Islamist radicalization is driving Muizzu’s anti-India stance, but cost for this myopic policy will be high for Maldives

Who knew the prime minister’s innocuous, if stunning, beach images from Lakshadweep to promote tourism at home would develop into an incendiary diplomatic spat between India and the Maldives? The fact that it did is due to an intriguing array of reasons — the intricate link between domestic politics and foreign policy, the growing power of social media to affect international relations, Maldivian polity’s decisive turn towards radical Islamism and the zero-sum power tussle between India and China for influence in the strategically located archipelagic nation in the Indian Ocean. In pitching Lakshadweep as the next tourism destination featuring pristine beaches and adventure sports, Narendra Modi may or may not have wished to draw tourist traffic away from Maldives. That point is moot. It is important to remember that it is well within the sovereign rights of a state to encourage and enhance the contribution of tourism towards the country’s economy which may create jobs, entrepreneurial opportunities and attract private investment. Some Indians on social media did interpret Modi’s fulsome praise of the lesser-known archipelago as a subliminal message to Maldives. However, at no stage did India’s prime minister, any member of his cabinet or government official refer to any other nation while highlighting the turquoise waters and unexplored beaches of Lakshadweep, leave alone mentioning the name of Maldives. It is all the more bizarre, therefore, that three Maldivian ministers, no less, from President Mohamed Muizzu’s government would choose not only to target the head of a friendly state by smothering him with derogatory insults such as “clown,” “terrorist” and a “puppet of Israel,” but also issue explicitly racist and hateful remarks against Indians who have since the end of pandemic been the most frequent visitors and a major source of revenue for the tiny archipelago and its tourism-dependent economy. The ministers have since been suspended, not sacked. While the Maldivian government has distanced itself from the remarks the president, currently on a tour of China, has remained silent. We shall presently explore why the Muizzu regime may have reacted the way it did but first let us get a perspective on the scale and depth of India-Maldives ties. According to statistics from the Maldivian tourism ministry, Indians were the top source of foreign tourists for four consecutive years since 2020 and contributed the most to the tourism sector when Maldives reopened for tourism post pandemic. Last year more than two lakh Indian tourists visited Maldives (more than 11 per cent of total arrivals), slightly more than Russia, followed by China in third place. Tourism is a serious business in Maldives. The sector’s direct contribution stands at over 20 per cent of the island nation’s entire GDP, and indirect contributions amount to a staggering 80 per cent, according to calculations from the Asian Development Bank. The bitter row over Lakshadweep, Maldivian ministers and sundry social media handles’ racist stereotyping of Indians, calling them “open defecators”, “smelly, unclean people”, dismissing India’s ability to measure up to the Maldivian tourism sector and insulting the prime minister have created such bad blood that public reaction in India has been swift and devastating. At the diplomatic level, the Maldivian envoy was summoned at the South Block and presumably given an earful, while The Hindu reports that the Indian high commissioner to Male, in his meeting with Maldivian authorities that “had taken up the social media messages by the three deputy ministers ‘strongly’ with the government of president Muizzu.” The bigger repercussion came at the public level where coercive diplomacy through non-traditional means was carried out by New Delhi with a degree of plausible deniability thrown in. Amid screengrabs after screengrabs of cancelled bookings to Maldives on social media by holidaymakers, one online travel agency has suspended all flight bookings to Maldives on its website “in solidarity with the nation”, calling on other platforms to follow suit. Multiple travel agencies are removing Maldives as a tourist destination from their holiday packages and urging tourists to go to the pristine archipelago of Lakshadweep, or head to Sri Lanka, Mauritius, or the Andamans instead. Amid persistent calls of #BoycottMaldives and #ExploreIndianIslands pushed by Bollywood celebrities and cricket icons on social media, one travel agent narrated a 40 per cent drop in bookings in just two days, according to CNBC, which says in a report that “India drove $380 million worth of tourism last year to Maldives”. CNN quotes the Confederation of All India Traders, one of the biggest trade bodies that represents thousands of traders and trade associations