Among India’s immediate neighbours, Myanmar – with an area of over 676,000 km and a population of 55 million – deserves a high degree of importance, especially considering its geostrategic location, historical ties, and richness of natural resources. Its border meets India’s Northeast region, specifically in four states: Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram. It is also a maritime neighbour. Yet, traditionally, Myanmar did not receive the priority attention it deserved, mainly because New Delhi remained preoccupied with more troublesome neighbours, Myanmar’s own tendency to look inwards, and a general disinterest among India’s citizenry in the country’s eastern flank.
However, this stance began to change in the early 1990s with the adoption of the Look East policy, which was elevated to the Act East policy in 2014. Over the past decade, developments in Myanmar have drawn greater attention, partly due to their direct impact on the Northeast, particularly Manipur and Mizoram, and partly due to the rising profile of the East in India’s external relations.
A close examination of Myanmar’s current state, four and a half years after the February 2021 military coup, its near-term direction, and the implications for India’s national security should be of broader interest. This analysis is situated within both the internal and external contexts of Myanmar, as various political players within the country are connected to external stakeholders, including neighbouring states, China, Russia, and Western powers. Their complex interactions and fluctuating connections make this multi-dimensional story both puzzling and interesting. The attempt below is to present it as objectively as possible, keeping in view the larger historical, geopolitical, and humanitarian dimensions of this tragic tale.
Myanmar’s Political Evolution
The country, called Burma until the military leadership changed its name to Myanmar in 1989, is a troubled polity, not at peace with itself. Its politics has been shaped by its history, geography, ethnic diversity, and religious profile. Experts are convinced that the nation-building process remains incomplete, which is the root cause of instability and strife since independence in 1948.
Two facts are of primary importance in this context. First, Myanmar has 135 races that are divided into eight main ethnic groups, namely, Bamar, Shan, Kachin, Chin, Karen, Kayah, Mon, and Rakhine. Of the total population, the Bamar people make up 68%. While the other ethnic groups are smaller in size, collectively they represent 32% of the population. Many of them harbour serious resentment and alienation towards the majority group for its failure to share power. Mostly, the Bamar live in the central region, whereas the ethnic groups reside in the peripheral areas that border neighbouring countries such as Thailand, China, and India,
Hence, their cross-border linkages became a significant factor in the ethnic strife that developed over the decades following independence.
The second key factor is the diversity of faith. Those familiar with Myanmar view it as a Buddhist country. This is true, but partly. An overwhelming majority-89% follows Buddhism, particulary its Theravada school. The Hindus have adjusted creatively with the Buddhist population. Muslims, on the other hand, have faced serious difficulties in several parts of the country, especially in the Rakhine State, where a very substantial minority of Rohingyas suffered discrimination and injustice, and were also viewed as a threat to Burmese-Buddhist values. This explains the seriousness of the Rohingya issue in the late 20th century and more prominently since 2017, when, following armed attacks and clashes, nearly one million Rohingya people were compelled to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh to seek shelter. They remain there, complicating Myanmar’s relations with Bangladesh and indirectly India as well.
Completing a 2016 study of Myanmar, this author expressed his considered view thus: “Without resolving the key challenge of defining nationhood and ensuring that the minorities feel a sense of belonging as much as the majority community, Myanmar may remain a troubled nation. Ethnic and national reconciliation, equitable power-sharing, and inclusiveness are the prerequisites for its well-being.” Superimposed on the failure to live with and leverage the nation’s ethnic and religious diversity for its collective benefit has been the dominant role of the Tatmadaw-the armed forces, also referred to loosely as the Army. Of the 77 years since independence (1948-2025), the country has been under direct military rule for 53 years. The remaining period is accounted for by the prevalence of democracy from 1948 to 1962, and of limited democracy from 2011 to early 2021. The Army views itself as the guarantor of national unity and the preserver of territorial integrity. Ethnic groups, on the other hand, dismiss it as a force of occupation, oppression, and exploitation. The striking feature of popular reaction to the military coup of 2021 was that major resistance came not only from the ethnic groups but also from a large section of the Bamar majority community, thus creating a truly national-level civil war within the country.
The country’s political development has primarily been a story of complex interactions involving the military, ethnic groups, and political parties. The U Nu-led era of democratic rule (1948-62) was replaced by military rule under the leadership of General Ne Win (1962-88). The period of political transition (1988-92) was followed by a prolonged period of Army rule, which ended in 2011 when the experiment with limited democracy began. The Army staged yet another coup, failed to crush the popular uprising, and is now faced with a virtual division of the country into two parts—one controlled by it and the other outside its control.
India’s Myanmar Policy
A brief examination of India’s past policy towards Burma/Myanmar may be useful in understanding New Delhi’s approach over the last four years. The first prime ministers of both countries Jawaharlal Nehru and U Nu-were close friends, ideological comrades, and supporters of the giants of the previous era: Mahatma Gandhi and General Aung San, the founding fathers of the two nations. Therefore, the era of democratic rule witnessed excellent development of bilateral relations and tangible cooperation at the regional and multilateral levels, including within the Non-Aligned Movement. This period gave way to Ne Win’s rule. Nehru was unhappy with the overthrow of democracy but was persuaded to adopt a more realistic approach.
Subsequently, his daughter, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, managed to cultivate a friendly and cooperative relationship with the Ne Win Government. The fundamental policy change was introduced by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Government, which, reacting to the eruption of a democracy movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi and other political leaders during the 1988-90 period, chose to extend generous support to it—in moral, political, and material terms. The assumption apparently was that the Army rule was on its last legs and the triumph of democracy was inevitable. This assessment proved wrong.
In the early 1990s, therefore, the P V Narasimha Rao Government undertook a comprehensive policy review. It took into account three factors: India needed the Myanmar government’s cooperation to manage the difficult insurgency situation prevailing in parts of the Northeast; there was a strategic calculation to curb China’s footprint in Myanmar by giving Yangon an option; and New Delhi was gearing up to launch its “Look East’ policy, in which it saw Myanmar playing a crucial role.
In this backdrop, a new policy—the ‘two-track’ policy on Myanmar—was conceived and implemented. Its two tracks were: first, India would continue to extend moral and political support to the cause of democracy; and second, it would also engage the military government with a view to improving and upgrading government-to-government relations. It was a return to India’s conventional policy of dealing with the government of the day. The new policy was a “calibrated and complex initiative to balance principles, values, interests, and geopolitical realities.”* It has remained unchanged since then, despite numerous turns and twists in India-Myanmar relations over the past three decades.
Rajiv Bhatia is the Distinguished Fellow for Foreign Policy Studies and a former ambassador.
This an excerpt from the chapter titled ‘Military Coup 2021 in Myanmar: Impact, Prospects and India’s Approach’ which appears in the book ‘Perspectives from and within India and its Neighbourhood’ edited by Shishir Priyadarshi and Dr Cchavi Vasisht, published by Chintan Research Foundation (2026).
You can access the full book here.