‘Indian Ocean is for all, don’t bully us’, Maldives Prez takes a dig at India after China tour

New Delhi: “We may be small, but that doesn’t give you the license to bully us,” President Mohamed Muizzu of the Maldives told journalists in Malé after returning from a tour to China on Saturday. No prizes for guessing whom he accused of trying to bully the tiny Indian Ocean nation, given the escalating tension between his government and New Delhi ever since he took over as the president and particularly the kerfuffle between the social media users of both the countries over the past few days. “We aren’t in anyone’s backyard. We are an independent and sovereign state,” said the 45-year-old, who beat his predecessor Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in the presidential elections held on September 9 and 23 last year.

Muizzu’s week-long tour to China was his first state visit after he was sworn in as the President of the Maldives on November 17. He had earlier visited Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates. All his democratically elected predecessors had chosen New Delhi as their first foreign destination after taking the oath of office. However, given the strident campaign his party, People’s National Congress (PNC), and its ally former president Abdullah Yameen Abdul Gayoom’s People’s Party of Maldives (PPM), ran against India’s role in the Maldives during the presidential elections, it was not a surprise for New Delhi when he chose to break the tradition. Though his office did convey his willingness to travel to New Delhi, it was clear that he wouldn’t do so before paying a visit to Beijing.

The PPM regime in Malé headed by Abdulla Yameen as the president had put the Maldives into a debt trap by awarding the state-owned companies of China lucrative contracts to build several infrastructure projects – mostly on unsustainable loan terms – ignoring the security interests of India. Beijing’s influence over Abdullah Yameen's regime had resulted in strains in New Delhi’s relations with Malé. It saw a reset after Solih and Yameen’s predecessor, Mohamed Nasheed, led the Maldivian Democratic Party to return to power in November 2018.

Solih launched an ‘India First’ policy of treating India as a preferred partner for the Maldives. His five-year-long stint saw India announcing and launching many infrastructure development projects in the Maldives and completing several of them.

The defence cooperation between the two nations also expanded over the past five years. India completed the installation of a coastal radar system, comprising 10 radar stations, in the Maldives to help keep watch in the Indian Ocean. New Delhi on February 21, 2021, signed an agreement with the Solih Government to “develop, support and maintain” a harbour at Uthuru Thila Falhu naval base in the island nation. Though the new harbour is being built officially for the use of the Maldives National Defence Force Coast Guard, it is also being seen as a strategic asset that could give India an edge over China, which has been trying to spread its tentacles in the Indian Ocean region.

Beijing was of course not amused with the return of normalcy in Malé’s ties with New Delhi. Yameen and his party, PPM, launched an ‘India Out’ campaign and Muizzu was among the ones on its frontline.

Muizzu’s campaign for the presidential polls saw him opposing and promising to reverse Solih’s ‘India First’ policy. He vowed to start the process of removing all military personnel of India from the Maldives immediately after taking oath.

India has 77 military personnel in the Maldives. They were deployed to operate and fly two Dornier aircraft and a helicopter gifted by India to the Maldives for emergency evacuation of people from the islands.

Muizzu’s government already formally requested New Delhi to withdraw the military personnel. It also moved to make India stop conducting hydrographic surveys in the territorial waters of the Maldives.

New Delhi has been cautious in dealing with the new regime in Malé. But all hell broke loose after the officials of the government of the Maldives reacted on X to the pictures and the videos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Union Territory of Lakshadweep off the Malabar Coast of India. One of Muizzu’s deputy ministers even called the prime minister of India a ‘clown’ and a ‘puppet of Israel’ on X. The post was deleted after it triggered a volley of sharp responses from the X users in India. Some other lawmakers and officials of the Government of the Maldives made critical comments about the holiday destinations of India.

To contain the row, Muizzu suspended three of his deputy ministers for making derogatory comments about Modi. This was however not enough to calm down India’s social media users who continued the tirade against the Maldives.

Some celebrities from India also lent their voices to the call for boycotting the Maldives as a holiday destination. So did some travel agencies of India.

With the relations between Malé and New Delhi on edge, Muizzu met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Wednesday. They elevated the ties between the two nations to a Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partnership and witnessed the signing of as many as 20 pacts to expand the bilateral cooperation. China did not miss the opportunity and took a not-so-subtle dig at India, not only pledging its ‘firm’ support to the sovereignty of the Maldives but also asserting its ‘resolute’ opposition to “interference by external forces in the internal affairs” of the archipelago.

“Though we have small islands in this ocean, we have a vast exclusive economic zone of 900,000 square kilometres. Maldives is one of the countries with the biggest share of this ocean,” Muizzu said on his return to Malé on Saturday. “This ocean does not belong to a specific country. This ocean also belongs to all countries situated in it,” he added, subtly echoing China’s oft-repeated argument that the Indian Ocean was not India’s.

The Maldives sits astride key international shipping lanes in the heart of the Indian Ocean, where the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s increasing forays triggered concerns in New Delhi. It was the strategic location of the archipelago that prompted China to seek to draw it into its orbit of influence and elbow out India. The change of regime after the September 2023 presidential elections in the Maldives is undoubtedly a setback for India, which perhaps now needs quiet and adroit diplomacy, uninfluenced by jingoism in social media, to manage the relations, even if it cannot completely stop the island nation from moving closer to China.