Exclusive: Maldives can't afford to have bad ties with India, says ex-President Mohamed Nasheed

Former President of Maldives Mohamed Nasheed said his country’s “safety, security and prosperity depend on good relations with India”. In an exclusive conversation with Firstpost, Nasheed said the island region “cannot afford to have bad ties with India”. Nasheed spoke on the sidelines of the 2025 Raisina Dialogue, organised by ORF.

When asked about his take on India-Maldives relations and how it survived a turbulent phase when the country’s President Mohamed Muizzu first came to power, Nasheed kept an optimistic stance. “Well, the Maldive’s safety, security and prosperity depend on good relations with India and we could never have bad, afford to have bad relations with India,” he explained. “Sooner or later, everyone, any new leader understands this and then turns it around. The anti-India sentiment is not a general sentiment in the Maldives,” he added.

Nasheed maintained that he was elected as Maldives’ president because he is “pro-India”. “I got elected, I know our people, it is not a common sentiment in the Maldives,” he added.

The China question

During the initial stage of his presidency, Muizzu maintained a pro-China stance, which briefly soured the island nation’s ties with India. Nasheed maintained that while China is enlarging its footprints around the world, the burden of debt cannot be ignored.

“Well, China has recently been enlarging its footprints all over the world and it is doing the same in the Maldives as well. They have done some infrastructure projects and these projects have landed us in a lot of debt,” he said.

“So, we are now heavily in debt distress and we must be very mindful
about our finances,” the former Maldivian president furthered. When asked if Muizzu’s stance is accepted in the country or not, Nasheed said: “Well, no one likes debt, so it would be difficult to justify that and so that justification didn’t come and wasn’t done.”

‘You make the environment your products’

Nasheed was part of the panel discussion titled “Destiny or Destination: Culture, Connectivity and Tourism”. Other than Nasheed, the panel comprised “James Lawless, Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Ireland; Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi, Minister of State, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, United Arab Emirates and Amitabh Kant, G20 Sherpa, India.

During the discussion, Nasheed threw light on how Maldives made a living out of tourism. “We started tourism in the 70s, we made a living out of it. On the back of tourism, we have become a middle-income country,” Nasheed said on the panel discussion which took place on the third day of the Raisina Dialogue.

The former Maldivian President recalled that during the COVID-19 pandemic, many come to Maldives to work remotely. “We developed infrastructure to make Maldives their second home,” he said. Nasheed emphasised that tourism in the country has been “very conscious of the environment. “You don’t destroy your environment, you make it your product,” he concluded.