But then reality intruded. India’s strategic rivals, China and Pakistan, began to cultivate the Burmese generals. Major economic and geopolitical concessions were offered to both suitors. The Chinese even began developing a port on the Burmese coast, far closer to Kolkata than to Canton. And the generals of the SLORC junta, well aware of the utility of what comes out of the barrel of a gun, began providing safe havens and arms to a motley assortment of anti — New Delhi rebel movements that would wreak havoc in the north-eastern states of India and retreat to sanctuaries in the newly renamed Myanmar.
This was troubling enough to policy-makers in New Delhi, who were being painfully reminded of their own vulnerabilities to a determined neighbour. The two countries share a 1600-kilometre land border and a longer maritime boundary with overlapping economic zones in the strategically crucial Bay of Bengal. Four of India’s politically sensitive north-eastern states have international borders with Myanmar. These borders are porous and impossible to patrol closely; people, traders, smugglers and militants all cross easily in both directions. The potential threat to India from its own periphery is therefore considerable.
But the clincher came when large deposits of natural gas were found in Myanmar, which it was clear would not be available to an India deemed hostile to the junta. India realized that its rivals were gaining ground in its own backyard while New Delhi was losing out on new economic opportunities. The price of pursuing a moral foreign policy simply became too high.
So New Delhi turned 180 degrees. When Pakistan’s President Musharraf travelled to Myanmar in 1999 to celebrate his country’s new relationship with his fellow generals, India’s then foreign minister Jaswant Singh soon followed. The increasingly forlorn resistance operations from Indian soil were shut down in the hope of reciprocation from the Burmese side. And New Delhi sweetened the Burmese generals’ tea for them by providing both military assistance and intelligence support to their regime in their never-ending battles against their own rebels.
India’s journey was complete: from standing up for democracy, New Delhi had gone on to aiding and enabling the objectives of the military regime. When monks were being mowed down on the streets of Yangon in 2006, the Indian government called for negotiations, muttered banalities about national reconciliation and opposed sanctions. New Delhi also sent its oil minister to negotiate an energy deal, making it clear the country’s real priorities lay with its own national economic interests, ahead of its solidarity with Burmese democrats. (At the same time, Indian diplomats intervened discreetly from time to time on behalf of Suu Kyi, though their effectiveness was limited by New Delhi’s unwillingness to alienate Rangoon.)
All this was in fact perfectly understandable. Officials in New Delhi were justified in reacting with asperity to Western critics of its policy: India needed no ethical lessons from a Washington or London that has long coddled military dictators in our neighbourhood, notably in Islamabad. Any Indian government’s primary obligation is to its own people, and there is little doubt that the economic opportunities provided by Burmese oil and gas are of real benefit to Indians. India does not have the luxury of distance from Myanmar; there is also the strategic imperative of not ceding ground to India’s enemies on its own borders. One inescapable fact of geopolitics remains: you can put your ideals on hold, but you cannot change who your neighbours are.
The member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), on Myanmar’s eastern flank, have made similar calculations. India’s government therefore cannot be blamed for deciding that its national interests in Myanmar more important than standing up for democracy there. As I wrote at the time, India’s policy was being made with its head rather than its heart, but in the process we had lost a little bit of our soul.
And yet, paradoxically, the gradual opening up of Myanmar following the 2011 elections and the installation of a general-turned-civilian, Thien Sein, as president, may offer New Delhi some measure of vindication. As the new regime released political prisoners, permitted freedom of movement to the detained Aung San Suu Kyi, allowing her to contest and win a by-election, and even questioned the environmental and economic impact of a big Chinese dam project in the country’s north, India’s Western critics began grudgingly to acknowledge that genuine change might well be on the way. Countries like India that had maintained links with the junta and gently prised open its clenched fist may well have achieved more than those whose threats, bluster and sanctions had merely hardened the junta’s heart.
After two decades of ruthless military rule under a remarkably opaque regime, Myanmar has witnessed an opening up of its political space amid evidence of self-assertion by the nominally civilian government. Aung San Suu Kyi’s victory in a by-election to the Myanmarese Parliament offers a glimmer of hope that the fledgling political process in that country could yet be used by its democrats to create something resembling a genuine democracy. There is no doubt that the country’s military rulers are cynically hoping to use her participation in the parliamentary process to bolster the illusion of freedom while continuing to exert real control over what goes on in their country. But such exercises in ‘managed democratization’ have often surprised their would-be manipulators in places as far apart as Iran and Indonesia. It is clearly in the interests of both India and the United States to work with this possibility. While China has always been much more comfortable dealing with an uncompromising military regime which could be guaranteed to uphold its interests, India’s embrace of the junta has always been a more reluctant one, based on the compulsions of a common geography rather than the affinities of shared ideals.
Former foreign secretary Nirupama Rao told Indian reporters after visiting US President Barack Obama publicly chastised New Delhi in November 2010 for its indulgence of the Burmese junta in Naypyidaw (the new Burmese capital created by the military): ‘Myanmar is not a country on the dark side of the moon but a country on our borders with which we have to deal.’ It is telling that India’s tri-services command on the Andaman Islands abuts Myanmar’s maritime boundaries and is just about 20 kilometres away from Myanmar’s Coco Islands, where China is believed to be building naval infrastructure. These are not considerations a responsible government overlooks.
In turn, by cancelling a $3.6-billion hydroelectric project (90 per cent of its electricity would have been exported to China), the Burmese government surprised most observers, even though Chinese analysts were quick to express understanding of Naypyidaw’s desire not to be seen as wholly subservient to a much more powerful neighbour. But the signal is clear: Myanmar is not a vassal state of China, and is willing to diversify its foreign relations.
It is in Myanmar’s interests to have more than one suitor wooing it; offsetting one neighbour against another is a time-honoured practice. Though China’s engagement dwarfs India’s, Myanmar — India bilateral trade reached $1.071 billion in 2010–11, including India’s purchase of 70 per cent of Myanmar’s exported agricultural produce, and India is now Myanmar’s fourth largest trading partner after Thailand, Singapore and China. (India’s privileged relationship with the junta in Naypyidaw also allowed it quicker humanitarian access than the United Nations and other international relief agencies enjoyed following the devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis in May 2008.)