With armed groups now holding most of Myanmar’s periphery, India has reached out to the rebels while preserving its historical ties to Naypyitaw. But it has also announced border controls that could undercut this approach. A more fine-tuned policy would better serve New Delhi’s ends

What’s new? Fragmentation of Myanmar’s state has prompted India to adjust its foreign policy stance toward its neighbour, balancing engagement with Naypyitaw with outreach to regime opponents, who now control much of the Indian border. But New Delhi has introduced restrictive border controls that threaten to undermine its wider policy goals.

Why does it matter? Myanmar’s Chin and Rakhine States, now largely under non-state control, face regime embargoes, making trade and aid from India essential for their populations, as well as for stemming refugee flows. For India, stable borders and better trade and transport connections to South East Asia now depend on ties to armed groups.

What should be done? Rather than build physical barriers, India should address legitimate security concerns along its Myanmar frontier without disrupting the lives of transborder communities. Having given generous emergency support after the 28 March earthquake, New Delhi should also boost cross-border trade and aid, assist refugees and broaden engagement with groups in Myanmar.

I.Overview

Since launching its disastrous coup in 2021, Myanmar’s military has lost its hold on most of the country’s borders, including the one with India. New Delhi has accordingly adjusted its foreign policy stance, forging tighter links with anti-regime armed groups along the border while maintaining ties with the top brass in Naypyitaw. In parallel, however, India’s home ministry has introduced restrictive new border policies, including plans to fence the frontier and limit crossings by locals. These threaten to undermine India’s foreign policy objectives by alienating local people, disrupting the informal trade they rely on and complicating relations with the armed groups that now control the Myanmar border. New Delhi should work with state governments in India’s north east to address legitimate security concerns without unduly disrupting the lives of locals and compromising its goals of greater connectivity with South East Asia. This shift in approach should include finding ways to increase informal trade and aid across the border, provide more support for refugees, and engage with a wider range of constituencies in Myanmar.

Immediately following Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing’s February 2021 coup, India was keen to stay close to the regime in Naypyitaw. For decades, New Delhi has sought to maintain fluid relations with whoever was in power in Myanmar in order to protect its key interests, including border security and regional connectivity, as well as to prop itself up in its competition with China. India has also relied on successive regimes in Myanmar to support its counter-insurgency operations against separatist groups in its north-eastern states, many of which had rear bases across the border. Against this backdrop, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government assumed that the post-coup regime in Naypyitaw would prevail in its struggle against domestic opponents. But that turned out to be a severe miscalculation. As anti-regime forces progressively took control of most areas of Myanmar bordering India, New Delhi diversified its engagement, seeking to build closer ties to opposition forces, while keeping good relations with Naypyitaw – including by sending generous support after the devastating 28 March earthquake.

A hard-border approach is … in contradiction with India’s objective of boosting connectivity and trade with South East Asia under its Act East policy.

But while the foreign ministry recalibrates its Myanmar policy, India’s home ministry has been moving in a different direction, introducing a set of restrictive controls along the Myanmar border. These include proposed fencing of the frontier; constraints on the Free Movement Regime that allows travel across the common border for area residents; and biometric registration of refugees who have crossed into Indian territory during the Myanmar civil war, with an eye toward repatriating them. These restrictions are incompatible with the ground realities in many parts of India’s north east, where communities straddle what they regard as an arbitrary border inherited from colonial times. A hard-border approach is also in contradiction with India’s objective of boosting connectivity and trade with South East Asia under its Act East policy. It is at odds, moreover, with New Delhi’s decision to build stronger relations with Myanmar armed groups that now control the border, since these forces oppose the fence and similar measures.

Instead of a hard border, New Delhi would be better served by a more fine-tuned policy. Such an approach could be designed most effectively in collaboration with India’s north-eastern states. Optimal solutions will likely vary from state to state, but the overarching principle should be to address legitimate security and border management concerns without disrupting the lives of transborder communities, damaging relations with armed groups in Myanmar or undermining the Act East objectives. It is also in India’s interest to facilitate more informal trade across the border, as well as greater volumes of aid, both of which are essential for addressing humanitarian needs in Myanmar and creating conditions conducive for refugees to return. In the meantime, more central government assistance is required to help the north-eastern states meet the needs of refugees in the states of Mizoram and Manipur. India should also expand its engagement to include a broader range of non-state actors in Myanmar, including influential ethnic armed groups not based along the Indian border.

