Executions in Myanmar signal that generals don’t care what world thinks of them. In this, for Delhi, a sharpening challenge

Two of the four activists executed were the well known and respected pro-democracy activists, Ko Jimmy and the Phyo Zayar Thaw, who had demonstrated in the days after last February’s coup that they could mobilise thousands to rally against the junta. Phyo Zayar Thaw had also been a member of Parliament of the National League for Democracy, and had worked closely with the party leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was recently transferred from house arrest to a prison where she has been placed in solitary confinement.

With last year’s coup and now the executions, Myanmar has regressed at least three decades. The executions are, of course, intended to spread fear among the groups that continue to resist the junta’s takeover. India, a member of the Quadrilateral grouping, stands out as the one major democracy that has not yet said anything about the executions. For a country that aims at a larger role on the world stage, this is unfortunate. Delhi’s “twin track” approach — that of engaging with the junta to secure its own interests, while persuading it to return to democracy — will not work if Delhi cannot find its voice at key moments in its own neighbourhood. Myanmar’s decade of hope, during the early years of which the notoriously insular military rulers loosened their repressive grip but without giving up control, has given way to another era of darkness. India can be silent only at the risk of being misunderstood.