Why did ‘India Out’ campaign succeed in Maldives? Answer lies in Salafist gains over Maldivian syncretic Islam

Asian geopolitics took another unpredictable turn this week with reports emerging that there has been a change of guard in Maldives, the Indian Ocean archipelago that sits astride a crucial strategic location for trade and security and lies at the heart of India’s Neighbourhood First policy. Ever since 2008, when China managed to increase its influence in Maldivian politics, the state of 1,200 islands and atolls has been at the centre of a tense geopolitical tug-of-war between Beijing and New Delhi. Arresting Maldives’ pivot towards China and protecting its multi-dimensional relationship has been a core foreign policy objective for India, that considers Maldives integral to its maritime security and ensconced firmly within its sphere of influence. Unsurprisingly, the defeat of pro-India Ibrahim Mohamed Solih of the Maldives Democratic Party (MDP) at the hands of Opposition candidate Mohamed Muizzu, the mayor of Malé who spearheaded a coalition of pro-China parties, has been interpreted instantly as a “setback to India”. On the face of it, the framework seems accurate. Muizzu led a ‘India Out’ campaign in the run up to the presidential elections. His party, the People’s National Congress (PNC), had a tie-up with Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) led by Abdullah Yameen. The former Maldivian president, an autocratic figure now serving a 11-year jail sentence for corruption and embezzlement of funds, engineered a stark tilt away from India and towards China during his tenure from 2013-2018. His anti-India policies disrupted regional geopolitics and introduced profound unease in the traditional India-Maldives relationship. Muizzu is the protégé of Yameen, having served as a former construction minister in Yameen’s government. He fashioned his campaign along the lines of “sovereignty”, putting under pressure the Solih government whose ‘India First’ policy and decision to dramatically restore India’s primacy in Maldives’ security policy, economic and developmental ties inadvertently created space for Muizzu’s coalition to exploit. Soon after winning the elections in the second-round runoff, polling 54 per cent of the votes compared to Solih’s 46 per cent, Muizzu declared that Maldives has “won back independence”. He pledged to “send back foreign soldiers” in a veiled reference to India, whose tiny contingent of military personnel stationed in the archipelago to operate and maintain a small aircraft and two helicopters aimed at boosting Maldivian coast guard became a lightning rod for Muizzu’s electoral campaign. The 45-year-old technocrat also capitalized on economic discontent and perceived corruption in the Solih government. Muizzu is wasting no time. He is vowing to remove Indian troops from Day 1 of taking charge, expected to be in November, and former president Yameen has already been transferred from jail to house arrest, another campaign promise. Let’s just step back at this point and explore two key questions associated with this development that may have a bearing on the future of India-Maldives ties. One, given India’s status as the ‘first responder’ in any Maldivian crisis, the geographical proximity, and the depth of the historic, cultural, economic and developmental ties — that were further intensified during Solih’s tenure through substantial Indian investment in community projects —why and how did the ‘India Out’ campaign succeed? Two, will the Muizzu government reactivate Yameen’s policy of a sharp pivot towards China? There are two ways of looking at the first question. Not enough attention has been paid to the fact that Solih, the ousted incumbent, had a crucial fallout with former president and ex-party colleague Mohamed Nasheed, who went ahead and floated a new party. The Democrats came third in the first round of voting in the presidential elections — in which Solih’s MDP secured 39 per cent votes and Muizzu-led PPM-PNC coalition 46 per cent — and chipped away seven per cent of the votes that would have otherwise gone into Solih’s account. It would have made for a wholly different set of circumstances. As it happened, the voting proceeded to a second-round runoff where The Democrats, crucially, chose not to take part as Nasheed’s negotiations with Solih fell through. The 56-year-old Nasheed, a former president who quit the ruling MDP along with 12 MPs in June this year, harbours deep leadership ambitions and remains a force to reckon with in Maldivian politics. His talks with Solih fell through over demands that a constitutional referendum be held before October to change Maldives’ system of governance from presidential to Parliamentary democracy that would eventually make space for Nasheed to be the prime minister. According to Mimrah Abdul Ghafoor, a former official in Maldives’ foreign ministry and a noted commentator on domestic politics, Nasheed’s ambition caused the rift. In an interview with The Diplomat magazine, Ghafoor said: “Nasheed, longtime leader of the MDP and for many years the face of the country’s democratic transition, has long wanted to regain executive leadership. His 2018 decision to relinquish the MDP ticket to Solih was reluctant, motivated by legal constraints stemming from a ‘terrorism’ conviction under the previous Yameen administration. Nasheed’s subsequent moves – running for the legislature, becoming speaker, and advocating for a shift from a presidential to a parliamentary system – clearly aim to position him as prime minister.” So, one of the key reasons behind Solih’s ouster