NDA general ability notes, follow the daily NDA current affairs, and prepare with our faculty in the upcoming Cavalier courses in Delhi.
✍️ Written by Maj Sunil Chopra — Co-founder and defence studies faculty at The Cavalier. Reviewed by the Cavalier Faculty Desk.