Published in The Indian Express

A Study in Contradictions

Maldives, especially when seen through the eyes of its Indian Ocean neighbors, and past and prospective allies, is a study in contradictions. An archipelago of nearly 1,200 islands, it is a specimen of small states that paradoxically managed to maintain relative independence from European colonization throughout the colonial period, in contrast to large South Asian territories that postcolonial became nation states in the mid-twentieth century. A constitutionally Muslim nation, today, Maldivian culture is rooted in Buddhism, which once informed the nation’s script, language, architecture, culture, and manners. This was prior to the adoption of Islam in 1153 AD, when it became a stronghold of Arab traders. Owing to its strategic location in the Indian Ocean, Maldives attracted the gaze of Portuguese, Dutch, and French explorers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and, for a while, in the late eighteenth century, the Dutch East India Company was indirectly involved in Maldivian politics by dint of the company’s rule over Ceylon. Following the eclipsing of the other European powers by the British, the Maldives came under British economic and strategic influence, that culminated in a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation that the nation signed with the British in 1887. While the Victorian administration became the de facto handler of Maldivian foreign affairs, the island nation retained its internal political sovereignty as well as British economic and military protection. During the Second World War, Maldives was a British naval base, and continued as a British protectorate until its independence in 1965.

The Maldives’ Chinese Slant

As an independent state, the Maldives became a member of the United Nations, in 1965, and began developing robust ties with India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), especially with the last, even though India was the first nation to launch a resident mission in Malé, in 1976, two years after a State Bank of India branch opened in the capital. In 1978, the Indian International Airport Authority was awarded a tender to modernize and expand the Hulhule airport runway, whose works concluded in 1981.

Indo-Maldivian bilateral relationship was formalized with the signing of the Treaty of Friendship in 1981, reinforcing mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. Nevertheless, Maldivian foreign policy under President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom took a lukewarm turn towards India despite his efforts to project a friendly face and despite India’s aid in preserving his regime during a coup attempt, which went unreciprocated. Most Indian troops had to leave Maldives once stability was restored, leaving only a small contingent to protect the president for a year. As the Maldivian democratic movement gained momentum, Gayoom attempted to leverage China over and India. Recognizing China’s emergence as a global power with significant strategic interests in the Indian Ocean, Maldives, under Gayoom, took a Sinocentric turn, as the President visited China in 1984, and then again in 2006. In the late twentieth century and early twenty first century, China played a significant role in Maldivian infrastructural development in the Maldives, most notably constructing the Maldivian Foreign Ministry building, a museum dedicated to housing the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, housing, road, and other urban projects in Malé, besides extending assistance to the Maldives during the devastating tsunami of 2004.

Indo-Maldivian ties saw an upward swing with President Mohamed Nasheed coming to power in 2008, following a campaign that was critical of Gayoom’s Sinocentric policies and pledged to correct this stance to garner Indian support. However, during Nasheed’s presidency, the Maldives confronted economic challenges in its tourism industry amidst the global recession. The opportunity as seized by China, that negotiated agreements with the Maldives to contribute to its tourism sector, eventually overweighing traditional tourism contributors like the United Kingdom and other European states. Even under Nasheed, China-Maldives relations were enriched, as the Chinese opened an embassy in Malé, on November 8, 2011, with the only hiccough being the public disclosure of a Sino-Maldivian agreement for Chinese supply of military hardware and training to the Maldives—a plan that was eventually shelved amid public concerns of security in the Indian Ocean, especially underscored by India.

Oscillating Domestic Politics

In October 2011, Nasheed attempted to alleviate Indian concerns at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth, reaffirming his ‘India first’ foreign policy which entailed refrainment from joint defense exercises with other states, avoiding domestic policies that could rival India’s democratic outlook, and desisting from providing a base to the Chinese or any other state to develop strategic infrastructure, deep-water ports, and airports in the Maldives.

During the interim presidency of President Mohammed Waheed Waseem, from 2012 to 2103, the Maldivian approach towards India soured once again as the Chinese stronghold on Maldives infrastructural projects resumed. Along with the Maldivian Minister of Defence and National Security, Mohamed Nazim, Waheed visited Beijing, where he lauded the Chinese foreign policy on small nations and purported non-interference in the internal affairs of Indian Ocean territories in contrast to the stances of other influential countries. In return, Waheed secured Chinese aid worth US$ 500 via infrastructural and military aid agreements. Chinese influence in Maldives found an additional fillip through China’s establishments in Sri Lanka—an island state that was meanwhile nosediving into a Chinese debt trap.

In the subsequent Maldivian regime led by President Abdulla Yameen, the half-brother of Gayoum, Malé seemed to further distance itself from Western and Indian influences while strengthening trade and tourism ties with China. Arguably, Yameen’s pro-China policy was more rhetorical than executive, as he chose India as his first overseas destination after assuming office, while also recognizing India’s strategic importance to the Maldives, alongside India’s economic ally, Japan. Hence, when Yameen’s successor Ibrahim Mohamed Solih assumed office in 2018, it was more pragmatic for him to use the ‘India first’ plank. Into the second decade of the twenty-first century, Maldives, under President Mohammed Muizzu, remains an important Indian Ocean neighbour to India, both as a strategic and trade partner and a tourism destination for India’s surging middle classes. Nevertheless, the challenges that confront Indo-Maldivian relations are seen to overlap with the challenges confronting the Maldives—the increasing Islamization of Maldivian society (that began in the early twenty first century or even earlier) and anxieties of the subsequent economic hollowing out of the littoral state. It will be interesting to see the impact on Maldivian domestic politics of geostrategic forces revolving around the Chinese ‘strong of pearls’ strategy at play in the Indian Ocean region or what is now better known as the Indo Pacific given America’s reconsolidation of its real estate in the Indian Ocean in close consonance with India.