II.The Bilateral Relationship

A.Historical Development of India-Myanmar Relations

India and Myanmar (then Burma) gained independence from Britain within a few months of each other, in August 1947 and January 1948, respectively. Solidarity from shared experience of anti-colonial struggle underpinned warm relations between then-Myanmar Prime Minister Nu and his Indian counterpart, Jawaharlal Nehru.1 Both were early advocates of non-alignment in the Cold War.2 In 1949, Nehru provided significant covert weapons shipments to help Nu counter a communist insurrection and prevent the fall of Yangon.3 The stability of India’s eastern neighbour and good relations with Nu were so important that Nehru did not react strongly to land nationalisation and other nativist economic policies in the 1950s that targeted Myanmar’s ethnic Indians, thousands of whom fled the country.4

General Ne Win’s 1962 coup created a bigger challenge for the Indian government, which worried that Myanmar under military rule would be a less reliable partner. New Delhi was determined to cultivate Ne Win as an ally against China and in tackling separatist insurgencies that were growing in India’s north-eastern states, operating from Myanmar soil. India was thus the first country to recognise the military government after the 1962 coup, and it set about building relations with Ne Win.5 The two governments had common interests: India had lost a border war with China the same year, and Myanmar was fighting a China-backed communist insurgency.6 Nehru thus again remained mostly silent when, in 1964, Ne Win expelled hundreds of thousands of Myanmar Indians, seizing their property and businesses.7 After Nehru’s death that year, his daughter Indira Gandhi – who would become prime minister in 1966 – visited Yangon as Ne Win’s personal guest, marking the beginning of a close political relationship between the two.8

Rajiv Gandhi, Indira’s son, who succeeded her as prime minister following her 1984 assassination, led the relationship in a very different direction. On his first visit to Yangon in 1987, he pushed for closer economic cooperation and connectivity with Myanmar, especially for India’s north-eastern states, an approach that New Delhi would formalise several years later as its Look East policy. He also advocated for connectivity plans that would much later become the Kaladan infrastructure project (see Section II.B below).9 Septuagenarian dictator Ne Win bluntly rejected these overtures, which were contrary to the economic isolationism that was a hallmark of his rule, and which contributed to the fall of his regime the following year.10

Nationwide demonstrations against Ne Win’s rule erupted in Myanmar in 1988, prompting the collapse of his regime.

Nationwide demonstrations against Ne Win’s rule erupted in Myanmar in 1988, prompting the collapse of his regime, a brutal crackdown by the army and the emergence of a new junta. By that point, India was primed to take a different approach toward its neighbour. Ne Win had infuriated Gandhi by refusing closer economic relations; the Indian security establishment, meanwhile, had been frustrated by Ne Win’s inability to deal with Indian insurgents operating in the north east from rear bases in Myanmar.11 As a result, New Delhi backed democratic forces it believed likely to prevail. These were led by Aung San Suu Kyi – whose father, the assassinated independence hero Aung San, had been close to Nehru, and whose mother had been ambassador to India. Aung San Suu Kyi, moreover, had been educated in India.12 New Delhi issued statements in support of the Myanmar people’s “legitimate democratic aspirations”, withdrew its ambassador and provided covert funding to support both political opposition to the junta and armed resistance groups, especially the Kachin Independence Organisation.13

India’s pivot failed, however. The Myanmar military held out against its armed opponents, and though Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in the 1990 elections, the military had placed her under house arrest before the polls and refused to transfer power. With the regime looking secure, and China having switched from supporting communist insurgency in Myanmar to backing the generals, India worried that it was losing influence in the country.14 North-eastern Indian insurgents were also expanding their use of Myanmar territory, with support from Pakistan.15 With the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, the personal dimension of the Indian leadership’s relationship to Aung San Suu Kyi had also dissipated, even if considerable public sympathy for Myanmar’s pro-democracy forces remained.16

In 1991, Rajiv Gandhi’s successor P.V. Narasimha Rao executed a policy U-turn on Myanmar when he unveiled the Look East strategy, which promoted economic integration with East and South East Asia. By the following year, New Delhi had ended its support for the political opposition and armed resistance, focusing instead on forging links with the military regime.17 What followed was two decades of close relations, with increased trade and military cooperation, including joint military operations targeting north-eastern Indian insurgents.

B.India’s Contemporary Policy Objectives

After Myanmar embarked on a path of political liberalisation in 2011 and allowed Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy to return to parliamentary politics in April 2012, India kicked relations into a higher gear.18 The following month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh became the first Indian prime minister to visit Myanmar in nearly 25 years. India’s defence minister then made the trip in early 2013, with the objective of deepening security cooperation.