in India, as saying that “Until the Maldives tender an apology or ensure remedial measures, the trading community in India will refrain from doing business with them.” Significantly, the controversy erupted bang in the middle of the prime holiday season. That may explain why President Muizzu, currently on a state visit to Beijing, is desperately urging China to send more tourists to Maldives. It might be too late to save this season from tanking. Taking 2022 data as an example, The Hindu observes in a report that “the number of beds occupied over a month in resorts and hotels peaked in the January-March period… The number of tourist vessels operating also peaked in March and April. If the trends from the 2022 season are of any indication, a boycott call during the 2024 holiday season could result in serious revenue losses for the Maldives.” Maldivian tour operators are understandably hitting the panic button. The Maldivian Association of Travel Agents and Tour Operators (MATATO), a forum for travel agents, has in a letter to EasyMyTrip, the online travel portal that has suspended all flight booking to Maldives, urged it to reconsider the decision. According to a report in Business Standard, MATATO acknowledged the “regrettable and derogatory” comments made by the Maldivian ministers and wrote that “tourism is the lifeblood of Maldives, contributing over two-thirds of our gross domestic product (GDP) and providing livelihoods to approximately 44,000 Maldivians, who work directly in the sector. This controversy will affect the lives and well-being of many.” Tourism, however, is just one aspect of the bilateral relationship. India’s ties with Maldives are multidimensional and civilisational — a legacy of geography, history, and tradition. The nations are bound by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, religious, military, strategic and economic ties for centuries. India is not only the first responder in any crisis that befalls Maldives, the coral atolls are dependent on India for everything from human resources, humanitarian and disaster response, developmental assistance, health, and medical care, education, security, imports and the works. Take medical care. Since the eruption of the controversy, anxious Maldivians are blaming Muizzu’s ministers for creating a crisis and jeopardising ties with India on whom they depend for specialised and critical medical treatment. Data furnished by the government in Rajya Sabha in 2022 shows that people from Maldives are consistently among the top three foreign nations to visit India for medical tourism, and according to a survey among the Maldivian medical travellers, India is the most preferred destination for critical healthcare due to “proximity, familiarity and affordability”. India also assists the Maldivian healthcare sector, offering training services to doctors and healthcare professionals, while the government of Maldives has put in place a  public referral system that allows doctors to refer patients to India for overseas treatment. From security and defence cooperation, capacity building, institutional mechanisms, disaster management, developmental cooperation in healthcare, tourism, education, and law enforcement sectors, to bilateral infrastructure and connectivity projects that include water and sanitation in 34 islands, ports and cricket stadiums, India’s preeminence in every sphere of Maldivian life is evident, undeniable, and inalienable. From the tsunami to COVID-19, preventing a coup in 1988 to propping up the economy, India has been Maldives’ quickest, staunchest, and truest ally. For instance, New Delhi provided 1220 tonnes of fresh water to mitigate Male’s drinking water crisis in 2014, sent a medical relief team of pulmonologists, anaesthetists, physicians and lab technicians in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, consignments after consignments of essential medicines, 100,000 doses of Covid vaccines. India’s financial assistance of $250 million to help Maldives battle the economic devastation caused by the pandemic was termed “the single largest financial assistance from a donor” by then-foreign minister Abdulla Shahid at his UNGA address. In the ongoing fiscal, India has allocated Rs 400 crore as a grant to Maldives, amounting to 1.5 per cent of archipelago’s budget, up from Rs 109 crore in fiscal 2018. The island nation is a frequent recipient of Indian grant assistance and line of credit (LoC). In 2022, it received a tranche of $100 million to tide over economic difficulties. The irony of the ruling Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) ‘India Out’ campaign is that had it not been for Indian workers, many of whom are involved in the tourism and hospitality industry as technicians, managers, engineers, the wheels of the tiny island nation’s economy would have come to a grinding halt. It may appear that India’s courting of