Bharat-Maldives bilateral relations seem to be deteriorating fast, courtesy the new government in Maldives under the leadership of the Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu.
First, the derogatory posts made on X against Bharat and the Bharatiya Prime Minister by three junior ministers in the Muizzu administration, and now the Maldivian President officially announcing a specific deadline for the withdrawal of Bharatiya troops.
According to media reports, Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu has asked Bharat to withdraw its troops from Maldives by March 15. The announcement was made by Abdullah Nazim Ibrahim, the Principal Secretary to President Muizzu on Public Policy even as the India-Maldives High-Level Core Group- set up when PM Narendra Modi met the Maldivian President on the sidelines of the UN Climate Summit in Dubai, held its first meeting in Male.
The announcement comes close on the heels of Mohamed Muizzu’s China visit during which he reportedly urged Chinese tourists to reclaim the top spot in arrivals that had been held by Bharatiya visitors for 2 years in a row. He pledged further support for China’s Belt and Road Initiative and oversaw the signing of 20 MOUs between China and Maldives. The symbolism is hard to miss. Even though Maldives suspended the three junior ministers who made anti-Bharat comments vis-à-vis PM Modi’s drive to encourage tourism in Lakshadweep, Maldives’ apology, considering the gravity of the situation was rather lukewarm.
As Bharatiya celebrities, travel companies, and netizens initiated a strong “Boycott Maldives” campaign, instead of evaluating his anti-Bharat strategy, the Maldivian President declared in China that he wants Maldives to be the preferred destination for Chinese tourists. Does this send Maldives full-on into the debt trap of China and make it unofficially a Chinese colony? Only time will tell.
After his return from China, the Maldivian President, in a veiled reference to Bharat, said that Maldives is a small island nation but that does not allow others to bully the country. He further stated that the Indian Ocean does not belong to any particular country and that the Maldives is not in anyone’s backyard. Muizzu also announced plans to reduce the country’s dependency on Bharat and talked about securing imports of essential food commodities, medicine, and consumables from other countries. Mohamed Muizzu’s government is also reportedly reviewing more than 100 bilateral agreements with New Delhi signed by the previous government.
Even though the Maldivian government suspended the three ministers who had posted derogatory tweets against Bharat and the Bharatiya PM in the wake of Prime Minister Modi promoting Lakshadweep as a tourist destination, it’s hard to believe that ministers in an official position could have posted such comments on a social media platform without covert encouragement from the government.
Much has been said and written about Mohamed Muizzu’s anti-Bharat stance ever since he won the country’s elections. One of his first announcements after his victory was his government’s decision to ask Bharatiya troops stationed in Maldives to leave the country. This came as no surprise as the coalition of Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) and the People’s National Congress (PNC) had contested the elections based on the “India Out” campaign.
The campaign, which was incidentally declared illegal by the previous Maldivian government led by then President Ibrahim Solih of the Maldivian Democratic Party, created a vitriolic anti-Bharat sentiment in the country insinuating that Bharat was taking away the sovereignty of Maldives by stationing their troops in the country, and through various other maritime agreements aimed at strategically controlling the small island nation.
Mohamed Muizzu carries forward the line of Abdulla Yameen, the former President of Maldives who was unabashedly pro-China. Abdulla Yameen can be called the architect of Maldives’s pro-China and anti-Bharat stance. Elected to power in 2015, although Yameen officially followed the India First policy of Maldives, it was during his reign that China expanded its commercial presence in the island nation. He also reportedly pressed for a Free Trade Agreement with China in 2017.
However, he failed to ratify the agreement before his successor, Ibrahim Solih won the next elections and became the President of Maldives. Under Solih’s tenure, Maldives took concrete steps to undo the damage caused to Bharat-Maldives relations during Abdulla Yameen’s rule. The Maldives accorded utmost priority to Bharat as its most important development partner under the leadership of Ibrahim Solih.