Since then, India has had three broad policy objectives in Myanmar:

• A key goal has been the stabilisation of north-eastern India and its border with Myanmar. As a result of arbitrary colonial boundaries, upland peoples in the region ended up divided by the borders of three separate states: India, Myanmar and Bangladesh. The result was a long series of separatist insurgencies in all of India’s north-eastern states, starting in the 1950s.19 Over the following decades, New Delhi responded with harsh counter-insurgency operations, fuelling local resentment of the Indian state. While peace negotiations had some success (including ceasefire deals with the Mizo in 1986 and a key Naga faction in 1997), many small rebellions persisted, at times supported by Pakistan, Bangladesh and China.20 These armed outfits often launched attacks from Myanmar or Bangladeshi territory, taking advantage of support from their ethnic kin across the border and the difficulty that Myanmar and Bangladesh had in securing these remote frontiers. As a result, India needed Myanmar’s support to tackle many of these insurgencies.
• Partly linked to the first objective, and partly for its broader economic development, India has focused on boosting connectivity to its east. But although the Look East policy was formally adopted in 1991, for two decades it failed to deliver the promised infrastructure that was supposed to allow more trade with Myanmar and, by extension, the rest of South East Asia. Soon after coming to power in 2014, Prime Minister Modi reframed the policy as Act East, signalling renewed determination to complete the promised projects.21 Most significant was the $500 million Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project. Agreed to in 2008, this major initiative was designed to connect India’s landlocked north-eastern states to the Bay of Bengal and the rest of India, via Myanmar’s Chin and Rakhine States.22 Another key project was the planned 1,360km India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway, connecting Moreh in India’s Manipur state, via Myanmar, with Mae Sot in Thailand, where it will join up with the existing East-West Economic Corridor to Vietnam.23 
• New Delhi has also viewed Myanmar as a theatre for competition with China. Ever since its shocking defeat in the 1962 Sino-Indian war, India has perceived China as a threat. This concern became more acute with China’s rise in the decades following its economic liberalisation in the late 1970s and its more assertive foreign policy since the 2008 global financial crisis. It was given even greater impetus by “India’s sense of strategic encirclement by China”, in the words of academic Avinash Paliwal, when Beijing launched its vast Belt and Road Initiative in 2013.24 This initiative included a $20 billion China-Myanmar Economic Corridor connecting south-western China with Rakhine State’s seaboard, the only feasible overland route from China to the Indian Ocean.25 These developments were central to Prime Minister Modi’s decision to launch his Act East policy and made maintaining close relations with Naypyitaw imperative.26 

III.A Changing Context in Myanmar

A.A Military Regime on the Back Foot

Military chief Min Aung Hlaing’s February 2021 coup represented a challenge for Indian policymakers, but no real dilemma. New Delhi’s wider competition with China, and its belated determination to put flesh on the bones of its Act East policy under Prime Minister Modi, meant its foreign policy objectives required good relations with Naypyitaw. The assumption was that the military would prevail; a repeat of Rajiv Gandhi’s post-1988 experiment in democracy promotion was never on the cards.27 India’s non-response to the Rohingya crisis in 2017 – when it declined to criticise Myanmar for the brutal military crackdown on the Muslim minority in Rakhine State despite pressure from its Western allies and Bangladesh to do so – had already demonstrated that human rights would not factor into its relations with Myanmar.28 

Indeed, India stood by its neighbour. It offered strong diplomatic support, both at the UN Security Council and through high-level visits, offers of technical assistance for the regime’s planned elections and economic engagement.29 New Delhi has also continued to sell arms to Myanmar, including air defence equipment and components for the manufacture of artillery, though it claims that the relevant contracts predate the coup.30

India misjudged the situation, however, as it had in 1988. Then, it wrongly assumed democratic forces would prevail over the military; this time, it overestimated the military’s strength and underestimated the determination and extent of the forces arrayed against it. Chin State, on the Indian border, was one of the first areas to witness armed resistance to the coup.31 Farther north, parts of Sagaing Region on the Indian border also saw armed resistance for the first time in decades. But it was in October 2023 that the Myanmar military’s fragility became unmistakably clear. That month, a coalition of ethnic armed groups known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance launched a major offensive (which they dubbed Operation 1027) that wound up giving it control of most of northern Shan State on the Chinese border.32 At the same time, one of the Brotherhood’s members, the Arakan Army, commenced its own operations in western Myanmar, swiftly taking nearly all of Rakhine State and adjacent parts of Chin State that border India.33 By 2024, key parts of the Myanmar-India frontier were under the sway of anti-regime forces.

B.A Slow Response from New Delhi

India was slow to adjust its Myanmar policy to reflect the fast-changing realities in the country, maintaining close ties with the regime while failing to reach out to the non-state armed groups operating on its border, other than through longstanding intelligence interaction.34 Some foreign policy watchers in India described this slowness as the inevitable result of a large, cautious bureaucracy.35 Others felt that it stemmed from a general unwillingness to engage non-state armed groups, due to sovereign principles as well as India’s own history of insurgencies. If New Delhi was seen engaging with armed outfits in neighbouring countries, giving them de facto recognition, difficult questions might arise about why it was not doing the same with domestic insurgents, for example in Jammu and Kashmir.36

Whatever the reasons for the apparent stasis, the need for India to rethink its Myanmar policy became clear following the launch of Operation 1027. Beginning in early 2024, influential Indian policy voices – namely retired diplomats and military officers – started arguing publicly that New Delhi had to step up engagement with armed groups.37 Ethnic armed group control of Myanmar’s periphery meant that India’s key interests in the country – border security, competition with China and the Kaladan project – were now all dependent on building good relations with such groups, while the regime’s frailty implied that this new reality was likely to be durable. Border security was an obvious issue: the Myanmar military was of little use as a partner for counter-insurgency operations in the north east when it was unable to operate along most of the border. Competing with China was no longer only about diplomacy in Naypyitaw, but also strengthening ties with groups such as the Arakan Army, which Beijing had long been doing.38

The original rationale for the [Kaladan] project had been to provide connectivity to north-eastern India, which was at risk of being cut off by China in a conflict.

