MALE — September was meant to be a moment of diplomatic glory for India.

The month began with the pomp of the Group of 20 summit in New Delhi, enabling Prime Minister Narendra Modi to project the country as a rising diplomatic powerhouse and eliciting fawning commentary on its growing confidence.

The summit was also a chance to challenge China for leadership of the so-called Global South. That India enjoys the edge on one score — democratic credentials — is beyond doubt. As the world’s largest democracy, it is a natural choice to lead the pack of democracies spanning Asia, Africa and Latin America.

But while India appeared to be ascendant on the international stage, it suffered a major setback in its own backyard on Sept. 30.

In the final round of the Maldives’ election, voters dumped the pro-India incumbent President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih for the pro-China opposition challenger Mohamed Muizzu. The result in South Asia’s smallest democracy gave New Delhi the equivalent of a diplomatic black eye, exposing India to questions about the state of its ties with neighbors just as it sets its sights farther afield.

Modi was quick to congratulate Muizzu, but his campaign will not be easy for India to forget. He had slammed New Delhi for interfering with the internal affairs of the strategically located Indian Ocean archipelago, which straddles busy shipping lanes. Two nights after his triumph, during his first meeting with party supporters in Male, Muizzu took another dig at India’s defense presence, saying, “We will send back foreign soldiers in the Maldives.”

Muizzu’s successful appeals to nationalism laid bare what really mattered to many Maldivians. Clearly not the millions of dollars India had poured into infrastructure projects in the country of 1,200 islands and atolls during Solih’s years.

The funds were New Delhi’s way of countering the similar financial largesse from China, which had backed its own share of big-ticket projects during the Maldives’ Abdulla Yameen presidency. The Chinese endeavors included the completed landmark bridge connecting Male to the neighboring island where the international airport is located.

The Maldivian polls were only the latest reminder of how voters in the smaller democracies that neighbor India — Nepal and Sri Lanka being the other two — have at times delivered a reality check on New Delhi’s South Asia policies.

Despite longstanding civilizational, political and economic ties — and acts of goodwill, such as Indian aid for the Maldives during a 2014 water crisis and assistance after the deadly December 2004 tsunami — India has struggled to sustainably counter China’s growing presence in the region.

Rather, outreach efforts and investments have given rise to perceptions that India is a pushy big neighbor only interested in securing its position against another giant.

The national flag of the Maldives flies at half mast in Male in January 2005, after the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami.   © Reuters

At the root of this is a common thread through India’s ties with the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Nepal, since China started flexing its financial muscle.

“It is a case of distrust that you see in assessing India’s treatment of its smaller neighbors,” said a former head of a South Asian foreign ministry, on condition of anonymity. “New Delhi doesn’t trust the governments of these countries, particularly in deals with China, so it tries to exert pressure, micromanage even in a petty way and upsets the locals.”

The rise of this anti-India political tide was palpable in the coffee shops that dot Male, the capital. Voters did not need much coaxing to openly share concerns about India gaining a deeper hold on their country under Solih, whose pro-India leanings were meant to counter the pro-China tilt of his predecessor, Yameen, President-elect Muizzu’s political patron.

Critics concerned about sovereignty pointed to New Delhi’s gift of military assets, such as two helicopters and a Dornier plane. The aircraft also came with 75 military personnel who, reportedly, enjoy diplomatic immunity.

Maldivians were equally suspicious of India’s offer to develop a coast guard harbor for Maldivian forces and the construction of a national college of policing — “all excuses for India to infiltrate the Maldives to set up a permanent presence,” as a supporter of Muizzu remarked.

Other voters highlighted anecdotal accounts about the Indian Embassy directly engaging with Maldivian ministries over appointments of jobs in the state sector.

Some of these views — although less inflammatory than the “India Out” public campaign led by Yameen’s allies a year ago — even prompted the Indian Embassy to push back on the eve of the presidential elections. It asked the Maldivian government to investigate the anti-Indian smears.

Sri Lanka’s President Ranil Wickremesinghe walks with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi before their meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi on July 21, 2023.   © Reuters

Indian diplomats in Nepal and Sri Lanka have, likewise, had to remain vigilant during election cycles or in the heat of political crises. A landmark election in the Himalayan nation in late 2017 was such a moment, when anti-Indian sentiment surged amid still-smoldering anger over a crippling blockade of essential goods the Indians had imposed on the landlocked country.

Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-Buddhist ethnic majority still harbors anti-Indian feelings over New Delhi’s handing of the island’s civil war. The bad blood can be traced to India offering remote localities as military training centers for Tamil rebels waging a separatist struggle against the Sri Lankan state.

As Muizzu prepares to begin his first term as the next Maldivian leader in mid-November, India’s diplomatic approach to its small southern neighbor will invariably come under more scrutiny.

New Delhi now gets a chance to appear magnanimous on the back of its rise as the leader of democracies in the Global South. It may be time for a new strategy to contain China — one that does not appear driven by paranoia and pettiness, leaving a trail of damaged ties.

Respecting each small country as a sovereign nation, rather than seeing them as uppity states in an Indian federation, may be the answer.

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