Abdulla Yameen was found guilty of corruption and money laundering by a lower court and sentenced to 11 years in prison by a lower court in December 2022, just ahead of the Presidential elections. Mohamed Muizzu was sworn in as the President as a proxy for Yameen, who was disqualified from contesting the elections since he was serving an 11-year prison term. However, not all seems to be well between Muizzu and Yameen as Abdulla Yameen is reportedly set to form his own political party. According to various media reports, Yameen loyalists accused Muizzu of seeking to hijack the leadership of PPM.
Looking at the way the internal politics of Maldives is playing out, the newly elected Muizzu government doesn’t look too stable. I guess Bharat’s best bet is to keep a close watch on the situation in Maldives and keep a low profile till there is a regime change in the island nation.
The anti-Bharat sentiment that has been brewing in Maldives for the past couple of years based on which Muizzu won the elections owing to his vitriolic campaign, has its genesis in the China-Islamist nexus of Maldives. The anti-Bharat sentiment in the island nation is a by-product of China’s strategy to increase influence in the region as well as the growing influence of radical Islam in Maldives. In June 2022, the International Yoga Day celebrations were disrupted in Male, Maldives by an extremist mob.
The Maldivian police suspected the involvement of local Islamic scholars and the PPM which was at that time the opposition party. The event organized by the Bharatiya High Commission in Male was attacked by a 150-member strong mob who attacked participants practicing yoga and vandalized property. The members of the mob were reportedly carrying flags with verses from the Quran. According to various media reports of that time, since performing yoga is akin to worshipping the sun which is prohibited in certain sects of Sunni Islam, the event was attacked for being un-Islamic. It doesn’t come as a surprise given that Islamists in Bharat as well often make controversial remarks on Muslims practicing yoga.
Maldives has often been portrayed as a peaceful country where the moderate version of Islam is practiced. When the island nation is talked about in the international media, its idyllic and picturesque beaches become the main subject matter. Maldives hasn’t quite been associated with radical Islam, at least not in the popular perception. Although, according to experts, radicalization is fast making inroads into Muslim majority Maldives and the country is becoming intolerant of the customs and traditions of non-Muslims.
A research article published by the famous Bharatiya think-tank The Observer Research Foundation in July 2022 provides an insight into the extremist ecosystem in the Maldives. The article argues that even though Maldives has traditionally practiced a tolerant version of Islam, interpretations of Saudi Wahabism and Deobandism began to get rooted in the Maldivian society from the late 1970s and 1980s.
This could be attributed to two factors; college education, that is, students traveling abroad for religious education and returning after being brainwashed in an extremist version of Islam, and generous mosque funds from Saudi Arabia received by Maldives, says the article further. Democracy isn’t always necessarily a blessing, especially for those where democracy comes in the garb of extremist viewpoints clamoring for attention. When Maldives embraced democracy in 2008, various radical Islamist elements got the socio-political space to seek legitimacy and disseminate their ideology, according to the article.
https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/sustained-extremist-ecosystems-in-the-maldives
Maldives is also reportedly one of the largest exporters of fighters to terrorist groups like the Islamic State. “For the radicalized youth, Maldives has been a land of ‘Kafirs’(infidels). They have preferred operating, fighting, and dying for Islam in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria. The Maldives thus became the world’s largest per capita FTF contributor. Maldives operatives too sustained close links with organizations such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS and have been reinforcing these organizations with young Maldivian recruits”, says the ORF article.
Another article published by the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis talks about the “Rising Tide of Radicalization in the Maldives”. The article published in 2021 analyzes the attack on former Maldivian President Mohammad Nasheed and its suspected link to Islamist extremist elements. This piece also talks about Maldives becoming a prime source of recruits for terrorist organizations the world over. It argues that it was in the reign of Abdulla Yameen, Nasheed’s successor that extremist Islamist elements became highly active in Maldives. It was in this period that at least 170 Maldivian youth (according to official figures), left for Syria to join ISIS and Jabhat-ul-Nusra, while over 400 attempted to leave the shores, says the article.
