June 12: A few days after history's worst regional cyclone hit the Irrawaddy delta in May 2008, causing nearly 1.5 lakh fatalities across Myanmar and destroying property estimated in excess of $10 billion, Manmohan Singh had received a very important telephone call at 7 Race Course Road, the Prime Minister's official residence. The caller was Gordon Brown, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Brown was not calling on his own. He was representing western nations whose leaders had almost overnight become bleeding hearts for the Myanmarese people. These were the same leaders who had immensely contributed to the sufferings of the very same Myanmarese people for decades with their pro-democracy sanctions against Yangon.

Britain and its allies held consultations over the devastating Cyclone Nargis and Brown was tasked on behalf of these western states to call up the Indian Prime Minister.

The consensus among these self-appointed knights in shining armour was that it was necessary to save Myanmar from itself. They believed that the junta in Myanmar - they still called it Burma - was incapable of organising relief.

Worse, their long-held prejudices against the junta had led them to also believe that the men in uniform in this impoverished country could not care less if their people died from diseases that natural disasters often bring in their wake.

Brown and Singh have long shared an exceptionally warm personal rapport. The former was shadow chancellor of the exchequer during much of the latter's tenure as finance minister in P.V. Narasimha Rao's government. They had a long and frank conversation about the situation in Myanmar, especially in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis.

The man in 10 Downing Street told his counterpart in 7 Race Course Road that Britain had decided to send relief supplies to Myanmar. Others from the western alliance would join in this enterprise.

Britain was in the lead in this effort because Aung San Suu Kyi's British connections - initially with Oxford's St Hugh's College and afterwards with her late husband and Oxford don Michael Aris - lent Whitehall's efforts a moral edge. But these relief plans would need India's strategic and logistics support as a neighbouring country.

After Brown unveiled his strategy and went into great detail about the compulsions behind the western humanitarian initiative, Singh, in his usual unflappable style, asked the British Prime Minister a question that would appear very basic to any interlocutor of this kind. "Have you consulted the government of Myanmar about this?"

The question had never occurred to the British leadership or to others who were behind this effort. The generals in Nay Pyi Taw were untouchables for the western powers: they had no legitimacy in the eyes of Britain, the US and others who shared a deep hatred for the junta.

Their plan was to bypass the Tatmadaw, the armed forces of Myanmar. Precisely what Narendra Modi appears to have done this week, as more information leaks about the "revenge raid" against the Northeast insurgents.

But India's then Prime Minister would have none of it. Singh advised Brown that although sending relief to the cyclone-hit people was a noble endeavour it must be done through the legal government of Myanmar.

A small and relatively powerless country that could not stand up to the West it may be, but Myanmar's sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected at all costs.

Brown heard out the Indian Prime Minister, consulted his western allies, and Singh's advice was eventually accepted. Singh and most of his predecessors have all respected this principle. Which is why India and Myanmar have enjoyed a robust friendship in recent years.

It is an irony that the Modi government has gone against India's own long-held and principled approach to Myanmar's sovereignty, with consequences that are unpredictable for now but may turn out to be far-reaching for New Delhi's entire neighbourhood and the near abroad.

So far, Myanmar's reactions have been nuanced. But that may change if its army - the only strong institution that country has known for as long as anyone can remember -- concludes that the circus in New Delhi by Modi's spin masters has crossed the limits that Myanmar's national pride can tolerate.

In a subtle message yesterday, Myanmar's ministry of foreign affairs prominently displayed without comment an article from its constitution that made New Delhi's claims of hot pursuit of Naga rebels untenable and unacceptable to Nay Pyi Taw.

"No foreign troops shall be permitted to be deployed in the territory of the Union" of Myanmar, it went.

The display, pregnant with hidden meanings that are open to interpretation, further said "the Union shall not commence aggression against any nation" and that Myanmar "upholds the principles of peaceful coexistence among nations".

The most imminent danger to India's carefully cultivated interests in this neighbouring country, which are critical to national security in the Northeast, is that BJP hotheads and chest-thumpers may drive Myanmar into a Chinese embrace.

The Modi government appears to have handed China an opportunity that Beijing's most optimistic strategic planners could not have hoped for.

By way of timing, the NDA government chose the worst possible date for the hot pursuit. Aung San Suu Kyi is currently on her first visit to China and yesterday she was received by no less a personality than President Xi Jinping.

In a welcome reserved for heads of state or government -- ironically reminiscent of Modi's own visits when he was only a chief minister - Myanmar's opposition leader was received by Xi in the Great Hall of the People.

Her red carpet welcome included important meetings with the state councillor, Yang Jiechi, the vice-chairperson of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, Shen Yueyue, and the vice-chairperson of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Wang Jiarui.

It is only logical that relations between Myanmar and India would have figured in any regional review during Suu Kyi's talks in Beijing. Assailed in the past for her British connections, Suu Kyi will have to go one step beyond her opponents in wearing nationalism on her sleeve in the impending elections, which are expected to give her a role in running Myanmar.

The belated wisdom within the NDA in toning down the bravado over this week's events are indicative that these factors have been considered, but only ex post facto, in relations with Myanmar.