India and Maldives | The shifting wind in Male

India and Maldives | The shifting wind in Male

Within minutes of the Maldivian state broadcaster declaring Mohamed Muizzu as the president-elect on October 1, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the “first leader” to congratulate him. In his message, PM Modi said that India remains committed to strengthening the time-tested India-Maldives bilateral relationship and enhancing “our overall cooperation in the Indian Ocean Region”. However, the latest development poses a problem for India—the pro-China Muizzu, from the People’s National Congress party, won power in the island-nation on an ‘India Out’ campaign, raising fears of the Maldives emerging as a pit stop in China’s ‘String of Pearls’ scheme of military and commercial establishments in the region. Indeed, soon after attending the national day celebrations of China at its embassy in Male on October 8, Muizzu declared, “Maldivians do not want any foreign troops to be present in the country, be it from India or any other country.” However, he emphasised that military cooperation with India will continue. PM Modi was the only major head of state to attend the pro-India Ibrahim Mohamed Solih’s swearing-in ceremony in November 2018. This year, with the anti-India election plank of Muizzu, India was represented by Union earth sciences minister Kiren Rijiju at the swearing-in on November 17. The downgraded representation is seen as a message to the new Maldivian regime.

When meeting Rijiju on November 18, Muizzu stuck to his guns—a formal request was made to India to withdraw its military personnel from the Mal­di­ves. New Delhi has said that both sides will try to find a “workable solution”. Muizzu is currently discussing the matter with Indian authorities before arriving on his maiden visit to New Delhi in the last week of November. The bogey of Indian troops “harming the sovereignty of the Maldives” raised by Muizzu—and which he used to defeat Solih of the Maldivian Democratic Party, known for his ‘India First’ political stand—relates to around 70 Indian military personnel who maintain and operate New Delhi-sponsored radar stations and surveillance aircraft in the Maldives, especially the Dornier aircraft and two Dhruv helicopters gifted by India in the past decade. This minuscule pre­s­ence has been projected as a security threat and interpreted as the establishment of an Indian military base by the Muizzu faction. However, while bringing up the topic with Rijiju, Muizzu acknowledged the contribution of the helicopters and the aircraft for the medical evacuation of Maldivian citizens.

Situated in the central Indian Ocean, barely 70 nautical miles from Minicoy in Lakshadweep and around 300 nautical miles from India’s west coast, and straddling the commercial sea lanes from east and west, the island-nation has great strategic importance for India, which has had close ties with Male. Muizzu’s ‘India Out’ stand, thus, is a setback for India in its geopolitical contest with China—a recent entrant in Male’s scheme of things—that is playing out in the Indian Ocean.

Ever since Maldives’ transition to a multi-party democracy in 2008, New Delhi-Male ties have gone through highs and lows under the looming shadow of Beijing. Mohamed Nasheed’s presidency (2008-2012) affirmed Maldives’ time-tested ‘India First’ policy. Under Mohamed Waheed’s presidency (2012-2013), the Maldives cancelled Indian firm GMR’s contract for the construction of the Male airport in 2012 and started courting China. The archipelago moved further into China’s ambit during the regime of Nasheed’s successor, Abdulla Yameen (2013-2018), joining the Chinese president Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, striking infrastructure deals with China and signing a free trade agreement with it. Significantly, though, India kept up its programme of aid for the Maldives. It ranged from providing defence pla­tforms and installations to humanitarian aid and building infrastructure. With Solih’s term (2018-2023), India-Maldives ties and Indian investment in the nation reached a high, with Indian aid estimated to have crossed Rs 1,000 crore. In 2021, India extended a $50 million (Rs 416 crore) line of credit to the Maldives for defence projects.

Dr Harsh Pant, a senior research fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, believes that though Muizzu’s recent statements are not surprising given his anti-India position, Indian presence in the country is minuscule and serves Maldivian security objectives.

Rear Admiral Sudarshan Shrikhande, former head of foreign cooperation, Indian Navy, says that Ind­ian military personnel are engaged in a variety of tasks in coordination with the host (Maldivian) government. “Maldi­ves has invited such cooperation and our small detachments are there in an open, transparent manner,” he says.

Apprehensive about a greater Chinese role in the Maldives, Indian military planners have begun weighing their options for future moves. Vice Admiral Anil Kumar Chawla, former head of the Kochi-based southern naval comm­and, says, “Maldives gets its entire maritime support from India. Now, the danger is that if India withdraws it and someone else takes over, the situation will not be in favour of New Delhi.”

Defence cooperation

The Maldives, known for its scenic bea­c­­hes and holiday resorts, is one of the biggest beneficiaries of India’s Neighbourhood First policy. Starting in 1988, defence cooperation between the two nations has expanded manifold. Male, aware of its limited capability to protect its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)—the nearly 1 mn sq. km of sea over which it has sovereign rights—against smuggling, trafficking and piracy, looks to New Delhi for its security needs. During Nasheed’s presidency, India and the Maldives signed a defence pact that paved the way for Indian aid—a military hospital, radars and the Dhruv helicopters. Even during the pro-China Yameen regime, defence ties progressed. For New Delhi, support for the Maldives has had an added objective—to keep Chinese influence at bay.

Besides providing military hardware and infrastructure, both nations engage in joint exercises, patrolling and surveillance of the Maldives’ EEZ. India also provides medical training, disaster response assistance, help with search and rescue operations, hydrographic mapping and maritime domain awareness. In addition, it provides trained pilots, observers and engineers to operate the Dornier aircraft it has given the Maldives for surveillance.

