India maintains formal relations with Myanmar’s military-backed government while, through Mizoram, engaging and assisting the Arakan Army (AA), which controls key territory along the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project route.

This two-track approach provides New Delhi practical access to the strategically vital Kaladan corridor and plausible deniability, but creates a contradiction between official respect for Myanmar’s sovereignty and de-facto negotiation with an armed group fighting that government.

The ambiguity risks satisfying neither side and undermines policy credibility; India will eventually need to clarify whether the AA is treated as an interlocutor based on territorial control or remain an unrecognised force, rather than sustaining both positions indefinitely.

India continues to deal officially with Myanmar through its military-backed central government. Yet along its eastern frontier, the state of Mizoram has openly maintained relations with, and provided assistance to, the Arakan Army, or AA. This carries significant strategic and diplomatic implications for New Delhi. The AA is an ethnic armed organisation in direct military conflict with the same authorities India continues to publicly endorse, while also controlling much of the territory through which the strategically important Kaladan project must pass.

The contradiction has become harder to ignore. On July 23, India and Myanmar signalled closer cooperation on rare-earth mining, adding a new economic dimension to relations between New Delhi and Myanmar’s military-backed administration. The development came less than two months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi received Min Aung Hlaing in New Delhi during an official visit from May 30 to June 3, 2026.

At the same time, Mizoram Chief Minister Lalduhoma has acknowledged maintaining good relations with the AA and recognised that it now controls Paletwa and other areas crucial to the Kaladan project.

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.

India’s Myanmar policy therefore 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.

The reason for this increasingly uncomfortable arrangement lies largely in the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project.

The project was designed to connect India’s northeastern states to West Bengal, through........

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