has less to do with the Opposition’s strident ‘India Out’ campaign, as has been proclaimed, and more to do with domestic political shifts that Muizzu’s coalition profited from. Which isn’t to say that the anti-India campaign didn’t hold significance. It did. Yet to perceive it merely as nationalistic zeal against the Indian military’s presence in the country would be misleading. Solih’s ‘India First’ policy and perceived lack of transparency in the flurry of bilateral agreements no doubt created space for dissent that was deftly channelized by the Opposition, but did the “sovereignty” plank mask deeper motives at play? That takes us to the second possible reason behind India-friendly Solih’s ouster. As the only 100 per cent Muslim nation in South Asia, the Maldivian constitution designates “Islam as the state religion, requires citizens to be Muslim, and requires public office holders, including the President, to be followers of Sunni Islam,” as a 2022 US State Department report points out. While Islam is integral to Maldivian politics, its syncretic nature derived from Buddhist roots had defined its religious and national identity through centuries. That syncretism is undergoing a rapid retreat in favour of a fundamentalist, doctrinal Salafism fed by money from Saudi Arabia and reversing the nature of Maldives from a secular, progressive state to a rigid, Islamist one. This shift in Maldives’ religious and national identity is also influencing its domestic politics, governance system and foreign policy. In her paper ‘Democracy and Salafism in the Maldives’ exploring the Islamist radicalization of Maldivian population, scholar Azra Naseem writes, “Salafism, with its goal of reviving ‘true Islam’ by returning believers to life as it was lived in Islam’s first three generations, is at odds with democracy, which the Maldives adopted as its preferred system of governance in 2008. This clash between Salafism and democracy dominates not just Maldivian politics but how life is lived by its citizens in the twenty-first century.” As the space for religious tolerance gets squeezed, the shared cultural bonds between India and Maldives are coming under increasing strain. For a country that shares civilizational ties with India — Maldivian language Dhivehi traces its etymological roots to Sanskrit and Pali, not to speak of the fact that Maldivians love Indian cinema — it was startling to see Islamist extremists storm an India-backed public yoga session in Malé last year. The program, organized by Maldivian authorities and the Indian High Commission at a football stadium in June 2022 to mark the International Yoga Day, was raided by dozens of flag-waving, violent radicals who smashed the billboards and drove the attendees away claiming that yoga was “against Islam”. The extent to which radical Islam has infiltrated the Maldivian society can be gauged from the fact that more and more Maldivian youth are choosing Islamist militancy and violent extremism. In July this year, the United States blacklisted 20 people in Maldives accused of financially supporting the operations of the Islamic State and al-Qaida. It turns out that Maldives has become a hotbed for ISIS and al-Qaida terrorist cells and modules that recruit and radicalize young men who are then sent to conflict zones and organize large-scale robberies to generate finances for global terrorist operations. The sanctions, announced by the US Departments of State and Treasury, “designated key leaders and financial facilitators of the ISIS and al-Qaida in Maldives, including 20 ISIS, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), and al-Qaida operatives. OFAC (Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control) also designated 29 companies associated with the individuals sanctioned today (July 31), who include leaders of Maldives-based terrorist-affiliated criminal gangs and associates of key ISIS-K recruiter Mohamad Ameen who was designated by OFAC in 2019. Several of the individuals being designated today have also planned or carried out attacks that targeted journalists and local authorities,” according to a readout. From India’s point of view, the worrying aspect is that the Yameen government was seen at best to be inactive in arresting the drift towards radical Islam, and may even have struck a Faustian bargain with radical Islamist elements in exchange for electoral support — hastening the country’s shift to a hardened Islamist posture. What was true of the Yameen government is true even now as the PPM-PNC coalition have gained power. Nikkei Asia newspaper quotes Azim Zahir, a lecturer and research fellow in international relations and politics at the University of Western Australia in Perth, as saying, “The PPM-PNC coalition particularly plays on religious nationalist fears. When the PPM came to power in 2013 with the election of Abdulla Yameen as president, its administration forged close ties with China on the back of anti-India religious nationalism.” This falls into place further when we note that during prime minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Maldives in June 2019, India and Maldives, then led by president Solih, agreed to enhance bilateral cooperation on a number of issues including “their unequivocal and uncompromising position against terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, both within the region and elsewhere…” According to an MEA readout of the visit outcomes, “both sides agreed to enhance bilateral cooperation on issues of common concern including piracy, terrorism, organised crime, drugs and human trafficking. They agreed to set up a Joint