News Desk
Abdulla Yameen’s re‑emergence on the political stage this week carried a sense of déjà vu. The former president has long understood the potency of nationalist sentiment, and at a rally of his People’s National Front he reached once again for a familiar lever: positioning the Maldives in tension with India. His remarks, centred on the origins of Lakshadweep — known locally as Malik — arrived at a moment when the Chagos question has returned to the forefront of public debate, creating fertile ground for political actors seeking to revive old tales that have long circulated on the margins of Maldivian history.
Yameen’s argument followed a well‑worn script. He told supporters that Malik, or Minicoy as it is known in India, was historically part of the Maldives, that its people spoke Dhivehi, and that the island was ceded to India only as a strategic concession during the Portuguese era. He went further, accusing Indian journalists of distorting the island’s history and urging India to acknowledge its supposed origins.
The timing is hardly incidental. The Chagos issue has become a powerful political instrument since President Dr Mohamed Muizzu’s administration began pressing for a review of the 2023 maritime boundary ruling that awarded the Maldives more than 47,000 square kilometres of ocean territory. The decision, delivered by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, was widely regarded as a diplomatic victory. Yet Muizzu’s coalition, then in opposition, cast it as a national loss.
Now in office, President Muizzu has reframed the matter once more, presenting Chagos as a question of national reclamation. In the south, he has encouraged the view that past governments failed to defend Maldivian interests. In the north, Yameen has seized the same emotional terrain, using Malik to argue that Maldivian history has been repeatedly eroded by foreign powers and by leaders who lacked resolve.
The symmetry is striking. Both men emerged from the same political lineage, with President Muizzu rising through Yameen’s Progressive Party of Maldives before leading its breakaway faction, the People’s National Congress. Their rivalry is personal, but their instincts are similar. Each has discovered that historical claims — even those resting on selective or incomplete evidence — can mobilise supporters and unsettle opponents.
What is new is the scale of the stage. From the northern atolls, Yameen is needling India. From the southern atolls, President Muizzu is invoking the spectre of the United States and the United Kingdom. Whether these gestures are intended for domestic consumption or represent genuine geopolitical positioning remains unclear. What is clear is that neither leader is engaging from a position of strength. Picking fights with larger powers may generate headlines, but it rarely produces meaningful gains.
India, for its part, has responded with restraint. New Delhi has avoided engaging with Yameen’s assertions, maintaining a steady, factual posture on Lakshadweep as an integral part of the Indian Union. It has declined to amplify fringe narratives or to be drawn into rhetorical skirmishes. This approach stands in sharp contrast to Yameen’s attempt to cast doubt on established history and reflects India’s broader strategy of keeping its relationship with the Maldives stable at a moment when Malé’s political class is increasingly fragmented.
Yameen’s own record complicates his new posture. In 2015, while in office and speaking in the presence of Indian diplomats, he described the loss of Malik as a painful chapter in Maldivian history but did not question India’s sovereignty. He acknowledged that the atoll had fallen under foreign control during the long arc of Maldivian history and framed the episode as part of the broader colonial experience. His tone then was measured, even conciliatory. The contrast with his recent rhetoric is difficult to ignore.
The historical record offers little support for Yameen’s latest claims. Lakshadweep is a chain of islands, yet Maldivian political discourse focuses almost exclusively on one. Maldivian history, largely preserved through oral tradition, contains fragments suggesting periods of influence, but these sit alongside long stretches of rule by the Arakkal dynasty of Kannur and later by the British.
The presence of Dhivehi‑speaking communities does not establish continuous Maldivian sovereignty. Nor do Dhivehi inscriptions found in Chagos, which historians interpret as evidence of cultural contact rather than territorial rule. What is striking is that Maldivian bookshelves are almost entirely bare on this subject; there is not a single substantial work, even in the local language, that sets out a coherent historical claim. In a country where oral tradition, folklore and jinni tales have shaped much of the collective memory, there is not so much as a passing reference that hints at Malik or Chagos as lost territories.
What Yameen is doing is something different. He is capitalising on a political moment shaped by President Muizzu’s own strategy. By elevating the Chagos issue, the president has created a national mood in which historical grievances feel newly relevant. Yameen, sidelined by legal troubles and political isolation, has found in this atmosphere a route back into the national conversation.
The risk for the Maldives is that these competing narratives may harden into something more destabilising. The Chagos case is grounded in international law, not mythology. The Maldives’ recognition of Mauritius’ sovereignty over the archipelago, reaffirmed in 2023, was based on the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice and the ITLOS process. It was also consistent with the Maldives’ long‑standing support for decolonisation.
Yameen’s attempt to fold Lakshadweep into this debate is a political manoeuvre, not a legal argument. It may energise his supporters, but it risks confusing the public about the country’s actual diplomatic position and unsettling the neighbourly relationship on which ordinary Maldivians depend.
For most citizens, India is not an abstract geopolitical actor but the immigration officer they meet at the airport and the doctor they turn to in moments of medical need. One is left to ask whether Yameen’s rhetoric offers anything to the man on the street or merely places him in the crossfire of political theatre.
India, meanwhile, has remained patient, choosing not to escalate rhetoric even as Maldivian politicians test the limits of historical interpretation.
An Indian commentator recently observed that if proximity and cultural ties were sufficient grounds for territorial claims, the entire region would be up for renegotiation. It was a pointed reminder that history, when selectively invoked, can become a dangerous tool.
That question now hangs over both Muizzu and Yameen, two leaders who share a political origin story yet are shaping the national conversation from opposite directions. The Chagos issue has given them a platform. What they choose to do with it will determine whether the Maldives navigates this moment with clarity or drifts deeper into a politics of grievance.
