Events and developments in India’s immediate southern, Indian Ocean neighbourhood, namely Sri Lanka and Maldives, over the past one-plus years have been dramatic at times and historic, even otherwise. They also have an immediate and/or lasting bearing not only on their domestic politics and also foreign and possibly security policy, but also those of India’s neighbourhood policy in their context.
There are commonalities and differences to the domestic developments in these two nations, and also in their external projections, too. India has had relatively smoothened ties with Sri Lanka under the new political leadership, but there were intermediate hiccups in ties with Maldives under President Yameen in 2015. Possibly for the first time in decades, there was also palpable tension between Sri Lanka and Maldives, too, though they were never allowed to come out in the open.
All these have a bearing on trilateral relations, with the US on the one hand and China on the other, providing the extra-regional dimension. In a way, the more things have changed in these two nations, and in relation to India, the more they have remained the same.
N. Sathiya Moorthy, who is initiating the interaction, is a Senior Fellow at the ORF Chennai. Mr. Sathiya Moorthy has been a student of Sri Lanka and Maldives for long, and speaks from his personal knowledge and expertise, which also go into his writings on these subjects.
