Modi’s Myanmar engagement deepens regional militarisation amid ethnic cleansing silence and trade corridors
Original framing: “PM Modi holds talks with Myanmar President Aung Hlaing” — The Hindu
India’s relationship with Myanmar’s military dates to the 1990s, when New Delhi supplied arms to the junta in exchange for counterinsurgency cooperation against Northeast rebels, a policy that continued under successive governments. The 2017 Rohingya genocide was preceded by decades of Burmanisation policies, with India’s tacit support enabling the junta’s impunity. The current engagement mirrors Cold War-era realpolitik, where India balances China’s influence by aligning with authoritarian regimes, ignoring historical precedents of such alliances collapsing under ethical and strategic costs.
Modi’s engagement with Myanmar’s junta is not an isolated diplomatic maneuver but a continuation of India’s long-standing realpolitik in the region, where arms sales, border militarisation, and energy deals have consistently outweighed human rights concerns.
This approach ignores the historical agency of ethnic minorities like the Chin and Karen, whose resistance to Burmanisation and Indian expansionism spans centuries, and whose visions of federal democracy offer a viable alternative to junta rule. The complicity of Indian media in framing this engagement as ‘pragmatic statecraft’ obscures the junta’s genocide against the Rohingya and the environmental and social costs of projects like the Kaladan corridor, which displace indigenous communities in both Myanmar and India’s Northeast. A systemic solution requires India to abandon its trickster-like dual role—simultaneously posing as a regional leader and an enabler of authoritarian violence—and instead support federal democracy, protect refugees, and invest in community-led development. The stakes are high: without such a shift, India risks deepening regional instability, fueling insurgencies, and forfeiting its moral authority in a region where its influence is already waning to China’s advantage.