The roughing up of the Maldives is being applauded as evidence of the strength of Narendra Modi’s “New India”. It is, in fact, a measure of its weakness. Only a pitifully insecure country would seek self-aggrandising frisson in the harrying of a tiny neighbouring archipelago. The humiliation of the Maldives is New India’s version of gladiator sport. Its purpose is to entertain and delude a nation deadened by Modi’s reign.
The prospects for the young entering New India’s job market are so dire that more than 1.25 crore people applied for 35,000 openings in the Indian Railways in 2022 alone. Last year, jobless men breached Parliament in protest. There is a not inconsiderable surge in the number of young people returning to their villages to scratch a living from farming.
But all of this is secondary: what really matters is that India has bloodied the nose of the Maldives. Three ministers, whom most Indians cheering on Modi cannot name, have been suspended from their jobs. India is about to crush the Maldives. India is a superpower. Modi has allowed his myrmidons to unload their pile of frustrations on a target one-millionth the size of India.
This is not the behaviour of a great nation. It is the conduct of a pathetically weak nation, a nation that has become accustomed to lying to itself, a nation that searches for validation of its insupportable self-image as a great power by taunting and tormenting a microstate.
None of this is to defend or even to advance extenuations for Mohamed Muizzu’s government in the Maldives. Muizzu is a clerically minded nationalist who rose to power by vilifying India. The three contemptible bigots suspended from his government are—for all the offence they have caused—inconsequential beyond their little bailiwicks. Given their job titles, their statements perhaps warranted a formal response from New Delhi. But any injury they succeeded in inflicting on India with their insults is immeasurably outweighed by the embarrassment they have caused the Maldives. Most Maldivians, mortified by the remarks of the three ministers, have gone out of their way to express their affection for Indians and India.
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Gladiator sport, but India should beware
Modi-worshipping Indians, however, have found a thrilling cause. The Maldives has wounded them and made them feel self-righteous in the same breath. Could there be anything more exciting to a people deranged by a decade of venerating the leader and bullying his rivals?
A posse of celebrities amplified their grievance. Our celebrities are ordinarily a stolid bunch. So little seems to disconcert them, and virtually no atrocity or wrong appears capable of stirring them into public-spirited action. In the past decade, they have reconciled themselves, among other horrors, to the lynching of Muslims by Hindu mobs, the loss of Indian territory to China, the subversion of democratic institutions, the catastrophic handling of the second wave of Covid, and the desertion of Manipur. But the outrages that have provoked them into putting on displays of aggrieved patriotism are posts on the internet by three Maldivian politicians. Just over ten years ago, so many of them relished playing the dissenter, offering commentary on rising costs and turning up at anti-corruption protests. Since 2014, they have confirmed themselves as cowards willing to abuse their fame and debase themselves in service of this government.
If this farce persists, India will pay the cost of the momentary thrill being experienced by Modi’s devotees. India’s friends in the Maldives will find themselves isolated if their nation is interminably mocked, maligned, and treated as though it survives on Indian sufferance. The Maldives may be small, but its people are as proud of their country as Indians are of theirs. No people can long abide such treatment. Nor do they deserve to be penalised as a whole for the sins of a handful of wretches.
The Maldives, at any rate, is not without choices. If India keeps throwing infantile tantrums, it will intensify Malé’s pro-China tilt. The contrition of ordinary Maldivians will curdle into contempt over time. The tour operators currently trying to mollify India with apologies will grow to despise Indian tourists once Chinese holidaymakers, already being encouraged by Beijing to visit the Maldives, flood the island. And the politicians who wish to turn the Maldives into a vassal state of China in the Indian Ocean will face no obstacles at home.
Kapil Komireddi is the author of ‘Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India’. Follow him on Telegram and Twitter. The views expressed above are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)