Is India Hardening Its Position Toward Military-Ruled Myanmar?

On June 16, the Indian government hosted a special gathering of foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in New Delhi. The summit, which celebrated the 30th anniversary of India-ASEAN ties and the 10th anniversary of the strategic partnership between the two parties, addressed a host of themes both economic and strategic, from climate change and initiatives to supercharge trade to the growing superpower rivalry between China and the United  States.

A joint statement issued after the summit reaffirmed both sides’ commitment “to further strengthen and deepen the ASEAN-India Strategic Partnership for mutual benefit, across the whole spectrum of political, security, economic, socio-cultural, and development cooperation.”

As with recent high-level ASEAN meetings, the meeting also bore upon the ongoing crisis in Myanmar, which has been in turmoil since the military seized power in February 2021. In particular, a notable absence from the meeting was the junta’s foreign minister, retired colonel Wunna Maung Lwin, whom the Indian government excluded from the list of invitees ahead of the summit.

While Wunna Maung Lwin’s exclusion was symbolic – Myanmar was still represented by Moe Kyaw Aung, its ambassador to India, and the joint statement made no mention of Myanmar’s tumult – it marked a notable hardening of New Delhi’s position toward the military administration.

Wunna Maung Lwin was invited and attended the regional BIMSTEC summit in March, drawing criticisms from foreign governments including the United States. This came after Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla paid a two-day visit to Myanmar in December 2021, during which he met with coup leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing The visit was widely seen as a sign of New Delhi’s accommodation with the military junta.

Despite expressing its deep concern about the coup and calling for a restoration of Myanmar’s democracy, the Indian government has refrained from imposing the sorts of punitive sanctions announced by the United States, European Union, and other Western nations. In March 2021, Indian officials were one of a handful of foreign delegates to attend an Armed Forces Day parade in Naypyidaw, which formed a surreal counterpoint to bloody crackdowns on anti-coup protests. In June of the same year, India abstained from endorsing a U.N. Security Council resolution that condemned the coup and sought the imposition of an arms embargo on the Myanmar military. In November, it appointed a new ambassador to Myanmar, another sign of diplomatic business-as-usual.

India’s decision not to invite Wunna Maung Lwin to the foreign ministers meeting aligned its position with that of the Southeast Asian bloc, which has excluded the junta’s representatives from high-level meetings since the last October’s ASEAN Summit.

The bloc made the unusual move in reaction to the Myanmar military’s lack of action on the implementation of ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus peace plan, which calls for an immediate cessation of violence and peaceful dialogue involving “all parties.” Despite some equivocation by Cambodia, which took over ASEAN’s rotating chairmanship late last year, this has largely carried over into subsequent high-level meetings, including an informal meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers in February and the U.S.-ASEAN Special Summit in Washington in May, although junta appointees continue to attend lower-level ASEAN meetings.

Myanmar’s defense minister, General Mya Tun Oo, was invited to the ASEAN defense ministers’ meeting on June 22, however.

As Kallol Bhattacherjee of The Hindu noted, the decision not to host Myanmar’s  military-appointed foreign minister was India’s way of “accommodating international concern over the junta in Myanmar.” Some have suggested that this pressure may have come from fellow members of the Quad, particularly the United States.

All the same, there are probably limits to how far India will go in shifting against the junta. While India’s economic engagement with Myanmar remains relatively modest– bilateral trade amounts to $2 billion annually, one-sixth of the country’s total trade with China – India’s strategic interests in Myanmar are considerable.

Myanmar occupies a central position in New Delhi’s “Act East” policy, announced in 2014 as an upgrade to the country’s previous “Look East” policy, which aims to broaden and deepen India’s engagement with Southeast Asia. Myanmar functions as India’s land-bridge to the fast-growing region, as befits its historical experience as an administrative appendage of British-ruled India. As Archana Atmakuri and Mustafa Izzuddin noted in an article for The Diplomat in 2020, Myanmar is also the only Southeast Asian nation that is part of India’s “Neighborhood First” initiative, which seeks to integrate it within the broader South Asian region.

Of particular relevance in this regard is the fact that India and Myanmar share a porous 1,600-kilometer border that runs through regions of eastern India with a host of active ethnic minority insurgencies. The Indian military has long viewed the Tatmadaw as an important partner in containing these insurgent groups, which in some cases are active on both sides of the border. A series of recent insurgent attacks on Indian security forces highlights the extent to which this remains a pressing concern for New Delhi.

India and Myanmar’s military junta also share misgivings about Beijing’s growing influence in the region, which formed another basis of a blooming security partnership. Given that China has now thrown its support behind the military junta – in April, Beijing said that it will support Myanmar’s military government “no matter how the situation changes” – the Indian government is reluctant remain on the sidelines. (Indeed, similar considerations underpin Japan’s own caution in dealing with the coup government.)

Like every foreign nation with interests in Myanmar, last year’s coup has been hugely disruptive for India. For instance, according to a report last month in the New Indian Express, deteriorating insecurity has held up the completion of the Kaladan Multi Modal Transit Transport project, which is designed to link India and Myanmar via the Bay of Bengal. But nearly 17 months on from the coup, and with no resolution to the country’s crisis in sight, New Delhi has seen little choice but to seek to salvage what it can from the relationship.

It is in this context that we should interpret India’s decision  to disinvite the junta’s foreign minister from its meeting in New Delhi. The very fact that India is following ASEAN’s lead, rather than taking the initiative to dial up the pressure on Naypyidaw, suggests that barring a further serious deterioration inside Myanmar, Indian government’s policy will continue to hew to a pragmatic line.