Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a meeting with President of Maldives Mohamed Muizzu during the COP28, in UAE.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: A day before he is set to commence his maiden visit to Beijing, the President of the Maldives, Mohamed Muizzu, had to suspend 3 deputy ministers of his government to avert a diplomatic row between New Delhi and Malé over their derogatory comments about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
After New Delhi conveyed its displeasure to Malé over the comments made by three deputy ministers of the Maldives, the government of the Indian Ocean archipelago issued a statement distancing itself from the comments made by the three deputy ministers on social media platforms. It stated that the derogatory remarks reflected personal opinions and did not represent the views of the Government of Maldives.
Even the island nation’s opposition politicians, including former presidents Mohamed Nasheed and Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, condemned the comments made by the deputy ministers of the government headed by Muizzu, who came to power a few months back after running a campaign against India.
The row erupted even as Muizzu recently asked India to withdraw its military personnel from the Maldives. His government also moved to scrap a bilateral deal that allowed India to conduct hydrographic surveys in the territorial waters of the Maldives. The twin moves triggered speculation in New Delhi about the new regime in Malé, reversing the erstwhile government’s ‘India First’ policy and steering the Indian Ocean archipelago back into the expanding orbit of geopolitical influence of China.
The officials of the government of the Maldives reacted on X to the pictures and the videos of Modi’s visit to the Union Territory of Lakshadweep off the Malabar Coast of India. Muizzu’s deputy minister of youth empowerment, Mariyam Shiuna, called the prime minister of India a ‘clown’ and a ‘puppet of Israel’ in a post on X. The post was deleted after it triggered a volley of sharp responses from the X users in India. Some netizens on social media platforms lauded Modi’s walks on the beaches and his snorkelling during his visit to Lakshadweep and called it a move by the Government of India to promote the archipelago as a tourist destination while others suggested that the archipelago off the coast of Kerala could beat the Maldives. Some even went to the extent of calling upon tourists from India to boycott the Maldives as a holiday destination.
India is one of the top sources of tourists to the Maldives. Over 200,000 tourists from India visited the island nation last year – the highest number of arrivals from a single country.
“While I wish success for India's tourism, targeting the Maldives so explicitly isn't diplomatic. India faces significant challenges competing in beach tourism, considering our resort infrastructure exceeds their total islands,” posted Abdulla Mahzoom Majid, another deputy minister of the Maldives. “The move is great. However, the idea of competing with us is delusional. How can they provide the service we offer? How can they be so clean? The permanent smell in the rooms will be the biggest downfall,” Zahid Rameez, another politician with links to the Progressive Party of Maldives, wrote on X, reacting to a media report suggesting that Modi’s visit to Lakshadweep was a move to promote it as a competitor to the Maldives as a tourist destination.
The High Commission of India in Malé strongly raised the issue with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of the Maldives and conveyed concerns over the comments made by certain ministers of the island nation.
Apart from the comments of Shiuna, Mahzoom and Rameez, New Delhi also conveyed its displeasure to Malé over some earlier derogatory posts by another deputy minister of the Maldives, Malsha Shareef, about the prime minister of India.
The Government of the Maldives suspended the three deputy ministers – Shareef, Mahzoom and Shiuna – by the evening.
Muizzu is set to fly to Beijing on Monday for his second foreign tour since taking over as the president on November 17. 2023. He earlier had a meeting with Modi on the sideline of the United Nations climate conference in Dubai.
Though most of his predecessors started bilateral foreign visits with one to New Delhi, Muizzu chose Beijing, fuelling speculation about the Maldives’ drift towards China.
Muizzu’s campaign for the presidential polls saw him opposing and promising to reverse his predecessor Solih’s ‘India First’ policy of treating India as a preferred partner for the Maldives. He had vowed to start the process of removing all military personnel of India from 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. The Muizzu Government already formally requested New Delhi to withdraw the military personnel.
Muizzu was a candidate of the Progressive Congress, a coalition of his own People’s National Congress (PNC) and the incarcerated former president Abdullah Yameen Abdul Gayoom’s People’s Party of Maldives (PPM). He defeated Solih of the Maldives Democratic Party (MDP) in a runoff on September 30.
Yameen, who was voted out in 2018, had led the Maldives into a debt trap by awarding China’s state-owned companies lucrative contracts to build several infrastructure projects – mostly on unsustainable loan terms – ignoring the security interests of India. Though Beijing’s influence over Yameen's regime had resulted in strains in New Delhi’s relations with Malé, it saw a reset after Solih and Nasheed led the MDP to victory in the November 2018 elections.
Yameen, however, led an ‘India Out’ campaign over the past few years, setting a narrative against New Delhi. It helped him and Muizzu set the narrative against Solih’s ‘India First’ policy during the campaign for the presidential polls, leading to the change in regime in Malé.
The ‘India Out’ campaign gained momentum in Maldives after 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.
The 2023 presidential elections saw the parties of Yameen and Muizzu campaigning that the naval facility the Solih Government allowed New Delhi to build would eventually be turned into India’s military base in the Maldives, thus undermining the sovereignty of the archipelago. Solih and his party countered it, claiming that the naval facility would rather enhance the capability of the Defence Forces of the Maldives in exercising jurisdiction and undertaking maritime surveillance of its exclusive economic zone and the islands.