Maldives: India’s three dilemmas

For the past six months, India’s foreign policy has been grappling with the Maldives challenge. The island state recently held parliamentary elections in which a pro-India president, Ibrahim Solih, lost to a pro-China challenger, Mohamed Muizzu. As expected, the new president’s successful visit to China was followed by a request for India to withdraw its military personnel from the country. To complicate matters further, Muizzu’s party, the People’s National Congress (PNC), secured a landslide victory in the elections. The PNC and its allies now control 75 out of 93 seats in the parliament. The electoral victory has not only strengthened the president’s hand but also portended warning signs for India.

India faces three dilemmas in the evolving situation in the Maldives. Firstly, should India maintain a close association with the incumbent government of its neighbouring country or adopt a quiet, more hands-off approach? This question is important because India’s neighbourhood is a complicated arena, and, in most South Asian countries, relations with India tend to become a matter of intense domestic politics. If New Delhi is seen as aligning too closely with one group and alienating the other, the potential political costs of such a behaviour might be high when tides turn. In the Maldives, from 2018 until 2023, the incumbent government was seen as close to New Delhi. In fact, the government had a declared ‘India First’ policy. In response, the Maldivian opposition campaigned on the ‘India Out’ platform and succeeded. Since then, India has been negotiating with the new government to ensure that its strategic influence and presence do not dissipate. The increasing presence of Türkiye and China in the Maldives will not help either.

The second challenge for India is to ensure that foreign policy is not mixed with domestic politics. Foreign policy is driven by strategic interests, whereas domestic politics operates on the basis of partisan political interests, and the two may not always match. In the case of the Maldives, the inter-related issue of Lakshadweep Islands and the tourism industry has highlighted this challenge. As India sought to develop its Lakshadweep Islands and promote tourism there, Maldivian ministers reacted sharply. They even crossed a line by using derogatory language against India’s leadership. However, the expression of anger on social media and the public discourse that emerged in the aftermath of this incident indicate the perils of mixing domestic politics with foreign policy.

It is clear that the Maldives depends on tourism and that, until October 2023, India accounted for the lion’s share of the number of tourists to the island state. However, since October 2023, a message has been implicitly sent out that the Maldives may perhaps not be such a suitable location for Indian tourists and that India can wield tourism as a punishing stick for the island state. Such practice is necessary and yet detrimental at the same time. It is necessary to send out a clear message that Indian interests should not be harmed. However, should it be done in public through the media and social media, or should such a message be conveyed through diplomatic channels? It is detrimental in the sense that it underscores the necessity of diversifying foreign and economic policy options for the neighbouring countries. In the long term, dependence on India will perhaps be seen as an asset as well as a liability. 

The third dilemma for India is between democracy and stability. Should India prefer democracy in the neighbourhood, or should the stability of a neighbouring country take precedence? For smaller states in India’s neighbourhood, except Sri Lanka, democracy is a recent phenomenon. Democracy will not always produce the desired results, as we can see in the Maldives. The defeat of an incumbent government and the change of guard is a good sign for Maldivian democracy. However, the election results will also change the foreign policy orientation. Democracy can also incentivize politicians to engage in a certain type of political behaviour that may not always be appreciated in the context of foreign policy. For India, the domestic politics in the neighbourhood have always presented difficult challenges. The Maldives elections also underscore the imperative to navigate this dilemma between democracy and stability.

Therefore, the elections and subsequent political trajectory in the Maldives are not only important for the island state but also matter for India. Great powers expertly navigate the contradictions and paradoxes in their strategic interests and professed values. For a would-be great power like India, the Maldives is a test of its strategic behaviour and diplomatic will. 

(The writer is the author of The Superpowers’ Playground: Djibouti and
Geopolitics of the Indo- Pacific in the 21st Century)