The piece further talks about how the Maldives witnessed a slew of terrorism-related attacks recently. “Maldives has itself witnessed several terror-related attacks in recent years. On April 17, 2020, ISIS took responsibility for the huge blast at the Mahibadhoo border. Five bombs destroyed a sea ambulance, four speed boats, and two dinghies. Thereafter, ISIS called on its supporters to carry more such attacks in India and Maldives in its e-magazine Voice of Hind”, says the article.
https://www.idsa.in/issuebrief/attack-on-nasheed-and-radicalisation-maldives-200521
Maldives is an Islamic country with 100 percent of its population practicing Sunni Islam. Non-Muslims are technically not allowed to take citizenship in Maldives. It’s true that Maldives has nowhere seen the kind of radicalization that exists in Islamic countries like Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, etc. But with a 100 percent Muslim population and the rise of Islamic extremism, all political parties feel pressured to accommodate the dictates of the extremist elements, in fear of losing their voter base. Thus, the extremist Islamic elements have become kind of match-fixers in the game of Maldivian politics.
In light of increasing Islamic radicalization in Maldives, it won’t be far-fetched to see extremist Islam as a major factor behind the “India Out “campaign of Maldives. Under the current BJP government in the leadership of PM Modi, Bharat is reclaiming its Hindu legacy, something that is being portrayed as “right-wing Hindu majoritarianism” by the leftist woke circles. This view is also shared by the global Islamists and thus it is natural that wherever radical Islam has made inroads, there will be an effort to create an anti-Bharat sentiment. A similar situation is happening in Maldives.
Then, there is the China influence. A research paper published by ORF in October 2022 talks in detail about the possible role played by China in funding the India Out campaign of the current coalition government of Maldives, elected based on that campaign. The article talks about how the India Out Campaign specifically targeted Bharat’s development projects in Maldives by creating propaganda that these projects could infringe on the sovereignty of the island nation.
Ibrahim Solih, the President of Maldives prior to Muizzu winning the elections, had reduced China’s influence in the country considerably and shelved many Chinese projects that the previous Maldivian government had sanctioned. Obviously, it makes sense that China sensed an opportunity for regime change and the fulfilment of its interests by raking an anti-Bharat sentiment in the people of Maldives.
“Despite the absence of a paper trail, it can be argued that China is covertly supporting the India Out movement. The MNN, the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese media outlets enjoy a good relationship with each other. It is largely believed that China covertly funds the MNN outlet. MNN continues to frequently promote Chinese propaganda from Xinhua, Global Times, CGTN, and other Chinese-affiliated media through its platform. ..Finally China’s elite capture of the PPM and its affiliates has been significant. China offered loans and deals to the PPM elites – most of them opaque – along with nurturing corruption and personal incentives”, says the article.
Surya Kanegaonkar, an expert on geopolitics and economics has also posted on X regarding the China-Islamic nexus in Maldives.
Apart from asking the Bharat to withdraw its troops from Maldives, the current Maldivian government has also reportedly canceled the MNDF Indian Navy Agreement signed during the visit of PM Modi to Maldives in 2019 for undertaking hydrographic surveys in Maldives. Also, the new President of Maldives chose Turkey as his first travel destination after assuming office, a country that wants to become an Islamic Emirate. Traditionally, the Maldivian President makes his first visit to Bharat. Owing to Muizzu’s anti-Bharat stance, it was speculated that he would break the convention by visiting China first. But Muizzu surprised everybody by choosing Turkey for his maiden visit.
The dangerous cocktail of China and Islamic extremism vis-à-vis Maldives should certainly ring alarm bells for Bharat. Bharat should carefully recalibrate its Maldives strategy to deal with a rather unfriendly and possibly antagonistic neighbor till a regime change in Maldives.
