M.D. Nalapat
India First’ policy touted by Government of India is becoming ‘India Last’, in practice.
Some days ago, the Indian Express carried a short news item
concerning the Maldives, which claimed that the Government of India had
decided—as a gesture of friendship to China—against any form of
intervention in the country which, though small in size, is core to
primacy over the westernmost quadrant of the waters of the Indo-Pacific.
Earlier, news reports had been printed of a flotilla from the PLA Navy
steaming towards the Maldives, and which had (according to several
accounts) dissuaded Delhi from going ahead with a strategy designed to
restore democracy in the Maldives, as demanded by ousted Head of State
Mohammad Nasheed and countless other moderate and freedom-loving voices
in the archipelago.
The lack of action by India thus far on the Maldivian situation
follows a very public snub to Nasheed administered recently by Defence
Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, and a lengthy period of silence by the MEA
over developments in the Maldives after an initial burst of advice to
Coup Leader Abdulla Yameen to abide by democratic principles and
methods. Advice that was not simply ignored, but rejected with contempt
by Yameen, under whom the Maldives has become a key recruiting station
for ISIS and Al Qaeda, and where the moderate, syncretic Islam that
still holds sway in India is rapidly giving way to Wahhabism. The BJP
has apparently kept Prime Minister Narendra Modi so busy politicking
that he has not found the time to focus on several issues that are
unrelated to the party project of making the BJP what the Congress Party
under Jawaharlal Nehru was in the 1950s, all-powerful except for a
Communist Party government in Kerala led by E.M.S. Namboodiripad that
was soon toppled by the Central government on the specious ground that
law and order had broken down.
It had not, despite the best (or worst, rather) efforts of a
coalition comprising the CIA and caste and religious leaders in the
state to create chaos. Unless Modi steps forward and de-freezes the
current block on an effective response by his government to the
liquidation of democracy and moderation in the Maldives, any talk of
India’s elevated standing in the easternmost quadrant of the
Indo-Pacific will be impossible to sustain.
China regards not simply primacy, but dominance in the South China
Sea to be an essential requirement in its steady progression towards
displacing the United States as the primary power on the globe. Once
that objective gets fulfilled, the next theatre for establishment of
primacy will be the Indian Ocean, from where Beijing will work to
displace the US as the dominant military force in the ocean waters. For
the US, the only route towards retaining its dominance would be a
partnership with India, initial steps towards which have been taken
through the Quadrilateral Alliance of the US, Australia, Japan and India
(hopefully to soon get expanded with the entry of Indonesia, Vietnam
and the Philippines). Thus far, a hypercautious Lutyens Zone bureaucracy
has fended off US efforts to get India to sign the other two of the
three Foundation Defense Agreements, even after suitable tweaking of the
language in them to take account of the lingering Cold War sentiment
still prevalent in Delhi.
Neither will the US be long able to fend off Chinese moves to
establish primacy over the Indian Ocean by itself nor can India alone
come anywhere near having primacy for itself within these waters,
important though that is for a country aiming to be a part of the global
Big Four of the future, together with Russia, the US and China. If
India regards itself as unable to back even its closest friends (such as
the legitimate Head of State of the Maldives, Mohammad Nasheed), it is
clear that the “India First” policy touted by the Government of India is
in practice “India Last”. The Maldives, Sri Lanka and Indonesia are
essential allies in any strategy designed to ensure the primacy of India
(in conjunction with its Quad allies) within the eastern quadrants of
the Indo-Pacific. Should the Modi government walk away from action
designed to ensure the restoration of democracy and a rollback of
officially sanctioned Wahhabism in the Maldives, the credibility of New
Delhi as a friend and its deadliness as a foe would verge on the
inconsequential. Some in the Lutyens Zone claim that it is Washington
that has counselled Delhi to hold its fire in the Maldives crisis.
If true, this indicates a failure of Indian diplomacy to convince the
US of the criticality of action in the Maldives to the objective of the
Quad retaining its dominant position within the Indo-Pacific.
Abandoning the forces of democracy and moderation in the Maldives to a
dire fate at the hands of Wahhabi fanatics would result in a sharp loss
of credibility for the Quad among the regional powers. The Maldives is
the first major test for the four-nation alliance, and thus far, it has
failed the examination miserably.
Once the anti-Quad forces in the Maldives comprehensively eliminate
moderate competitors through the use of muscle power, political groups
in Sri Lanka would draw the appropriate conclusion: that the US and
India are shaky allies at best, while China (which has been a consistent
backer of Abdulla Yameen) is far more reliable in good times or bad.
Given the past unpleasantness between the (newly ascendant) Rajapaksa
family in Sri Lanka and the Lutyens Zone, it would be logical for the
formidable former President of Sri Lanka to reach the conclusion that
the downside is small to treating Delhi the way Coup President Abdulla
Yameen in Male and Prime Minister K.P. Oli in Kathmandu are doing. As
for Indonesia, it has watched as Wahhabi groups in Pakistan were funded,
armed and trained for generations by the US and its allies, enabling
them to grow to a monster that poses a threat to global security.
Since military dictator Suharto entered upon a clandestine
relationship with religious extremists in Indonesia in the 1990s,
Wahhabi groups have been multiplying in a country which till recently
was a bastion of moderation and syncretic values. Unless Jakarta joins
Colombo and Male in dropping anchor within the protective ring formed by
the Quadrilateral Alliance, resistance to Wahhabism will remain
inadequate for a rollback of this pernicious doctrine. If the first (and
smallest) domino in the shape of the Maldives remains in the control of
Wahhabi forces opposed to the Quad, the others are at risk of following
suit. Hopefully, those reports that talk of a policy of pusillanimous
inaction over the crisis in the Maldives will soon be proved wrong, else
it will be clear that India Last has prevailed over India First.
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