Lakshadweep: PM Modi’s Lakshadweep Tourism Push May Impact China-leaning Maldives

Hubungan India-Maladewa dalam beberapa bulan terakhir tegang, setelah Presiden Mohamed Muizzu berkuasa. Tiongkok telah berinvestasi pada infrastruktur di Maladewa
New Delhi: A tweet by a Maldives minister days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the Lakshadweep archipelago has triggered a row on social media.
PM Modi’s visit to the country’s smallest Union Territory comprising 36 islands with an area of 32 sqkm was seen a move to promote tourism on the island.
Dalam tweetnya, menteri tersebut menuduh India menargetkan Maladewa dan mengatakan India menghadapi tantangan besar dalam bersaing dengan Maladewa dalam wisata pantai.
The tweet came after PM Modi’s posts on X (formerly Twitter) about snorkelling in the Lakshadweep went viral, prompting social media users in India to suggest the island Union Territory as an alternate tourist destination to the Maldives.
Hubungan India-Maladewa dalam beberapa bulan terakhir tegang, setelah Presiden Mohamed Muizzu berkuasa.
Mr Muizzu took over as President in November 2023. In his election pledge, he said he would remove a small contingent of some 75 Indian military personnel in his island nation and change Maldives’s “India first” policy.
Mr Muizzu is scheduled to visit China on Monday, the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement. Chinese President Xi Jinping invited him, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said on Friday.
Muizzu, yang dipandang sebagai politisi pro-Tiongkok, mengambil sumpah sebagai Presiden kedelapan Maladewa setelah mengalahkan pendahulunya yang ramah di India, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, dalam pemilihan presiden yang diadakan pada bulan September.
“China and the Maldives boast time-honoured friendship. In the past 52 years since the establishment of diplomatic ties, the two countries have treated each other with respect and supported each other, setting a fine example of equality and mutual benefits between countries of different sizes,” said Wang Wenbin, another spokesperson of the Chinese foreign ministry, according to news agency PTI.
Mr Muizzu’s predecessors in the recent past visited India first, considering the wide-ranging bilateral ties and the Maldives’ proximity to India, followed by China which has expanded its influence in the island nation by investing in major infrastructure projects there.
Presiden Maladewa yang baru telah bertemu dengan PM Modi di Dubai di sela-sela perundingan iklim COP28 pada bulan Desember 2023. Kedua pemimpin telah sepakat untuk membentuk kelompok inti untuk membahas hubungan multidimensi dan semakin memperdalam hubungan.
Pertemuan tersebut juga terjadi setelah Muizzu meminta New Delhi untuk menarik 77 personel militer India dari Maladewa dan memutuskan untuk meninjau lebih dari 100 perjanjian bilateral antara kedua negara.
Wakil Presiden baru Maladewa Hussain Mohamed Latheef bulan lalu mengunjungi Tiongkok, kunjungan pertamanya ke luar negeri, dan mengambil bagian dalam Forum Kerja Sama Pembangunan Wilayah Samudera Tiongkok-India di Kunming yang disponsori Tiongkok.
Significantly, while praising Chinese infrastructure projects, Mr Latheef made no mention of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) under which most of the Maldives’ infrastructure projects were built.
The Maldives is India’s key maritime neighbour in the Indian Ocean Region and occupies a special place in India’s initiatives such as SAGAR, or Security and Growth for All in the Region, and the ‘Neighbourhood-First Policy’ of the Modi government.
The Maldives’ proximity to India, barely 70 nautical miles from the island of Minicoy in Lakshadweep, and 300 nautical miles from the mainland’s western coast, and its location at the hub of commercial sea lanes running through the Indian Ocean, gives it significant strategic importance.