Mizzima
While the West is sanctioning the Myanmar military for its 2021 coup and “crimes against humanity”, India continues to quietly engage with those in power in Naypyidaw.
In an interview with an anonymous India watcher, Insight Myanmar looks into India-Myanmar relations as well as Indian PM Narendra Modi’s recent ten-minute talk, which celebrated the late Buddhist practitioner S.N. Goenka’s birth centenary.
So while the West is adamant that the Myanmar junta is death incarnate, why is the Indian government seemingly willing to ignore what is obvious to the rest of the world?
Here is an excerpt from the full Insight Myanmar podcast, and below a link to the audio:
Insight Myanmar: I think even casual observers are aware of how countries like Russia and China have provided ongoing support to the Myanmar military. But the role that India’s current BJP-led central government has played is perhaps less well known. Indeed, India did not follow other democracies around the world in condemning the coup, and it has moved towards a normalization of relations with the SAC, supplying a reported 51 million dollars’ worth of arms to the Burmese military. And while foreign investment has dramatically decreased in Myanmar since the coup, a number of Indian projects are still underway there. Can you provide a basic overview of the situation, from your perspective?
A: India engages Myanmar based on its policy of “strategic autonomy”; so, for this reason, it did not join Western-led sanctions against the military junta, and continues to chart its own path of engagement. Myanmar falls under India’s “Act East” and “Neighborhood First” policies.
Since 2021, India has called for ceasefire and constructive dialogue by all parties, while asserting that the military remains part of any eventual solution. The Ministry of External Affairs dismisses the notion that India is actively supporting the junta, but all its actions so far have proven otherwise, and it continues to give tacit support to the SAC. Even though more than 40,000 Myanmar refugees have crossed into India in the border areas, New Delhi does not recognize them as refugees, but rather as illegal migrants, and provides no humanitarian support. Even so, local communities in the border areas support these refugees because they are ethnically linked. The current Indian government is also worried about its own armed insurgent groups who hide and have their bases in Myanmar.
For years they have sought the help of the Burmese military junta in tackling them, and they do not want to have those activities stopped, even if ground reports are revealing that the junta continues to use Indian insurgents against anti-junta groups, PDFs and others opposing them. India is also concerned that if it disengages from the current regime, then all advantage will go to China, which has got a lot of links and influence with many ethnic armed groups. India is also keen on its connectivity projects that link the relatively isolated region of northeast of India to the rest of Southeast Asia; Myanmar is the geographic center of this initiative, the land-bridge as it were.
Despite the Burmese military’s huge losses over the past three years, the Indian Central Government and its military strangely show blind faith and continue to support and engage with Myanmar’s military junta.
At the same time, the Indian government has shown an immense lack of knowledge and understanding of the ground reality unfolding just across its borders. It has yet to take into its calculations the tactical understanding of engaging the National Unity Government (NUG) and the long-term advantages it can gain by supporting the creation of a new federal democratic charter and a federally and democratically governed country, which would be an anathema to China.
Insight Myanmar: It sounds like you’re saying that India has chosen to follow this “strategic autonomy” policy, which includes supporting Myanmar’s military regime for pragmatic reasons. Can you expand on this?
A: The current positioning of India’s relation with Myanmar’s military junta has to be seen through the lens of New Delhi’s current foreign policy blend of idealistic principles and pragmatic considerations. India’s Act East Policy is intertwined with the internal security dimension of northeast India, and the various insurgent groups operating from within Myanmar – some demanding independence, some autonomy, and some additional recognition and rights from India.
China and Pakistan have both provided support to many of these groups over the years since the 1950s, and China continues to do so, albeit indirectly. As a result, India has sought support from the Burmese military junta to counter those groups. India is also competing with China and its influence with the Burmese military, as well as with many ethnic groups in Myanmar. The military junta is well-aware of this strategic competition and is using it to their advantage. The regime knows that India will continue their support to them out of fear of China, and they use this to their advantage, which pits India against the anti-junta groups and maneuvers India into kowtowing to their will. This has led the Modi government to strengthen its already strong ties with the military junta, while ignoring and sidelining the resistance forces who are seeking support from Myanmar’s immediate neighbors.
For the current BJP-led government (and soon incumbent as general elections are coming up in India), as I said earlier, Myanmar is the geographic key to India’s efforts at connecting its relatively isolated northeast region to the broader ASEAN / Southeast Asia market. For this reason, India will continue to engage the junta, and maintain economic and military relations with them, while ignoring the developments and gains made by the anti-junta groups, and the democracy movement overall.
India’s actions and statements continue to show that its military-to-military relations are very strong and dominant, and these relations will continue to govern how India looks at the unfolding conflict inside Myanmar, and why it will keep on insisting that Myanmar’s military junta remain central to the future of the country’s unity and its political future.
Please find the full Insight Myanmar podcast interview here: https://insightmyanmar.org/burmadhammablog/2024/2/28/an-unexpected-connection-prime-minister-modi-and-the-vipassan-tradition-of-sn-goenka
