Episode #242: The Borders of Conflict
“It's not just the Northeast that guides, in many ways, the Indian government's outlook towards Myanmar,” explains Angshuman Choudhury, a policy analyst and researcher at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “There are also broader concerns relating to the geopolitical and geostrategic landscape of South and Southeast Asia, and which have undergone tectonic shifts over the last few decades. These concerns are also to do with what is known as, quote-unquote, the ‘national security interests of India.’ I'm always keen to debate on this term, like what does it really mean? What does ‘national security’ mean?”
Originally from Assam, which is not far from the 1,640 kilometer-long border with Myanmar, Choudhury has been reporting on how the coup has reshaped relations between the two countries. He describes how, from 2014, the Modi administration has been shoring up relations through the creation of a land bridge from northeast India into Myanmar. “The Indian government invested a lot of money, diplomatic assets, and political assets to build seamless, west-to-east overland connectivity and improve people-to-people contacts, and to improve the economic relationship and bilateral trade, including the border trade.”
The situation has been complicated because of ethnic rebels from the Indian states of Nagaland, Assam, and Manipur. Indian military operations pushed them out of their home states, and after trying unsuccessfully to gain footholds in Bangladesh and Bhutan, they eventually found refuge in the Sagaing region of Myanmar in 2003, from where they have launched attacks into India. It has become a varied and confusing amalgam of groups and coalitions, perhaps the most notable and influential being the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN). New Delhi has been trying for years to encourage its Burmese counterparts to take action against these insurgents, but to little avail. As a result, India started providing arms to and coordinating strategy with the Myanmar military in the hopes that it would better be able act against Indian insurgent groups; however, the Myanmar generals instead have mostly used the weapons to suppress its own country’s ethnic groups, although they did manage to eventually disarm the NSCN, in exchange for which India supported Myanmar’s operations against the Arakan Army (AA).
During the transition period, Modi had a close relationship with the Aung San Suu Kyi administration; Choudhury points out how even during state visits, he was careful never to criticize the unfolding Rohingya crisis, in what many international organizations and experts have since called a genocide. Aside from some concern that the refugee crisis might spill over onto their side of the border, the Indian government did not pay much attention to the Rohingya until an aggressive Hindu nationalist movement took power in the form of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). “We've seen over the last few years, under the BJP government, that there has been a sharp increase in anti-Rohingya directives in Indian media, social media circles, and even political circles,” he explains. “The Rohingya have been routinely cited or projected as a threat to national security as criminals, terrorists, and essentially unwanted outsiders.” Coupled with the insurgent groups on the border, these problems culminated in a call to “fence the border” and seal it off entirely, not unlike Trump’s rhetoric in wanting to build a wall on the US-Mexico border.
Choudhury emphasizes that a thorough understanding of the region's context and history requires knowledge of the agreement known as the Free Movement Regime (FMR). Established in the post-war era, it refers to the policies of India and Burma which each allowed ethnic groups in the region to cross the other’s border. It was based in recognition of the fact that their presence there predates modern map-making, which is a function of colonialist thinking. In each case, the policy allowed indigenous peoples to cross the other’s border and remain for a limited period (though the restrictions in the respective policies were not entirely the same). “There was a very profound understanding that, look, this is an open border! These people have been living here since time immemorial, they've been crossing back and forth. What's the sense in stopping them and creating new waves of discontent along the border?” But in 2004, with pressure mounting to clamp down on roving insurgent groups that had been causing havoc, New Delhi moved to restrict their side of the FMR. Then in 2018, the two countries’ policies were bilaterally formalized into an agreement between the two governments for the first time in history. Choudhury explains that this was very much in the interests of India’s Act East Policy, which aimed to develop greater connections into Myanmar. “So in many ways, that was the zeitgeist of the time, to have an open border policy, to not just ‘Look East,’ but also ‘Act East.’” After the coup, however, there was significant pressure from Indian media to revoke the FMR, yet Modi resisted doing so for years, highlighting his commitment to maintaining close ties with Myanmar even amid ongoing conflict. However, the challenges at the border ultimately proved overwhelming, and the Ministry of Home Affairs recently announced the suspension of the FMR.