Maldives is altruistic. That would be misleading. While Maldivians rely on India’s role as a provider for nearly everything from daily sustenance to net security, the island nation’s strategic location and proximity to commercial shipping lanes is vital for India’s maritime security. The Indian Ocean archipelago is a vital cog in India’s defence framework, one that lies firmly in India’s sphere of influence and New Delhi is desperate to keep it that way, faced with China’s growing ingress. The question then arises, given the symbiotic nature of the relationship that stretches long into history and deep into everyday existence, why is the Muizzu regime bent on putting it through a series of stress tests? The answer takes us to the heart of the problem which is much bigger than a social media-induced diplomatic spat. Worth noting that the Maldivian overreaction to Modi’s promoting of Lakshadweep as a tourist destination was predicated on ultra-nationalist posturing. That in turn was fuelled by an anti-India hatred that bubbled onto the surface during the ongoing row and took Indians by utter surprise. The ferocious backlash in India’s public domain indicated a sense of betrayal, almost. As if it is unthinkable that the turquoise waters and sandy white beaches can hide such unbridled animosity. Indians had not been paying attention. Despite the umbilical connection, there is not enough awareness in India of the extent to which anti-India hatred is being fuelled in Maldives by an Islamist turn of the polity. The increasing political muscle of the religious right, that fabricated an adversarial image of India and used it as a hegemonic prop to throw punches en route to grabbing power, is a causal effect of the subterranean jihadism that has caught Maldives in a death grip. We must hold the rabid radicalisation, that has seen tiny Maldives bag the dubious distinction of sending the highest per capita ISIS fighters to Syria and Iraq (an estimated figure of 250 men and women from a country of only 500,000, as responsible for the thinly disguised Hindu hatred that lies at the core of Maldives’ ‘anti-India’ animus — a factor that led to Muizzu’s rise. For an increasingly Islamist Maldives and its radicalized young demography, a Hindu India is not just a hegemonic force but an existential threat that must be kept at a distance. From this vantage point, Muizzu’s actions become clear. Having grabbed power through its strident and divisive ‘India Out’ campaign, during which Muizzu’s PPM and coalition partner People’s National Congress (PNC) spread anti-India sentiments through online disinformation campaigns and sought to generate baseless anxiety over the presence of a tiny Indian military contingent inside the country — as a newly published  European Union report on Maldivian elections points out — Muizzu set about reorienting Maldives’ foreign policy away from India and towards deeper links with China. As soon as Muizzu came to power in November 2023, within a month he terminated a key agreement with India for joint hydrographic surveys in Maldivian waters, broke with the longstanding tradition of visiting India on his first official trip and went to Türkiye instead — something which even the pro-China former president Abdulla Yameen hadn’t done, went to China on an official visit to ensure that New Delhi gets the message and asked India to remove the military personnel stationed on Maldivian shores. The tiny contingent of 77 Indian soldiers is involved in operating two India-supplied Dhruv helicopters and Dornier aircraft and is primarily on a humanitarian mission to help with evacuation or help Maldivians access medical assistance, but in the twisted narrative of Muizzu regime, it is “a threat to sovereignty”. As Al Jazeera reports quoting members of the Maldivian Opposition, “Muizzu understands that Indian troops do not really threaten the country’s sovereignty, but managed to touch a nationalist nerve in the nation for political and electoral dividends.” The key thing to note here is that Muizzu’s anti-India stance, that uses ultra-nationalism as a feint, is in essence an anti-Hindu hostility that derives from a hardcore Islamist posture. The Maldivian president has promised to prioritize Islam at the core of governance, and linked Islamism with “Maldivian independence, culture, customs, and heritage.” It is the same mindset that has prohibited the celebration of Christmas on the islands, branded India-sponsored yoga event as “un-Islamic”, and led young ministers in his cabinet to throw unprovoked, racist slurs at Indians. Religious fanaticism is the tiger that Muizzu rode to power but doesn’t know how to get off. He is reportedly under pressure from radical groups to take even more stringent anti-India positions and further antagonize the nation with whom the fate of Maldives is intricately linked. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.