The remarkable exhibition recently of political leaders’ lack of courtesy, dignity and grace, as shown by some junior ministers in the Indian Ocean archipelago of the Maldives who targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi in offensive language, only goes to show that in the arena of international relations, the old adage still holds true: “the more you try to change, the more it remains the same”. This was seen way back in the 1950s with China’s Chairman Mao Zedong, and in the 1970s from America’s Watergate-tainted President Richard M. Nixon and his German-origin adviser Henry Kissinger (who damaged America permanently by handing over its economics, commerce and industry to Beijing), and who both had the blood of Bangladesh’s gory liberation struggle on their hands.
First, a look back at history. When the suave, well-educated, cultured Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was trying to be cordial, using sophisticated diplomatic semantics to build friendly bilateral relations with China, the opposite was the idea of the uncultured and brutish Communist dictator Mao Zedong, who hurled the choicest abuses by calling the democratically-elected head of a neighbouring country the “running dog of imperialism”. Not that it made any difference to the stature of a tall leader like Pandit Nehru, it only exposed the acute inferiority complex of an eternally grumbling Han overlord.
Again, in 1971, as Indira Gandhi faced an unprecedented assault from the US, China, and West and East Pakistan, leading to an avalanche of refugees flooding into India, an ill-informed US President Nixon called Mrs Gandhi a “bitch” and thought that Indians were “cowards”. Why? It’s because Nixon’s national security adviser (and later secretary of state) Henry Kissinger called Indians “bastards”. But how did Kissinger know all Indians are “bastards”? During Kissinger’s July 1971 secret trip to Beijing to kowtow at the Communist durbar, Chinese PM Zhou Enlai presented him a copy of the infamous Neville Maxwell’s India’s China War, an India-bashing account of the 1962 war by the Australia-born London Times reporter which portrayed the Dragon as a saint and Delhi as the Satan. Kissinger was so impressed with the book that it coloured his views on the subcontinent, and all his advice to an ignorant US President revolved around painting India as the villain.
The reality, of course, was somewhat different: India’s Prime Minister emerged a glorious victor in all four fronts in 1971; China ate humble pie; Pakistan faced a catastrophic defeat and the country’s breakup and the Nixon-Kissinger duo looked like Alice in Wonderland at best.
The moral of the story for today’s so-called rising powers is quite simple: money, armaments and military and geographical presence can give you pretensions about superpower status, but the use of obnoxious language won’t provide the strategic superiority you so desperately crave. For that, the power of ideas is infinitely superior!
Now, to the unguided, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, vituperative and venomous verbal diarrhoea unleashed by a trio of deputy ministers from the island nation of the Maldives -- who referred to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a “clown”, “terrorist” and “puppet of Israel”. Super poetic? Destructively divine? One is left amazed at such vast knowledge and deep wisdom, or the lack of it, of the three deputy ministers. After the three got promptly suspended from their posts, in a damage control exercise by the government in Male after a flurry of Indians began to cancel their tourism and holiday plans in the Indian Ocean island, their newly-minted President, Mohamed Muizzu, in office for less than two months, was off on a five-day trip to China to beg and borrow funds and other assistance from Beijing’s overlord Xi Jinping, and also to urge more Chinese tourists to visit, in place of the Indians opting out.
President Muizzu even went to Fujian province, where Mr Xi grew up and honed his skills in the tricks of the Communist power structure, straightaway seeking project investments and other handouts.
Obviously, the Maldivians don’t as yet know how to conduct themselves in a complex international environment. They think, as ocean islanders, they can easily, and adroitly, play one big nation against another. That, unfortunately, doesn’t usually happen because the islands are inherently more vulnerable and thus prone to voluntary subjugation, and become subservient to countries with a strong Navy than the small land powers. The Maldives leaders should immediately start to study a world atlas and examine how many small island nations can operate truly independently.
The real question for India, given the current international environment, is how to tackle these recent developments. Should it deploy the stick, or use the carrot instead? There is a long history of an Indian role in these islands, going back to 1980s when then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi ordered the Indian armed forces to thwart a coup attempt against the legitimate government of the Maldives. These islands lie within this country’s sphere of influence as an underbelly. How long will these hundreds of tiny, uninhabited, scattered isles remain independent? Someone, one day, will definitely take possession of this strategic location. But India shouldn’t try to do that.
Rather than encourage boycott calls, this is India’s golden opportunity to send swarms of tourists around the year to pack the Maldives. Let people there know and distinguish between friend and foe. Let Indian tour operators and techies swim in the sea, set up outlets for rest and recreation, making the Maldives a centre of water sports, wining and dining.
Let more remote area facilities be created by Indians, and there is no dearth of Indians seeking adventure destinations. Vigorous and robust people-to-people contacts will enlighten the Maldivians, who are more at home with India rather than strangers from far away whose language, culture and traditions they don’t share.
On the strategic front, New Delhi simply cannot afford to have its vast northern neighbour, already on the warpath in the South China Sea, to spread its tentacles further in the Indian Ocean. Indeed, the abusive words of the Maldivian ministers couldn’t have come without the surreptitious instigation of President Mohamed Muizzu’s best friend Xi Jinping. It remains a fact that every Indian Prime Minister, from Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi to Narendra Modi, has been abused by the leaders of Communist China or by Beijing’s puppets. Indians thus need to avoid any knee-jerk reactions. The uncivilized words of the Maldives leaders are an opportunity for all Indians -- from techies to tourists, traders, bureaucrats, bankers and businessmen -- to help the island nation grow and prosper and show who are the best people to associate with in the neighbourhood.
