by It started with a postcard-perfect snapshot. An image of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi lounging in a chair on a secluded white sand beach sparked heated words from officials in the Maldives, a small archipelago nation in the Indian Ocean.
Indians on social media reacted with a fierce wave of indignation, which sent shockwaves all the way to Beijing.
Modi had been posing for a series of photographs to highlight the natural beauty of the beaches of the islands called Lakshadweep, an Indian territory 150 miles from the mainland and just 100 miles north of the Maldives.
Lakshadweep is like a mini Maldives, with just one-tenth the land mass of the more famous atolls to the south. The people of Minicoy, its southernmost island, speak the same language as in the Maldives and retain some of their oldest customs.
But in Modi’s seemingly harmless words of praise (morning walks on the beach were “moments of pure happiness”), the Maldives heard a threat. Its around half a million inhabitants are sensitive to feeling pressured by India, with a population of 1.4 billion.
“What a clown,” Mariyam Shiuna, a deputy minister in the Maldives government, wrote on the social media platform The post was later deleted.
In fact, Modi had been snorkelling, an activity compatible with life jackets. But she is actually friendlier to the Israeli government than is popular on the Muslim-majority islands. Other Maldivians used their social media posts to insult Indian tourists and India in general.
The reaction was swift and, by some accounts, apparently coordinated. A flood of posts from high-profile Indians, including government officials and Bollywood stars, simultaneously criticized the anti-Maldivian outrage. These posts were illustrated with travel brochure-like images of Lakshadweep, making the competition explicit. (However, many of these photographs were actually taken in the Maldives.)
On Monday things got difficult. An Indian travel portal, EaseMyTrip, has joined Indian celebrities in boycotting travel bookings to the Maldives. The Maldives government finally cried uncle. Ms Shiuna was suspended from office, along with two other ministers who had joined her in comments deemed offensive to India.
Since the 1970s, the Maldives has become one of the favorite tourist destinations of the global jet set, earning $3 billion in tourism revenue in 2019, worth about a quarter of its national economy. After coronavirus pandemic-related lockdowns came into effect, when Chinese outbound tourism ground to a halt, India became the largest source of high-spending visitors to the Maldives.
India had always kept little Lakshadweep a secret. Until recently, its islands received only 10,000 visitors a year, almost all of them Indians. In 2021, the Modi government indicated that it saw great untapped potential there. If Lakshadweep’s coral-shaped lagoons can be sold to the world as an alternative to the Maldives, it would affect the small country’s economic livelihood.
Just as the war of words with India reached a fever pitch, with some Indian celebrities vowing to restrict their luxury vacations to India’s own shores, the Maldives’ new president, Mohamed Muizzu, was beginning a state visit to India. five days to China. His trip was planned long before, but rivalries with India were already on the agenda.
The Maldives, like many other South Asian countries, has for years been floating on the surface of a great power competition between India and China. Successive governments have been more pro-China, such as that of Abdulla Yameen, from 2013 to 2018, or pro-India, such as that led by Ibrahim Mohamed Solih until November. Muizzu, who defeated him in the polls, had campaigned on the “India Out” platform.
Muizzu had already broken with tradition by avoiding visiting India and making his first state visit to Turkey. So it was no surprise that he chose China for his second state visit. His government also intends to expel the approximately 80 Indian military personnel operating aircraft based in the Maldives.
But the country of Muizzu and India should be careful not to escalate tensions further. India has major infrastructure projects underway in the Maldives, which neither side wants to cancel. By suspending Ms. Shiuna and her colleagues, Mr. Muizzu sent a message.
India, for its part, does not want to erode its influence among its smaller neighbors. In the Himalayas, Nepal and Bhutan have recently made unusually open gestures toward China. The importance of maintaining allies in its rivalry with China is one of the reasons why India has redoubled its close relationship with Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister of Bangladesh, who this week claims her fourth consecutive term in power.
Mahil Mohamed contributed reporting from Malé, Maldives.
