Note: Run with the hare and hunt with the hounds is trying to support both sides in an conflict, for your own benefit
A rare alliance: The strategic flaws of India’s ‘double game’ in Myanmar
October 19, 2025
Guest contributor Shalini Perumal
India’s foreign policy towards Myanmar has descended into an ethically dubious and strategically flawed, bipolar dance.
New Delhi, in its relentless pursuit of geopolitical advantage and resource security, has chosen a path of contradiction: it is courting the military junta in Naypyidaw while simultaneously forging an alliance with one of the junta’s opponents, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).
This dual approach, driven by a myopic focus on short-term gains, risks undermining regional stability, compromising India’s international standing, and ultimately failing to achieve its stated objectives.
The most telling aspect of this policy is India’s engagement with the KIA, a non-state armed group that has been in a decades-long struggle for autonomy.
As revealed by recent reports first published in Reuters, India’s Ministry of Mines has been actively exploring a deal to secure rare-earth mineral samples from KIA-controlled mines in northeastern Myanmar.
State-owned entities like IREL (India Rare Earths Limited) and private firms such as Midwest Advanced Materials have been enlisted in this unprecedented effort, signaling a willingness to engage with non-governmental actors to bypass traditional supply chains.
The motivation behind this move is clear: to break free from China’s stranglehold on the global rare-earth market. With Beijing having tightened export restrictions on these critical resources, essential for technologies from electric vehicles to advanced military equipment, India has been left scrambling.
The KIA, which controls key mining belts in Kachin State—the source of a significant portion of the world’s heavy rare earths presents a tempting alternative.
India’s officials have reportedly expressed concern over the logistical nightmares of transporting large quantities of minerals across Myanmar’s remote and underdeveloped mountainous regions.
The road network in the area is primarily geared towards supplying nearby China, further complicating any potential export route to India.
More critically, even if India succeeds in acquiring the raw materials, it lacks the industrial-scale facilities to process them into high-purity rare-earth magnets.
While New Delhi is reportedly seeking partnerships with Japanese and Korean companies, this is a long-term endeavor that provides no immediate solution.
India’s strategy appears to be one of securing the “what [the minerals]” without a viable plan for the “how [processing and logistics]”, revealing a fundamental lack of foresight.
While its officials were meeting with the KIA in the shadows, India was simultaneously embracing the junta in plain sight. In a brazen display of realpolitik, an Indian Armed Forces delegation, comprising high-ranking officers from the Army, Navy, and Air Force, was warmly welcomed in Naypyidaw, the junta’s capital.
This visit, framed as a means to “enhance friendship,” offers tacit legitimacy to a regime that brutally overthrew a democratically-elected government and is now engaged in a nationwide conflict against its own people.
This overture to the junta is not an isolated incident. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with junta chief Min Aung Hlaing in China, where they reportedly discussed rare-earth mining, further indicates India’s willingness to engage with the very regime battling the KIA.
This engagement with a despotic junta is ostensibly justified by strategic imperatives: maintaining border security and counterbalancing China’s influence.
However, by embracing the junta, India is complicit in the regime’s violence and repression, alienating the pro-democracy forces and a significant portion of the Myanmar population that seeks to restore civilian rule.
This myopic focus on short-term stability ignores the long-term risk of a protracted civil war that could destabilize the entire region.
India’s duplicitous policy is a textbook example of a government caught between competing interests, ultimately failing to serve any of them effectively.
The “bipolar dance” with both the junta and the KIA is fraught with risk and contradictions. How can India expect a long-term, stable supply of resources from KIA while simultaneously engaging in military and diplomatic overtures to its sworn enemy?
This approach breeds mistrust on all sides. The junta will remain suspicious of India’s ties to the KIA, and the rebels will question the sincerity of an ally that is also politically and militarily legitimizing the junta.
Furthermore, India’s policy of engaging with the junta, an entity responsible for widespread human rights abuses and the overthrow of a democratic government, is a grave ethical compromise.
By welcoming armed forces delegations and holding high-level meetings with the junta’s leader, India is effectively legitimizing a brutal and illegitimate regime.
It sends a clear message that for India, economic and strategic interests supersede democratic values and human rights, a stance that severely damages its soft power and moral authority on the international stage.
India’s actions in Myanmar are not just strategically flawed; they embody a modern form of neocolonialism, where a more powerful nation exerts control and influence over a less powerful one without direct political or military occupation.
The primary driver of India’s engagement with the KIA is to secure access to rare-earth minerals.
This focus on resource extraction is a classic hallmark of a neocolonial relationship. Instead of seeking to help Myanmar develop its own processing capabilities or build a diversified economy, India is focused on treating Myanmar as a quarry for its own industrial needs.
The country’s resources are seen not as an asset for its people but as a commodity to be siphoned off to fuel India’s domestic manufacturing and technological ambitions.
This transactional relationship mirrors the historical patterns of colonial powers exploiting the raw materials of their colonies.
Neocolonialism thrives on political interference and the manipulation of local conflicts for external benefit. By simultaneously engaging with the junta and the KIA, India is playing both sides against the middle, treating Myanmar’s internal conflict as a means to an end.
It is not seeking to broker a peace deal or support the democratic aspirations of the Myanmar people. Instead, it is using the country’s instability to its own advantage, creating a scenario where its interests are served regardless of who holds power.
This behavior disregards Myanmar’s sovereignty and self-determination, reducing the nation’s political landscape to a tool for India’s geopolitical maneuvering.
A central tenet of neocolonialism is the external power’s indifference to the internal suffering of the nation it is exploiting. India’s policy demonstrates a clear lack of concern for the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Myanmar.
The focus remains squarely on its own security concerns, such as border stability, and economic needs, such as rare earths, while the immense human cost of the civil war is largely ignored.
This self-serving perspective, where the well-being of the local population is secondary to the needs of the external power, is a stark indictment of India’s approach.
Ultimately, India’s “pragmatic” approach is a cynical gamble that compromises its ethical principles for fleeting geopolitical gain. It risks tarnishing its image as a responsible regional power and an emerging democratic leader on the global stage.
By failing to take a firm stand on either side of the conflict—by neither fully backing the resistance nor exclusively dealing with the junta—India is a fair-weather friend to both and a reliable partner to neither.
This wishy-washy policy is increasingly not a sign of diplomatic dexterity but a symptom of a deeply flawed and opportunistic foreign policy that is likely to unravel in the face of Myanmar’s enduring political instability.
Shalini Perumal is a creative international development professional who has worked previously in Mae Sot, Thailand at Mae Tao Clinic, consulted for Finnish Refugee Council Myanmar, and served as a Writer/Researcher at Insight Myanmar Podcast. She is currently a freelance journalist working on a novel.
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