In Maldives, Delhi must steer clear of irritants to use mix of Gujral doctrine, tough talk

As far as neighbourhood regimes go, the last few days have been a mixed bag for India’s diplomacy for different reasons. 

For New Delhi, the happier note was widely anticipated as Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina won her fifth term in office, the fourth consecutive one – amid controversies that have become usual in the country’s poll scene. 

The win for Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League bodes well for a further upswing in Indo-Bangladesh ties in recent years. Strengthening of trade and connectivity links between the two countries have followed the resolution of land and maritime boundary differences. Moreover, on vital questions of regional security, such as the threat of terrorism, New Delhi and Dhaka have come to share the same outlook. 

It was, however, in its south-western maritime neighbourhood, that India had to deal with an unprovoked tirade from three members of the government of Maldives, leaving a sour aftertaste.

The current Male-Delhi row sprang up from a non-event; an online diatribe, and the backlash snowballed into a situation which touched delicate diplomatic nerves and cooled down only after the governments of the two countries intervened. 

The spat was triggered by the derogatory language used by three deputy ministers of the Maldivian president Mohamed Muizzu’s government in their social media posts about India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the Indian PM endorsed the natural splendour and the tourism potential of Lakshadweep islands. 

The outrage unleashed by a section of India’s netizens saw the comments made by the three Maldivian ministers as stoking anti-India sentiments, even having a quasi-racial undercurrent. 

In the realm of state practice, such coarse and provocative remarks against the premier of a friendly country could be clearly seen as unbecoming of the serving ministers. And it was seen as such. 

India’s external affairs ministry registered its strong disapproval, and so did former Maldivian presidents and other members of the opposition Maldivian Democratic Party, whose regime had a definite pro-India worldview. 

All this had its effect on the Muizzu government, to get into the damage control mode, distancing itself from the remarks made by the three members of the regime, and finally, suspending the three deputy ministers for triggering the spat. But, the row had escalated fast enough to outrun the late response. Even though the uncouth tone of the three members of the current Maldivian government caused uproar, the anti-India tilt of Muizzu-led current government in Maldives hasn’t been a secret. 

In fact, the hostility against India formed a key part of his campaign in the polls last year. After being voted to power, his government has asked Indian military personnel to leave the country. Breaking with the tradition of Maldivian presidents coming to India for their first official visit, Muizzu travelled to Turkiye in November, even though there are reports suggesting that his plans to visit India couldn’t materialise because of scheduling issues. Widely seen as attempting a pro-China reset in Maldivian foreign policy, his visit to Beijing this week came quite early in his tenure. This was preceded by Male terminating the pact with the Indian Navy for a hydrographic survey in Maldives’ territorial waters. 

The Muizzu government’s exercise of choice between two regional powers – India and China – treads on a confused strategic binary. 

In terms of Maldives’ security needs, geography implies that Male’s ties with New Delhi make clear strategic sense. The logic of geographical proximity means that India is located as the first responder for Maldives, and by its position in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), India is well placed as the net security provider for Maldives’ security concerns in the region. 

No wonder that Male, until recently, had found it prudent to ink its key defence agreements with India and the US. 

Moreover, the economic footprints of New Delhi in Maldivian economy could be seen with the fact that India led the investments in Maldives’ infrastructure through as many as 40 development projects.

Historically, India’s military has stood the previous regimes in Male in good stead over the decades, as one could recall the Indian troops-led Operation Cactus in 1988, thwarting  the coup attempt against President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom when the Maldives had asked for military assistance. 

Now the rhetoric of the current Maldivian president against India’s military presence in the country  glosses over the fact that it’s limited to around 75 Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guards personnel. And India has been maintaining that even this thin presence is aimed at providing medical support to distant islands, patrolling and rescue work. 

At the same time, the new assertion seen by China’s maritime presence in the region has seen the Maldivian parties taking sides between two sets of security policies, and other allied benefits. That explains why in the IOR, after Sri Lanka, Maldives became the second country to get on board with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. 

In marking its divergence from the previous regimes, the current regime has sought downgrading ties with India to leverage proximity with Chinese interests in the region. But, given the need to protect and nurture a favourable neighbourhood, particularly given Male’s key location in the IOR’s lines of sea communication, New Delhi would be alert to the domestic dynamics in the country as well as its diplomatic priorities.  

While these phases of yo-yoing by smaller countries between two regional powers isn’t new, India’s approach must be taking note of two important factors in light of the latest row.

First, in crafting a regional policy of  friendly allies befitting a regional power, India has to steer clear of the minefield of minor irritants, that the daily digital churn of social media can pose for dealings between the two governments. That isn’t to downplay the patently provocative comments made by three members of the current regime in Male that triggered the current row. In fact, such remarks were too facile to merit a response as it didn’t even care to grasp India’s nuanced stand to the Israel-Hamas conflict. That, however, doesn’t mean that the online vitriolic exchanges between the netizens of the two countries, and their respective allies in the digital flare up, should be allowed to come in the way of stately, studied and  diplomatic handling of a squabble that was getting hideous.

It’s a challenge that diplomacy in the 21st century is increasingly facing and trying to find a way around. In 2017, for instance, while reflecting on the twin effects of citizen and digital diplomacy on the working of career diplomats, former British Ambassador to Lebanon Tom Fletcher came up with a book carrying a rather revealing title – Naked Diplomat (William Collins, 2017). Fletcher saw it as an irreversible process. That, however, doesn’t rule out the pitfalls of instant diplomacy as it grapples with feed and reactions in a 24-hour information cycle. 

Many Indian diplomats, as a former foreign secretary has noted, have to grapple with the threat such distractions pose to the rigour of the diplomatic process because instant diplomacy is a contradiction in terms. 

At the same time, premiers too can also fall into such traps, as seen in the Maldivian president’s response to the online call by a section of Indian netizens to boycott Maldives. In a reflex move, Muizzu ended up asking China to send more tourists offset what was essentially online backlash from Indian netizens, none of which was the Indian government’s view on Maldives as a tourist destination. 

In the 90s, India’s neighbourhood policy, except two clearly hostile neighbours, was sought to be cast on the lines of the Gujral doctrine – a move named after India’s former Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral which relied on unilateral concessions by India to friendly neighbours. Sometimes it paid off, sometimes it didn’t.  

In the process, the power to inflict costs on the deviant state behaviour of foreign governments was also seen as key to protect national interests – material as well as intangible – and presence as the regional power. While the former was aimed at reducing the distrust that “Big Brother’’ India evoked in smaller neighbours, the latter was a reminder of India’s core concerns and power play in the region. A mix of the two delivered better results like the steady progress in the India-Bangladesh ties and the resolution of contentious issues. Sometimes the regimes found themselves on the same page to produce a favourable outcome, sometimes they didn’t. 

India would hope that it can employ the same mix while waiting out a testing phase of New Delhi’s ties with Male, in which a hostile regime and online flare-up could be managed as transient notes.