As for Kaladan, no progress was possible without the cooperation of the Arakan Army, which by early 2024 controlled the entire Myanmar segment of the project, other than the Rakhine State capital Sittwe itself. The original rationale for the project had been to provide connectivity to north-eastern India, which was at risk of being cut off by China in a conflict, since it is linked to the rest of India only by a 22km-wide corridor between Nepal and Bangladesh, with China just to the north, known as the Siliguri Corridor or the “chicken’s neck”.39

With the project mired in uncertainty even before the coup due to the Arakan Army’s insurgency, New Delhi had started developing an alternative. In 2018, it reached a bilateral agreement with Dhaka allowing Chattogram (better known as Chittagong), Bangladesh’s main seaport, to be used for the tariff-free movement of goods between India’s north-eastern states and the rest of the country.40 The infrastructure and procedures to facilitate this arrangement, which set up a route of only 70km from the port to the north-eastern Indian town of Sabroom, were put in place in April 2023.41 Kaladan thus became less of an immediate priority, notwithstanding its broader importance to the Act East approach and competition with China’s ambitions in the Indian Ocean.

The August 2024 overthrow of the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh fundamentally changed India’s calculations regarding the Kaladan project.42 Due to its strong backing for Hasina’s regime, New Delhi has a difficult relationship with the interim government currently in power in Dhaka. It cannot be certain that the interim government, or a future Bangladeshi administration, will continue to facilitate tariff-free movement of goods through Chattogram.43 A renewed sense of urgency has thus emerged in New Delhi about the Kaladan project. But moving forward with Kaladan required strengthening relations with the Arakan Army. Kaladan was not the only rationale for such overtures, given the other concerns about border security and China noted above, but it shifted a slowly evolving policy into higher gear. The Indian government began to expand contacts with the Arakan Army, as well as Chin armed groups, in both New Delhi and in Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram.44 There was, however, significant mutual mistrust to overcome in forging a meaningful relationship.

Historical grievances over India’s betrayal of a previous generation of Rakhine rebels particularly riled the Arakan Army. In 1998, several dozen members of the National United Party of Arakan (NUPA) armed group, including its leader, travelled to India’s Landfall Island, located in the Andaman chain, with a boatload of weapons, in the company of an Indian intelligence official.45 Indian officials had told them that they could use the island to establish a maritime supply route for the group’s nascent separatist insurgency in Rakhine State.46 Instead, on arrival Indian forces detained the insurgents, extrajudicially executing the NUPA commander and five other leaders, while arresting the 34 others.47 Codenamed Operation Leech, the sting dealt a fatal blow to the incipient Rakhine insurgency, leaving residual anger at India among Rakhine nationalists to this day.48

The reality, however, is that whatever its feelings about the past, the Arakan Army knows improved relations with India are indispensable to its plan to govern Rakhine State (plus Paletwa township in Chin State) as a quasi-independent state. Its only other land borders are with central Myanmar, where the military has put in place a blockade, and with Bangladesh, with which it has a prickly relationship.49 The Indian border is therefore vital for the Arakan Army’s logistics, as well as for the flow of essential goods into the territory it holds. Given that such trade must be informal – there are no authorised trade gates on the Paletwa-India border – an understanding with Indian authorities is imperative. But there have been trade disruptions. In particular, an influential Mizoram civil society group, the Young Lai Association, which opposes the Arakan Army’s control of Paletwa, has sporadically blocked the flow of goods across the border.50

The Indian government was also mistrustful, partly as a result of past events. First, there was the Arakan Army’s 2019 abduction of five Indian engineers who were working on the Kaladan project, one of whom died of a heart attack while detained. This incident alarmed New Delhi and reinforced the view that the group was antagonistic to Indian interests. Nonetheless, the Arakan Army – which had released the Indian nationals and the body of their deceased colleague the day after it grabbed them off a boat it intercepted in Paletwa – managed to convince Indian interlocutors that the abductions had been inadvertent.51 A former top Mizoram official told Crisis Group that the Arakan Army subsequently developed “a good understanding” with the Indian contractors working on the Kaladan project.52 It may have helped that India agreed to pay the group 1 per cent of the Kaladan project budget – around $5 million – as a commission.53 A senior Arakan Army representative told Mizoram Chief Minister Lalduhoma in a 2024 meeting that the group was “equally invested [as India] in the completion of Kaladan”.54