Starting from 2007, India has installed 10 coastal surveillance radars across the islands; the Extended Coastal Surveillance Radar System (CSRS) will integrate the information from these radars. The system was built with an Indian grant of $15.8 million (Rs 131 crore). The CSRS data will feed into India’s International Fusion Centre and will be linked to similar systems set up in Sri Lanka, Mauritius and Seychelles. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, who visited the Maldives to hand over the CSRS in 2022, had said that it will contribute to enhancing the security for the entire region and was an example of India’s ‘SAGAR’ (Security and Growth for All in the Region) and Neighbourhood First policies.

In May 2023, defence minister Rajnath Singh visited Male and handed over a Fast Patrol Vessel and a Landing Craft Assault ship to the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF) and laid the foundation stone for constructing the Ekatha Harbour at Uthuru Thila Falhu (UTF), an island near Male. The patrol vessel, capable of coastal and offshore surveillance at high speeds, was commissioned as the MNDF Coast Guard ship Huravee. The Ekatha Harbour is one of India’s biggest grant-in-aid projects in the Maldives. India will help develop and maintain the harbour and provide technical/ logistical support for 15 years upon its completion. It will enable the MNDF to dock and repair its coast guard vessels.

The Maldives is strategically located in the Indian Ocean—an area where India and China are both keen to establish influence. It may have a land area of just 300 sq. km and a population of around 480,000, but it straddles a 960-km-long submarine ridge running north to south, which forms a wall in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Located at the southern part of this island chain are the only two passages through which ships can pass safely. These sea lanes are critical for maritime trade flow between the Gulf of Aden and the Gulf of Hormuz in West Asia and the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia. The Indian Ocean is a highway for global trade and energy, and the Maldives is a gatekeeper at its centre. As matters stand, military and logistical assistance from India is crucial for Maldivian connectivity and control over the 1,100 islands spread over 90,000 sq. km.

Ever since it inaugurated its emb­assy in Male in 2011, China has been expanding its reach in the Maldives. In 2014, the Maldives joined the Maritime Silk Route (MSR) project, a branch of the Belt and Road Initiative, and received $16 million Chinese aid; in 2017, it inked a free trade agreement with Beijing. By 2018, Beijing had completed a major upgrade—including a new 3,400-metre runway—of the Maldives’ main international airport and built a new bridge linking Male to the island of Hulhumale. However, by 2018, repayment of Chinese loans for development projects had saddled Male with nearly $1.5 billion in debt, a high figure for a nation with a GDP of less than $9 billion. China’s former foreign minister Wang Yi visited Male in January 2022, when the two nations inked agreements to cement ongoing collaborations like housing projects and upgrades to the Velana International Airport. China also has an interest in obtaining basing facilities in the Maldives. In bilateral trade, China is fast catching up with India. Chin­ese exports to the Maldives in 2021 amounted to $395 million (Rs 3,290 crores); for India, the amount was $416 million (Rs 3,465 crores).

Humanitarian assistance

India has been the first port of call for the Maldives in times of crisis. On November 3, 1988, under Operation Cactus, the Indian army intervened to avert a coup attempt at the request of the then President, Abdul Gayoom. Moreover, India was the first country to respond to the Maldives’ needs during the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami; it also provided 30,000 measles vaccines to prevent a national outbreak in 2020. In 2014, during the Yameen presidency, the Maldives faced a water crisis when a fire erupted in its only water plant. Indian aircraft and naval ships provided over 2,000 tonnes of water to Male. The Chinese response took weeks. During the Covid pandemic, Indian vaccines enabled the Maldives to vaccin­ate its tourism industry personnel, thus safeguarding its economy.

The Indian military has frequently come to the Maldives’ aid by providing air connecti­v­ity between its islands for medical evacuation. “The statis­tics speak for themselves. The 470 med­evac (medical evacuation) sorties from January 2019 until mid-2023 helped save 495 lives. The Dornier and helicopters have flown 430 surveillance sorties, including EEZ patrols to prevent illegal fishing and the narcotics trade,” Rear Admiral Shrikhande says.

The way forward

Indian strategists believe that since Muizzu has started off with anti-India rhetoric, it will be difficult for him to publicly reverse his position. However, in actual governance, it will be fool­hardy for him to ignore the role that India plays in the strategic calculus of the Maldives as a defence and strategic partner.

Pant says that in the short term, the symbolism of Indian troops leaving the Maldives—if that comes about—will be seen as a gain for China, though it is unclear what it will mean for the larger India-Maldives security relationship. Despite his anti-India posturing, Yameen had continued the defence engagement with New Delhi. “So, India’s position in the Maldives, both economically and militarily, is very strong. In terms of what India means to the Maldives, China can never displace India,” Pant adds. Vice Admiral Chawla agrees with Pant, but adds a cautionary note: he believes New Delhi needs to play it smart and not antagonise Mui­zzu, for his allowing another country to play a role could become a problem for India.

Lt Gen. Anil Ahuja, former deputy chief of Integrated Defence Staff (Policy Planning and Force Development), says that since the Maldives is by no means an Indian military forward base, the issue of moving Indian troops out seems more a political rather than a strategic narrative. “Even if the uniformed personnel are re-deployed, I presume India would still be happy to assist the Maldives in maintaining its security and maritime domain awareness capability by incorporating it in the Indian Ocean information architecture through information sharing or any other arrangement,” Lt Gen. Ahuja says, while adding that there is no denying the Maldives’ position in our immediate strategic neighbourhood.

When asked to comment on the India-Maldives ties in the light of Muizzu’s election, some Maldivian politicians politely declined to come on record, stating that the political situation in the Maldives was very fragile still and that the leadership of both governments were trying to overcome their differences.