- Jamil Chughtai
India shares land and maritime frontiers with China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and Maldives. India’s strategic grudge against Pakistan and China is an open-secret and it never tried to hide those animosities either. In case of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, India continued to play oddball so as to sustain a sort of love-hate relationship with a purpose. However, India feels highly possessive about smaller states such as Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives where it initially developed significant business & trade stakes, and then converted the dynamics of those bargains into its strategic and political spheres over time. For India, being a chronic trespasser, the concept of national interests and means to achieve them are still focused on intrusions and interference. Considering Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives as its very own satellite states, India every so often meddles in their internal affairs, and they helplessly acquiesce each time to the dictations of a bully in their neighborhood.
In yet another episode of uncalled-for interventions of late, India put the things upside down in Maldives merely to secure its strategic and politico-economic stakes in this Indian Ocean archipelago of 1190 tiny coral islands. Maldives, in its best national interest, decided earlier this year to bypass New Delhi and also open itself to rest of the world believing that India should not be the only option for Male. Accordingly the then President Abdullah Yameen developed bilateral ties with India’s regional rival China and invited them to build infrastructure in Maldives besides signing new Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with them. In reaction India activated its sprawling tentacles within Maldives, particularly the judiciary and opposition, and coerced them to impede all efforts of the incumbent government to go out of Indian sway. Eventually, President Yameen had to impose emergency in February so as to avert undue influence of India especially on Maldives’s national policies on security, economy and trade. Finding India adamant at meddling into Maldives’s very personal affairs, Male as a last resort told India to remove its military and strategic hardware from the Island.
Maldives’s above-referred measures ought to have been taken as a pragmatic stance by a small yet sovereign state trying to draw internal policies by itself, yet India could not digest this self-regulating posture of its satellite fearing that it may extricate itself from Indian orbit. The step that really drove India mad was President Yameen’s adopting rationalized policies, including refusal to free-flow of work visas to Indian doctors, professionals and other workers while showing willingness for multidimensional collaboration with other countries as well. This caused uproar within power corridors of India which finally burst out that it was “deeply dismayed by the imposition and extension of emergency rule in Maldives” expressing concern about President’s sacking top judges and jailing political dissidents under the garb of emergency.
For the first time ever, this Indian statement earned them an official rebuke from the Maldives foreign ministry that warned India against interfering in its political crisis which may deepen a rift with the country once seen as its closest ally. Reacting to Maldives’s transgression, India preferred Indonesia over Maldives when they vied for United Nations Security Council (UNSC) non-permanent seat contested on June 8. India did not just vote against Maldives but also created hostility for Male by lobbying against them to show India’s annoyance. To frustrate them further, India resorted to its traditional strategy of using its payroll-pals in Maldives to help fish in already troubled waters of the honeymoon islands. Ironically (yet understandably) one of the exiled pro-India opposition leaders Muhammad Nasheed publicly appealed India to intervene militarily to help ‘people-in-crisis’ – a proven strategy used more intensively by India against East Pakistan in 1971.
Comprehending Indian intentions beforehand, Maldives unequivocally announced that “there is no doubt that they are experiencing one of the most difficult periods in their history, it is important that friends and partners in the international community, including India, refrain from any actions that could hinder resolving the situation”. But India continued to interfere feeling no qualms in fanning the turmoil further both overtly and covertly so as to install the government of its own liking in Male by replacing President Yameen. What irked India most was the fact that pro-China Yameen might stall a number of Indian projects, including a training academy for the Maldivian armed forces, demarcation of an Exclusive Economic Zone and business initiatives by India’s private sector companies in Maldives. Presumably the stakes were so high for India that it went full-throttle in support of the regime change in Maldives which eventually culminated in putting President of India’s liking in place as a result of elections in September.
Being heavily obliged to India, the new regime under President Ibrahim Muhammad Salih is moving just in line with what India had desired for long. Having pulled back its satellite into Indian orbit after five years’ gap, PM Modi made his victorious appearance at Salih’s oath-taking ceremony held on 17th of November. As expected, President Salih has vowed to bring back ‘India First’ to Maldives’ foreign policy and revive stalled projects. There are indications that the new government will safeguard India’s security interests in the region, including disallowing any Chinese military base in Maldives – one major Indian concern – besides expanding Indo-Maldivian defence partnership to cover various areas in the maritime domain as well.
It goes without saying that as a sovereign state, it is the prerogative of the people and leaders of Maldives to chose friends and foes keeping in view the best interests of the nation. However, the food for the Islanders’ thought is to draw a realistic comparison as to why other neighbors did not fancy intruding into Maldives when it was embroiled in internal chaos. Given that both India and China had their respective strategic and economic stakes in Maldives, what made China to emerge morally different from India during this entire episode is that it did not opt to breach the established protocols on diplomacy and non-interference besides allowing Maldives free space to resolve its internal problems as a self-governing country. For saner voices in the coral Islands, this preference of India over China has dealt a heavy blow to political independence of Maldives – yet again.