More fundamental questions for New Delhi were whether the Arakan Army would be able to hang on to the Kaladan corridor and could be relied upon to eschew a closer relationship with China.55 Prior to the coup, India had been uncertain about both points.56 But by 2024, the armed group had demonstrated military capability, internal cohesiveness and political vision, and Indian officials began treating it as a more serious force in the political, security and economic spheres.57 The Arakan Army also tried hard to convince India that it was not a Chinese proxy, as some people in the intelligence and security apparatus believed, explaining that given Rakhine State’s location on the Indian Ocean, good relations with New Delhi were indispensable.58 According to a retired senior Indian security official, the group eventually “showed their independence from the Chinese”.59

By mid-2024, India was stepping up its relations with the Arakan Army.

By mid-2024, India was stepping up its relations with the Arakan Army. The deputy commissioner of Mizoram’s Lawngtlai District (who is appointed by New Delhi) discreetly crossed the border into Paletwa township to inspect progress on the Kaladan project.60 The Mizoram chief minister and other senior state government officials then met with Arakan Army representatives in Aizawl, not only with New Delhi’s knowledge, but at its urging.61 Senior officials at the Indian foreign ministry also met with representatives of the group in New Delhi and Aizawl.62

By design, these initiatives remained out of the public domain. Indian policymakers felt that on balance, due to the sovereignty issue and other sensitivities (see above), engagement with non-state entities in Myanmar needed to remain quiet. They were also aware of the limitations: secret processes were unaccountable, and hence less convincing to the other side (particularly given the legacy of Operation Leech), as well as being more limited in scope.63 As one former Indian ambassador to Myanmar put it to Crisis Group: “The Chinese openly have relations with all sides; can India afford not to have the same?”64

New Delhi thus began to shift to a more public diplomatic posture on its engagement with Myanmar armed groups. In September 2024, the key foreign policy official dealing with Myanmar, the joint secretary for Myanmar and Bangladesh at the Ministry of External Affairs, visited Aizawl and informed the Mizoram state government of plans to provide electricity across the border to Paletwa township, which by that point was controlled by the Arakan Army. A photograph and readout of the meeting was reported in local media, in an indication that the authorities wished to make the information public.65

A few days later, Reuters news agency revealed that India had invited anti-regime forces – the Arakan Army as well as Chin and Kachin armed groups and the opposition National Unity Government – to a seminar in New Delhi in November.66 The event was to be held at the Indian Council of World Affairs, a think-tank linked to the Ministry of External Affairs, with senior officials in attendance, thereby marking the first formal engagement between India’s central government and Myanmar anti-regime forces.67 Some analysts assumed that the information had been leaked deliberately, to signal publicly the shift in policy and to gauge the reaction of the military regime, which at this stage had not been invited.68 Preparations for the meeting had started in June, when India began to shift its policy.69 India’s plans, however, were thrown off course by China’s own policy changes.

C.China’s Myanmar Pivot and Its Implications

Beijing was displeased with the 2021 coup, which it saw as damaging its strategic interests and imperilling its large investments in Myanmar – particularly because the post-coup turmoil and armed conflict harmed the prospects for moving ahead with the planned China-Myanmar Economic Corridor linking Yunnan province with the Indian Ocean (see Section II.B above). Beijing was also unhappy with commander-in-chief and coup leader Min Aung Hlaing: the Chinese leadership viewed him as incompetent; knew that he harboured anti-China sentiments; and judged him as insufficiently cooperative in cracking down on scam centres that were trafficking and defrauding large numbers of Chinese citizens.70 As a result, Beijing gave its tacit backing to the Three Brotherhood Alliance’s Operation 1027 in Shan State that routed regime forces and took control of areas that were being used by scam syndicates (see Section III.A above).

But while China was unhappy with the junta, and had an interest in ethnic armed groups with which it had good relations taking control of areas adjacent to the Chinese border, it had never intended to trigger an existential threat to the regime when it greenlighted Operation 1027. But by mid-2024 – and in particular after Lashio town fell in July – China’s assessment was that the regime could collapse in a matter of months.71 The regime’s disorderly demise was something Beijing wanted to avoid, because of the uncertainty about what would come next, and because China sees much of the resistance – particularly the National Unity Government – as too close to the West.72 A Western-leaning government taking power in what it considers its backyard would be anathema for Beijing.

China applied intense pressure on armed groups in the north of Myanmar to halt their offensive operations.