Working Group on Counter Terrorism, Countering Violent Extremism and De-radicalisation.” It is evident that under the guise of “sovereignty” against “Indian hegemony”, the ‘India Out’ campaign has galvanized hardened Islamist elements against “Hindu nationalist-ruled India” and it likely contributed to the Opposition’s electoral kitty. The second question that must concern us is the extent to which the Muizzu-led coalition government may radically change Maldives’ foreign policy tenets and lean in favour of China. After all, Yameen, who is now back in play, still retains a huge influence in domestic politics. His PPM is an equal partner in the coalition government and concerns that Maldives may yet again be steered closer to Beijing must have arisen afresh in New Delhi, given the fact that half India’s external trade and 80 per cent of its energy imports transit the sea lanes near the Maldives. The alarmism on display since Solih’s defeat and the coming to power of an ostensibly ‘pro-China’ coalition is uncalled for, even though the Opposition had championed the ‘India Out’ campaign. There are several reasons for this optimism. One, India isn’t going anywhere. India’s geopolitical and geoeconomic influence in Maldives has traditionally been strong, the civilizational ties, historic bonds and geographic proximity cannot be wished away by policy swings. As the ‘first responder’, India has always been the first to assist Maldives, as witnessed during the 2004 Tsunami as well as the water crisis in Malé in December 2014. At the peak of the pandemic in January 21, when richer nations were busy hoarding doses and pricing out the Global South, India’s first consignment of 100,000 doses of Covishield vaccine— part of its ‘Vaccine Maitri’ initiative — went to Maldives. Likewise, India had dispatched swiftly 30,000 doses of vaccine in January 2020 to prevent a measles outbreak. As Rasheeda M. Didi writes for Carnegie, Maldives relies on a trilateral maritime security partnership with India and Sri Lanka, and apart from security ties, “India has become the main destination for other kinds of medical treatment as well… The main government-affiliated hospital in the Maldives, the Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital in the capital, was built with aid from the Indian government… In 2020, India surpassed China and Europe as the leading source of tourists to the Maldives, a crucial development since tourism is the largest sector of the Maldives’ economy.” Notably, prime minister Modi was the first world leader to congratulate Muizzu on being elected as the president of Maldives, and in a post on X (formerly Twitter), he wrote, “Congratulations and greetings to @MMuizzu on being elected as President of the Maldives. India remains committed to strengthening the time-tested India-Maldives bilateral relationship and enhancing our overall cooperation in the Indian Ocean Region.” Alongside, in its weekly media briefing the MEA spokesperson revealed that on October 4, the Indian High Commissioner in Malé had called on Muizzi and “had a good discussion on various aspects of our bilateral partnership, including development cooperation.” And in response to another question, the official added, “the focus of our partnership with Maldives has always been on capacity building and working together to address our shared challenges and priorities, you know, including security challenges and priorities. As neighbours, we need to collaborate closely to address these challenges confronting our region, such as transnational crimes as well as HADR, Humanitarian Assistance Disaster Relief situations. We look forward to engaging with the new administration in Maldives on all these issues.” Evidently, India has no intention of giving up on Maldives, a fact that hasn’t been lost on the new administration. In an interview to The Wire, Muizzu’s key foreign affairs advisor and vice-president of coalition partner PPM, Mohamed Shareef ‘Mundhu’, said “All the fear-mongering about China is unwarranted… We strongly value and want to work with India on the safety and security of the Indian Ocean, in which we have said that the biggest stakeholder will continue to be India.” He also indicated that Muizzu, on assuming office, would honour the tradition of India being the first foreign trip by a new Maldives president. What emerges therefore, is that a line needs to be drawn between campaign rhetoric and foreign policy prerogatives. Worth noting that even Yameen, who was seen to be anti-India and pro-China, maintained the traditional foreign policy posture albeit establishing strong commercial ties with China. As Ghafoor said in the interview mentioned above, “It’s important to recognize that the actual foreign policy stances toward India and China are less polarized than campaign narratives suggest. For example, the Yameen administration, much like the current one, adhered to an ‘India First’ policy. Muizzu also pledges to continue with this policy, albeit with reservations concerning the purported Indian military presence.” Ultimately, regardless of the campaign rhetoric that was aimed more at galvanizing domestic support around an ‘issue’, the space for any Maldivian president to radically shift policy is only cosmetic. Under Muizzu, Maldives is likely to continue with its close security partnership with India while giving primacy to China in economic engagement — a strategy of playing off the big powers for profit motive that is almost a standard operating procedure for smaller states caught in the eye of great-power storm. 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.