The 2021 coup set in motion a mass exodus of refugees fleeing state violence across this same, porous, northeast Indian border. Yet even though the uptick in immigration and resulting border problems were the direct result of the military takeover, few Indian leaders have called the junta out for it. “We haven't seen India blame the junta for the crisis,” he says. “In fact, we haven't really seen India blame the junta for anything at all, since the coup, for any of the violence!”
Echoing the words of Hunter Marsten on a previous episode, Choudhury describes the Indian system as “a delicate dance of federalism between two centers of power, at the provincial and federal level.” The Mizoram state government, in particular, has made a point of welcoming the largely Chin refugees, and by doing so has openly defied an order from New Delhi to refuse turn back the refugees. “It was quite a unique political event at the time,” he acknowledges, adding that the newly elected party, the Zoram People’s Movement, has similarly insisted on maintaining humanitarian support, though with limited funds. “Delhi recognizes that it cannot push the Mizoram government into a corner over this issue. So it has allowed the Mizoram civil society and the state government to do whatever it wants to support the refugees.” He explains this is also because the national government requires a close working relationship with local governments in order to effectively manage “a very complex” situation in its multi-ethnic borderlands.
Still, Mizoram is rather remote, and with no UNCHR office located in the northeast, many refugees are simply not able to travel beyond there, cutting them off from work and education opportunities. In fact, India refuses to call these peoples anything other than “displaced nationals,” as it was not a signatory on the 1967 Refugee Convention, and so does not recognize “refugees” in any form. This also means that anyone who enters India without proper documentation is officially an “illegal immigrant” and subject to immediate detention. And that is what often happens in nearby Manipur, whose local government is not nearly as welcoming, essentially viewing them “interlopers, poppy cultivators, drug smugglers, and criminals in general.” Nonetheless, many Manipur residents are from the Kuki community and share an ethnic bond with the Chin, so there has been some measure of community support in the absence of aid from local authorities. Still, Choudhury asserts that while New Delhi would likely never move to fence the border or send in the army to Mizoram or Nagaland, he could see such a scenario playing out in Manipur, where the anti-refugee sentiment runs much higher.
Moving on to tackle the question as to how India has been responding to the 2021 coup overall, Choudhury characterizes their engagement as non-interventionist and risk-averse. He argues that, like many of Myanmar's neighboring countries, the Indian government is hard-wired to believe that the military will remain the primary, governing force in Myanmar, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary. Choudhury describes their thinking as follows: “The military is facing extraordinary levels of resistance across the country, but eventually it will come back and stabilize the country and crush the resistance properly, and things will go back to normal.” Essentially, this means that New Delhi’s emphasis on not jeopardizing its relations with the Burmese military has led to staying silent on the subject of the latter’s continued human rights violations, a shift he describes as moving from idealism (which could manifest through the support of pro-democracy actors) to pragmatism (working with whoever is deemed to be in power). Essentially, this means that New Delhi’s emphasis on not jeopardizing its relations with the Burmese military has led to staying silent about the latter’s continued human rights violations. This approach, while always pragmatic at its core, has seen shifts in its degree of engagement based on the prevailing political climate in Myanmar, oscillating between cautious support for democratic movements and a more pronounced alignment with the military for strategic stability. Choudhury continues his summary of New Dehli’s calculations: “As long as we are able to maintain our working relationship with the key power center in Myanmar, then then we are certain that we can take care of our own interests.”
And this is what Choudhury has seen being played out since the coup. “The fact that India not just maintained its relationship with the Myanmar military, but also upgraded and became much closer to the Myanmar military, even through the years of the democratic transition, really showed the fact that the thinking in Delhi is the Myanmar military is not going anywhere, anytime soon! They saw the Myanmar military as a formidable political force, not just a security actor, but a key political force in Myanmar.” He believes that Modi’s earlier close relationship with Aung San Suu Kyi, rather than a contradiction to this strategy, was actually a validation of it, with Modi shrewdly positioning himself close to a charismatic and beloved popular figure. And when the tides of power changed, so did he.