To stave off the regime’s collapse, in August China threw it a lifeline. It first provided greater diplomatic support, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi travelling to Naypyitaw in mid-August to meet Min Aung Hlaing for the first time since the coup.73 Min Aung Hlaing then visited China in November, an invitation he had been pushing for since the coup but which Beijing had resisted offering.74 China also provided military support to the regime, transferring six fighter jets and other equipment.75 In addition, China applied intense pressure on armed groups in the north of Myanmar to halt their offensive operations – including cutting off essential supplies and power from the Chinese side of the border, which these groups have relied upon to ensure the functioning of their territories. On 18 January 2025, it secured a ceasefire between the regime and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, an ethnic Kokang armed group which is part of the Three Brotherhood alliance; other groups continue fighting, however.76

China’s repositioning tipped the balance slightly in the regime’s favour, potentially staving off a rebel attack on the country’s second largest city of Mandalay.77 But it was no salvation for the junta, which continued to face major battlefield challenges elsewhere. In particular, the Arakan Army continued to take more territory in Rakhine State, as did the Kachin Independence Organisation in the north. China’s intervention did, however, force India to adjust its approach.

IV.India’s Evolving Response

A.Adjusting to the New Context

1.Foreign policy response

Indian government officials have had to consider not only the rapidly evolving situation in Myanmar, but also the positions of other countries, including Bangladesh after the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government (Section III.B above) and China (Section III.C). Above all, China’s decision to throw a lifeline to the regime in August 2024 had a major impact on India’s calculations, as it increased the regime’s odds of survival while intensifying diplomatic competition between the region’s two heavyweights for influence over the regime in Naypyitaw.

As a result, India’s plans for the November seminar it had set up with regime opponents changed. Previously, New Delhi had considered not inviting the regime, but with the junta potentially reinvigorated, thanks to Chinese support, this option had become unpalatable.78 That said, neither the regime nor any of its foes was prepared to take part in a joint meeting.79 The seminar therefore went ahead at the Indian Council of World Affairs on 5-6 November 2024 with only regime-selected participants from the Myanmar side, including the minister for border affairs, Lieutenant General Tun Tun Naung, members of the regime’s peace committee, representatives of armed groups participating in the regime’s (mostly dormant) peace process, and leaders of political parties registered with the regime-appointed election commission.80

New Delhi’s objective of more formal engagement with the regime’s adversaries was achieved through a different channel. The three ethnic armed groups now in control of the Indian border – the Arakan Army, Chin National Front and Chin Brotherhood – and the National Unity Government all visited New Delhi in November for individual meetings with the Ministry of External Affairs (the Kachin Independence Organisation was also invited but declined to attend).81 These meetings were at a senior official level, led by the joint secretary for Bangladesh and Myanmar. The meetings were not publicised, and thus did not meet the goal of shifting engagement with these groups to the public sphere. But they were a strong signal of intent, proving more substantive than if these interlocutors had attended a think-tank seminar, and more significant in protocol terms, since the parties met directly with the ministry, at a high level.

2.Domestic security response

While India’s Ministry of External Affairs has been recalibrating its Myanmar policy, its home ministry, which oversees border and internal security matters, has also been taking decisions that have a direct impact on relations with ethnic armed groups now in control of the border on the Myanmar side. Broadly speaking, the ministry has adopted a more restrictive approach in response to the changes in Myanmar. There are three elements to the home ministry’s approach:

• In January 2024, the home minister announced a plan to fence the 1,643km border, at a cost of some $3.7 billion.82 India has long sought to seal its borders with Bangladesh and Pakistan – fencing large parts of both – due to tensions with these neighbours going back to independence, along with contemporary Hindu nationalist concerns about Muslim immigration. The Myanmar border was treated differently, due to historically better bilateral cooperation and in recognition of community sensitivities, including among the Naga and Kuki-Chin-Mizo tribes, who live on both sides of the frontier.83 These communities reacted with anger to the fencing plan.84 Mizoram’s highest executive official, Chief Minister Lalduhoma, travelled to New Delhi to argue against it, and a senior retired Indian security official told Crisis Group the plan was “stupid” as it ignored local realities.85 It is also impractical.86
• At the same time, the minister also pledged to end the Free Movement Regime, an arrangement whereby people living within 16km of the India-Myanmar border can obtain annual permits to travel the same distance across the border for a period of up to fourteen days, along with limited quantities of goods, without a passport or visa.87 The arrangement dates back to colonial times, but was formalised via a bilateral agreement in 2018 as part of the Act East policy.88 Since it is governed by a bilateral agreement, India does not have the authority to revoke free movement unilaterally, but can temporarily suspend it.89 No official notification to do so has been issued, however, and since 1 January 2025 it has been superseded by new instructions reducing the visa-free travel corridor to 10km and requiring day passes issued by the Indian military for Myanmar borderland residents entering India.90 The government introduced these measures hastily, with no advance notice.
• In April 2023, the minister had also ordered the state governments of Manipur and Mizoram to capture biometric and biographic details of “illegal immigrants” in their states.91 The order was for the data to be entered into India’s national crime portal, collected on forms that were provided by the Myanmar embassy. Manipur complied, registering over 5,000 people over the next year, and deporting some.92 Zoramthanga, then the Mizoram chief minister, nevertheless refused to comply with these instructions, saying the Myanmar people sheltering in his state were not criminals. He added that use of a form provided by Myanmar suggested registration was a prelude to deportation.93 After discussions with the state’s new chief minister, Lalduhoma, the home ministry agreed to provide a separate (non-crime) portal, but it did not address concerns about the Myanmar embassy form.94 With local authorities in Mizoram refusing to proceed until they received an alternative form, by the end of 2024 no information about immigrants in the state had been recorded despite the fact that it hosts the largest number of refugees.95

