Maldives, Sri Lanka and the “India Factor”

Colombo has been a traditional friend and New Delhi a friend in need of this strategic yet vulnerable republic, the smallest member of SAARC.

There is no record of when the first settlers arrived in the Maldives. It is thought that an original Dravidian population from South India settled here as early as the 4th century BC, and that two millennia ago a second wave of settlers, Aryans from India and Ceylon, eventually dominated the islands. The Maldivian language, Divehi, is Indo-Aryan in origin, and Buddhism was the religion here till AD 1153, when the king was converted to Islam by a travelling Moroccan saint and the entire country adopted the Muslim religion. Unlike its nearest neighbours India and Sri Lanka, the Maldives has suffered little direct foreign domination. Over the centuries, the islanders repulsed attempts made by the Portuguese, the Malabar potentates and others to control their atoll. All along, the contact with the outside world tended to be through Sri Lanka, although the Maldive sultans enjoyed good relations with the Moghul empire as well.

In December 1887, confronted with internal skirmishes fanned by Indian Bohra merchants based in Colombo, the Sultan of Maldives signed an agreement recognising the suzerainty of the British. Patterned after the treaties the British signed with some Indian princes and the Himalayan kingdoms, the agreement recognised British monopoly over foreign affairs but provided for non-intervention in domestic affairs. The British authorities in Colombo left this protectorate in "splendid isolation" until 1932, when, following a court rebellion, Sultan Muhammad Sams-ud-Din Iskander III renounced some of the royal prerogatives held for 800 years. He introduced the Maldives´ first written constitution, which largely resembled the Donoughmore Constitution of Sri Lanka of 1931.