While some might call out New Delhi’s refusal to so much as acknowledge Myanmar’s democratic leaders as a flaw in their so-called pragmatic approach, since the democratic forces may very well win out in the end, Choudhury sees it more as an affirmation that they firmly believe the military will retain power. He suggests that despite possessing detailed and granular intelligence about the latest developments pointing to the military steadily losing ground, India's higher echelons of political and strategic decision-making might not be adequately leveraging this intelligence to make proactive decisions, highlighting a paradox in India's typically active foreign policy stance. “In Delhi, there is also a kind of arrogant, patronizing attitude… which is that, ‘Okay, we're like the big brother or the parent, and we've got to talk to our kids who are fighting, and we've got to just make them sit down and talk to each other and things will be fine.’”
But in reality, this miscalculated intelligence results in New Delhi not just misconstruing a truly pragmatic approach—one that responds to real developments on the ground—but also in violating its core ideological principles as well. “That is where there has to be a red line in every foreign policy or moral red line where you put your feet down and say… ‘Hundreds of people are dying on a weekly basis right next door, and we can’t just sit and watch the bloodbath, because India’s stated position has always been that we are a country that cares for the people of Myanmar.’” He notes how, despite the fact that India is willing to turn a blind eye to the junta’s human rights violations in the service of pragmatic engagement, they have also, at times, shown a commitment to fostering a more equitable system in Myanmar, such as through programs that train Burmese stakeholders in parliamentary democracy practices. Furthermore, India's model of federal democracy has served as an inspiration for many Burmese leaders, who aspire to draft a new charter for their country once their military is toppled. Yet even in this regard, it is not so straightforward, as under the Modi administration, “we have also seen a sharp democratic backslide in many ways on political freedom, civil rights, media rights, and more importantly, on pluralism and secularism in India.”
Choudhury further emphasizes that cultural diplomacy has been another, key factor linking India’s Act East pivot to not only Myanmar, but the wider Southeast Asian region. One illustration of this is highlighting the Buddha’s Indian origins (an example being the extended talk that Modi gave on the life of meditation teacher S.N. Goenka). “They have created something called the Buddhist Circuit, which encourages monks from Southeast Asian countries, including Myanmar, to travel to India for pilgrimages, particularly to Bodhgaya in Bihar, and we have seen several flights from Myanmar to Bodhgaya in recent times.” They have also loaned out Buddhist relics to countries in the region, as well as helping restore Buddhist sites. Another, less savory example is India’s increasing anti-Muslim rhetoric. “Many Hindutva activists and provocateurs in the last few years have used the Buddhist, ultra-nationalist example, especially on the Rohingya front.”
Sadly, however, the current policy perspectives on Indo-Burmese relations is widely shared by a cross-section of political and media figures, with only very few standing on the side of the democracy movement. “As far as Myanmar is concerned, there is almost an across the board consensus that ‘we've got to play safe.’ There is an understanding that we need political stability in Myanmar in order to ensure economic development and economic relationship with India, and also to prevent the spillover of the conflict into northeast India… In fact, in that sense, there is a bipartisan consensus between India's ruling party and opposition parties over this issue.”
The one other factor that Choudhury emphasizes is the specter of China, and their massive investment projects as part of the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative). This has caused the Indian government to counter China’s influence on its doorstep with its own economic initiatives, especially in Rakhine state where the Chinese have the Kyaukphyu project. This includes investments in oil and gas, as well as significant connectivity initiatives like the India-Myanmar-Thailand trilateral highway project. Additionally, India funds various local projects through its developmental aid program, making Myanmar one of the top recipients of such aid. Moreover, Indian private companies are keenly interested in Myanmar's markets, and the bilateral trade between the two countries has not significantly declined since the coup. Myanmar's role is also pivotal in the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation), where it stands as one of the two Southeast Asian members alongside Thailand. Choudhury further references the SOC (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) to contextualize India's development aid to Myanmar within its broader regional strategy, highlighting Myanmar's strategic importance to India compared to even SOC member states.
But if there was ever a chance that New Delhi could be swayed to shift its policy and be more welcoming to the democratic movement, what argument will work to make it reconsider? Choudhury argues that for this to happen, the opposition needs to assert that “it is by working with us that you will be able to protect and stabilize the border, including the projects that you most care about [in Myanmar]… Those arguments need to be made more forcefully and articulated more clearly from the NUG side.”