When Prime Minister Narendra Modi attends the Maldives’s sixtieth Independence Day celebration in capital Male on July 26, 2025, his presence will mark a main turnaround in ties between the neighbours — one thing that neither aspect may need foreseen 18 months in the past.
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Although Mohamed Muizzu used the ‘India out’ plank — taking off on a marketing campaign by former President Abdulla Yameen — for his profitable presidential bid in September 2023, there was a notable thaw in the Maldives’s India ties inside months, seen in the assembly of the leaders of each international locations, on the sidelines of the UN COP 28 local weather summit in Dubai in December 2023, the place they agreed to bolster financial partnership and people-to-people ties.
Downs and ups
However, early 2024 noticed a fast decline in the connection once more, with junior Maldivian ministers making derogatory remarks towards PM Modi, in connection together with his Lakshadweep go to, and a shrill, apparently well-coordinated ‘Boycott Maldives’ marketing campaign that dominated Indian social media quickly after, threatening the nation’s tourism-reliant economic system.
Returning from a five-day go to to China in January 2024, President Muizzu instructed native media that the Maldives could also be a small island nation, however that doesn’t permit others to “bully” the nation and that the Maldives “is not in anyone’s backyard”. In March 2024, Mr. Muizzu mentioned no Indian army personnel, not even these in civilian clothes, could be current in his nation after May 10, 2024. By early May final yr, India totally pulled out its troops from the Maldives, assembly the deadline set by President Muizzu, with a compromise of changing them with technical personnel.
Economic help
Subsequently, ties noticed an enchancment, paving approach for President Muizzu’s state go to to India in October 2024, even because the island nation was fighting its debt burden and widening fiscal deficit that some feared may push it in the direction of default.
After the 2 leaders met in New Delhi, India signed a essential forex swap settlement — accessible till 2027 — with the Maldives for $750 million, to assist the island nation tide over its present international forex crunch. The two international locations additionally agreed on a “vision statement” for a “comprehensive economic and maritime security partnership” going ahead. In May 2025, India rolled over a $50 million-treasury invoice to help the nation bolster its reserves and stabilise its economic system.
Today, Indian flags have been put up throughout Male, sources based mostly in the capital metropolis instructed The Hindu on Thursday, to welcome the Indian PM, scheduled to reach Friday [July 25, 2025] morning from the United Kingdom, amid appreciable social media criticism of the Maldivian authorities from detractors. Mr. Modi is the primary Head of State to go to the Maldives since President Muizzu assumed workplace in November 2023.
‘Hard work’
“It’s a question of working hard at a relationship,” Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri mentioned, in a particular media briefing on July 22, 2025, referring to the optimistic shift India-Maldives ties. Observing that “there will always be events that will impact or try to intrude on the relationship”, he pointed to the “kind of attention” that has been paid to the connection and together with on the highest ranges. “We have continued to work at it …we have also been in very close discussions with our partners in the Maldives to provide clarity and assurances about what it is that we want to do bilaterally, and I think the result is there for all to see,” he instructed reporters in New Delhi.
Describing the joint imaginative and prescient for an ‘India-Maldives comprehensive economic and maritime security partnership’ because the “guiding framework” for bilateral ties, Mr. Misri mentioned New Delhi has seen almost half a dozen ministerial-level visits from the Maldives in the primary six months of this yr. During Mr. Modi’s go to a set of agreements throughout sectors is anticipated. The two sides are more likely to agree on the phrases of reference for the Free Trade Agreement that’s at the moment below negotiation. Further, agreements in new areas of cooperation, together with renewable power, fisheries, digital infrastructure are to be firmed up.
Prior to Mr. Modi, former Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and former Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif participated as Guests of Honour in the Maldives’s Independence Day occasions in 2015 and 2017 respectively.
