India’s Myanmar policy now rests on a contradiction that New Delhi can no longer easily conceal. A foreign policy carrying such serious regional and security implications must be clearly articulated and made subject to public scrutiny, rather than pursued through ambiguity and deniable channels.
In public, India continues to deal with Myanmar through its military-backed central government. That position was reinforced when Prime Minister Narendra Modi received Min Aung Hlaing in New Delhi during an official visit from May 30 to June 3, 2026.
Yet along India’s eastern frontier, a different policy appears to be taking shape.
Mizoram has openly acknowledged maintaining good relations with the Arakan Army, or AA, an ethnic armed organisation fighting the same authorities New Delhi continues to receive as Myanmar’s government. Mizoram Chief Minister Lalduhoma has recognised that the AA now controls Paletwa and other areas through which India’s strategically important Kaladan project must pass.
This is not merely an awkward diplomatic overlap. It exposes the two-track nature of India’s Myanmar policy: New Delhi formally deals with one authority while adjusting, in practice, to the power exercised by another.
The Kaladan Reality
At the center of this policy is the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project.
The project was designed to connect India’s northeastern states to West Bengal, through the Bay of Bengal. Cargo would travel by sea to Sittwe port, move up the Kaladan River to Paletwa and then continue by road towards Mizoram.
For India, however, the Kaladan project is not simply a trade corridor. It provides an alternative route to the northeast, reducing dependence on the narrow Siliguri Corridor linking the region to the rest of the country. It is therefore one of the principal physical foundations of India’s Act East Policy.
But the political assumptions on which the project was built have eroded. The original agreement was made with Myanmar’s central government. That government no longer retains control of much of that route. The AA captured Paletwa in January 2024 and has since consolidated its position across most of Rakhine. More recent Indian assessments indicate that the organisation controls all but a handful of townships in Rakhine State.
India may possess the legal agreement under which the Kaladan project was conceived, but the project now lays bare the hypocrisy at the heart of its Myanmar policy. Narendra Modi’s regime continues to recognise and engage Myanmar’s central authorities while simultaneously cultivating ties with the Arakan Army, which is actively at war with those same authorities. Through Mizoram, this relationship has moved beyond indirect contact into open cooperation and support. India is therefore not merely responding to a new reality on the ground. It is maintaining relations with both sides of the same war while refusing to explain publicly where its policy actually stands.
The AA is fully aware of the leverage it now holds. Its political wing has already signalled that the Kaladan project may proceed, provided India is prepared to work with it in terms of mutual benefit. This is the arrangement now taking shape behind New Delhi’s formal insistence on sovereignty and non-interference: public recognition of one authority, and practical negotiation with the armed force challenging it.
Mizoram and New Delhi’s Plausible Deniability
New Delhi may be tempted to present Mizoram’s contacts with the AA as local improvisation. The evidence points towards something more organised.
Foreign affairs and defence remain Union responsibilities. Mizoram cannot independently recognise a foreign authority or conduct national foreign policy. The Assam Rifles, meanwhile, is a central force rather than an instrument of the state government.
Ministry of External Affairs records also refer to assistance extended under the headings of ‘humanitarian assistance’ and ‘disaster relief medical aids’ in connection with the Arakan Army. Former Mizoram chief minister Zoramthanga and officials from India’s state-owned IRCON were also seen inspecting the Kaladan project. A senior AA representative has also met the Mizoram chief minister, during which the organisation reportedly expressed its interest in the project’s continuation.
The relationship has since acquired a more permanent institutional form. In February 2025, an AA focal person met M. Laikaw, the BJP-affiliated Chief Executive Member of the Mara Autonomous District Council in Siaha, and conveyed the organisation’s intention to establish an office there. According to local sources, by June 2025, the AA had reportedly opened offices in Aizawl, Lawngtlai and Siaha—all within Mizoram.
Most significantly, on two occasions in December 2025, local witnesses saw AA personnel receiving and transporting seven truckloads of military supplies from an Assam Rifles camp in Mizoram.
Taken together, these are not the signs of a border state acting spontaneously at the margins of Indian policy. They point to a regularised channel involving political contact, an institutional presence, official funds, project coordination and central security infrastructure.
The more credible explanation is therefore not that Mizoram has escaped New Delhi’s control. It is that Mizoram provides New Delhi with political cover, consequentially keeping its own role out of view.
Through the state government, India can communicate with the AA without recognising it, negotiate access to Kaladan without admitting that the project depends on a non-state army, and preserve formal relations with Myanmar’s military-backed authorities. Mizoram absorbs the visibility. New Delhi retains the benefit.
Sovereignty at Home, Convenience Abroad
The contradiction becomes sharper when India’s conduct abroad is placed beside its security doctrine at home.
New Delhi has long treated armed separatism in the northeast as a threat to national sovereignty. The AA is not listed by India as a terrorist organisation, and it would therefore be inaccurate to describe the relationship as official financing of a designated terrorist group.
But the political double standard remains.
India rejects the idea that armed organisations can use territorial control to compel recognition from the Indian state. In Myanmar, however, it is accepting precisely that logic because the AA controls territory required for an Indian strategic project.
The message is difficult to disguise: armed ethnic autonomy is unacceptable when it obstructs India, but negotiable when it serves India.
This does not mean contact with the AA will automatically revive separatism across northeast India. The more immediate damage is to India’s own credibility. Sovereignty cannot remain an absolute principle at home while becoming a flexible instrument across the border.
A Hedge That Could Satisfy Neither Side
India’s strategy is ultimately an attempt to avoid picking a side in the conflict.
It wants continued relations with Myanmar’s military-backed government because it remains the formal state authority. It wants the AA because the AA controls Kaladan. It also wants to protect its investment, prevent China from monopolising influence in Rakhine and preserve access regardless of which authority emerges stronger.
New Delhi may present this as pragmatism. But India is not standing outside the conflict as a passive bystander; it is maintaining ties with both sides of it. In doing so, it risks earning the trust of neither.
Myanmar’s military authorities may conclude that New Delhi is strengthening an organisation fighting to remove them from Rakhine. The AA may conclude that India wants its cooperation without political recognition or a durable commitment.
Nor is the AA dependent on India. If New Delhi retreats under diplomatic or domestic pressure, the organisation can seek support elsewhere. India could then lose the confidence of Naypyidaw, prove unreliable to the AA and still fail to secure the corridor.
A Policy Built on Strategic Ambiguity
The problem is not that India speaks to competing sides in a civil war. Governments routinely do so when authority fragments.
The problem is that New Delhi behaves as though no fundamental policy change has occurred.
India cannot indefinitely speak of Myanmar as a single sovereign authority while organising strategic access around an armed administration replacing that authority in Rakhine. Nor can it hide behind Mizoram whenever the relationship becomes inconvenient.
India must eventually decide how it views the AA. If it remains merely an insurgent force threatening a neighbouring state’s territorial integrity, official funding and material cooperation require an explanation. If it has become a legitimate security and development interlocutor because it exercises effective control, New Delhi should acknowledge that reality and accept the diplomatic consequences.
It cannot credibly maintain both positions forever.
The Kaladan project was designed as a corridor advancing India’s influence into Southeast Asia. It now risks becoming a corridor exposing the contradictions of Indian foreign policy itself.
Author: Researcher from Bangladesh and works for an international think tank