Several factors fuelled these home ministry decisions. First, in the lead-up to India’s April-May 2024 polls, the Modi government was inclined toward grand gestures that would play well with its Hindu nationalist base, including on alleged illegal immigration. Secondly, the deteriorating situation in Manipur, where communal violence has raged between the majority Meitei and the minority Kuki-Zo – the latter closely related to the Chin in Myanmar – has heightened border security concerns. Unsupported rumours that Kuki-Zo groups are being armed and reinforced by their Myanmar kin helped fuel New Delhi’s response.96 In addition, Indian authorities and local communities are concerned about illegal immigration and the trafficking of Myanmar-produced narcotics.97 

While progress in enforcing the above measures has been halting, the home ministry enjoys immense political power in New Delhi, and it appears determined to press ahead as a result of domestic political concerns, even if they are inconsistent with India’s foreign policy pivot, which is a secondary consideration for the government when compared with internal security.98 The strong opposition from many communities in the north east, as well as from the Mizoram government, has slowed but not stopped these initiatives.99 

B.Policy Tensions and Challenges

India’s policy on Myanmar has been evolving toward counterbalancing regime engagement with more formal relations with armed groups operating along the border. The outlines of India’s new policy are not yet settled, mainly because the situation in Myanmar remains in flux, but also because the policies of other states, particularly China, have been shifting.

India would prefer that its decision to increase engagement with the Myanmar regime’s opponents not create too much friction in its relations with the junta. While these ambitions may seem contradictory, New Delhi does not view them as such.

First, it feels that Naypyitaw cannot object too much when India has clear strategic and security justifications for engagement with armed groups, given that regime forces no longer control most of the border. Secondly, it has been careful not to antagonise the junta unduly, giving no publicity to its engagement with regime opponents. India responded quickly to the destructive 28 March earthquake in Myanmar, dispatching within 48 hours an 80-strong specialist search-and-rescue team and a 200-bed army field hospital with 118 surgical and medical staff; it also provided a large quantity of emergency relief supplies by air and sea.100 New Delhi stated that it stood ready to send further assistance to Myanmar, “a key partner of our Neighbourhood First and Act East policy”.101 On 4 April, Prime Minister Modi met regime leader Min Aung Hlaing on the sidelines of a Bay of Bengal summit in Bangkok, their first in-person meeting since the coup.102 Modi reaffirmed his offer of further assistance to Myanmar following the earthquake.

Thirdly, and most importantly, New Delhi has never been greatly concerned about taking actions in its own self-interest that might upset its neighbour – especially now, when the Myanmar military is arguably weaker than ever – and considers that the job of its diplomats is to keep relations smooth despite these contretemps.103 In the same way, it does not see its continued arms sales to the regime – which it presents as small-scale and not primarily related to counter-insurgency weapons – as constraining its relations with regime opponents.104

There is … a tension in India’s policies between restrictive and coercive approaches to its border with Myanmar.

There is, however, a tension in India’s policies between restrictive and coercive approaches to its border with Myanmar, which have some popular appeal domestically, and its more open and collaborative approaches aimed at dealing with the reality of trans-border ethnic communities. In Mizoram, this tension has led to the state government pushing back against or delaying the implementation of home ministry orders, which are unpopular locally.

There are limits to how much Mizoram can resist, however. To begin with, the small state is heavily dependent on central government funding, giving New Delhi leverage.105Chief Minister Lalduhoma was also elected with the help of significant campaign contributions from the Bharatiya Janata Party, which controls the central government and had become frustrated with his independent-minded predecessor, Zoramthanga.106 In addition, as a former police officer, Lalduhoma is inclined to respect hierarchies and follow orders, unlike Zoramthanga, who entered electoral politics after being a long-time leader of the Mizo insurgency.107

Views among the local population are also shifting in a more hardline direction. While at first there was huge sympathy for refugees from Myanmar due to the kinship ties that span the border, there are signs that the welcome is wearing thin, due to competition for scarce resources and jobs, as well as occasional reports of crimes committed by refugees.108 Local people are also increasingly concerned about smuggling of drugs and other contraband from Myanmar. One of the most influential civil society organisations in Mizoram is suggesting that it is time for refugees to return to Myanmar, and another weighty community group has supported border fencing.109 A prominent Mizoram social activist has also written to the home minister calling for greater curbs on Myanmar refugees.110 As Crisis Group has argued elsewhere, attempts to seal the border will hinder the flow of goods into Chin State, exacerbating the humanitarian situation, which could both trigger new refugee flows into India and make it less likely that refugees can return soon.111

Besides the frictions with Mizoram, India’s new restrictions on its border with Myanmar have also complicated its efforts to engage with ethnic armed groups controlling that border, as well as its goal of improving connectivity with South East Asia as part of the Act East policy. Border fencing and ending the free movement regime are both impractical and counterproductive in much of the north east, where minority communities – and in one case an individual village – span a border that locals regard as artificial and arbitrary.112 Without the cooperation of residents on both sides of the border, not to mention armed groups in Myanmar, the measures will breed resentment and resistance rather than improve security.113 Border restrictions are also incompatible with Act East, including the high-priority Kaladan project. But even if India were willing to force through those restrictions by sacrificing Act East and jettisoning Kaladan, the fence would be extremely difficult to build, given that locals and armed groups are strongly opposed to it.

C.Creating Mutually Beneficial Outcomes

Instead of relying primarily on physical barriers and movement controls, India should consider adopting a more flexible approach that recognises both security needs and local realities. By working with state governments and civil society organisations in the north east, New Delhi could tailor such an approach to the specific characteristics and challenges of each stretch of the border, which are not uniform. The current approach is maximally restrictive, preventing Mizoram – where security concerns are seen as less pressing – from adopting more flexible policies compared with Manipur, where a segment of the state’s political forces are demanding tougher border security. In all concerned states, the aim should be to address legitimate security and border management concerns without disrupting the lives of transborder communities, damaging relations with armed groups on the ascendant in Myanmar, or undermining infrastructure connectivity such as the Kaladan project and the broader Act East framework.

India should look at ways to facilitate an increased flow of goods across the border.

Border restrictions will also affect the informal flow of goods across the border, creating problems for local communities that rely on this trade in both countries, and in particular undermining livelihoods and humanitarian conditions in Chin and Rakhine States.114 Not only are these measures a further impediment to refugee returns, but they will likely push more people to flee across the border to India’s north-eastern states. Instead, India should look at ways to facilitate an increased flow of goods across the border – both informal trade and humanitarian support via local organisations.115

One way to do this job would be to replicate the border markets (haats) that India has long established along the Bangladesh border, where specific products may be freely traded between communities on either side, with a degree of regulatory oversight but without onerous customs or immigration formalities being imposed. One such market was opened on the India-Myanmar border in 2020 as a pilot project, and four more locations were identified, but the initiative has not moved forward.116 Analysts have also noted that these informal markets can help empower local women.117

Delhi should also provide financing for the Mizoram government to deliver services to refugees. Current support mostly comes from communities themselves, or from state government coffers, which is hard to sustain and increases local resentment of refugees. Even though it is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention, New Delhi should provide protection for refugees fleeing conflict and persecution in Myanmar, not only as a moral and humanitarian imperative, but also as a critical element of building better relations with armed groups across the border. 

On the diplomatic front, given the trajectory of the Myanmar conflict, it is in India’s interest to continue bolstering its engagement with the regime’s opponents. Rather than limiting itself to establishing ties with ethnic armed groups along the border, and occasional interactions with the National Unity Government, India should consider expanding its engagement to a wider range of protagonists. It could reach out to influential armed groups in other parts of Myanmar, as well as to political and civil society organisations. This extra engagement is important because India’s policy objectives in Myanmar are not limited to border security. Boosting connectivity with East and South East Asia requires a broader set of partners – especially at a time when Myanmar appears to be on an inexorable path to greater and longer-lasting fragmentation.

V.Conclusion

The Myanmar state is fracturing, and considerable uncertainty surrounds the question of what comes next. New Delhi has started to adjust to this new reality, increasing ties with the armed groups operating along its border, while maintaining close relations with the military regime and providing timely assistance after the earthquake. But even as it balances its contacts with these two, the contradictions between its foreign policy aims and an approach to Indian internal security that hardens the border are becoming increasingly conspicuous. A more considered approach that addresses legitimate security issues in a way that does not harm the communities living in India’s borderlands would not only be more effective, but it would also align better with India’s general foreign policy imperatives regarding ties to Myanmar and South East Asia.

China’s influence over Myanmar looms large in New Delhi’s thinking. Strategic competition with Beijing is now central to much of India’s foreign policy. For now, Beijing clearly has greater leverage with a more diverse set of groups in Myanmar than New Delhi does. China has also been more diplomatically nimble in the post-coup period. India will benefit from greater flexibility in its foreign policy stance toward Myanmar, especially by developing a broader set of interlocutors rather than trying to pick winners or hewing too closely to a state-centric diplomatic posture. But for this tack to work, India should steer clear of an approach to Myanmar that now appears more geared toward sealing its frontiers than toward bringing stability to its borderlands. 

Myanmar/Bangkok/Brussels, 11 April 2025

Appendix A: Map of India-Myanmar