NEW DELHI: India’s Sri Lanka policy is an unprecedented mess. The easy way out for Indians to console themselves is to blame the Rajapaksa brothers and, of course, China. The truth is, however, more bitter and complicated. A genuine self-critical autopsy will reveal that India is to blame for much of its present predicament.
This is not to overlook the calculated decision by Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his elder brother-cum-Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to snub India by embracing China in a manner few countries would do. Yes, Chinese loans, which Colombo finds it difficult to repay, lie at the bottom of the problem but Sri Lanka may not have done what it did but for its distaste with decades of dealing with an overbearing India.
India’s overview of Sri Lanka can be broadly divided into four time periods:
- 1983-90, when the Tamil separatist campaign began until Indian troops returned home after failing to tame the LTTE;
- 1990-2006, when Eelam War II erupted until the Rajapaksa brothers waged the final battle against the LTTE;
- 2009-14, when the Tamil Tigers were crushed until the Congress-led UPA was voted out in India; and
- 2014-, when Narendra Modi became the Indian Prime Minister until now.
Sri Lanka’s dominant Sinhalese community has not forgiven—and is unlikely to forgive—India for harbouring, training as well as arming Tamil militants from late 1983, the violence transforming a once idyllic Indian Ocean island into a blood-soaked nation. Willfully or otherwise, New Delhi allowed the LTTE to decimate all its rivals, inadvertently planting the seeds of fascism which destroyed the group in the long run but after badly denting the soul of every community in Sri Lanka. This period also marked New Delhi’s loudhailer diplomacy when it lectured Colombo publicly on how it must tackle a thorny problem, which was partly made in India. Everything combined to lead to an India-Sri Lanka pact that was virtually thrust down on President J.R. Jayewardene. Indian troops were deployed in Sri Lanka’s northeast under the impression that everything will now on be hunky dory but it led to a costly war with the LTTE.
Even as India licked its military wounds, the LTTE, led by Velupillai Prabhakaran, assassinated former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. New Delhi began to punish the LTTE in many ways but its ties with President Ranasinghe Premadasa—who ordered Indian troops to go home—remained sour until the latter was blown up, a la Gandhi, by a suicide bomber. Sri Lanka failed to tame the LTTE during Eelam War II and III, leading to a Norway-brokered ceasefire between the warring sides in 2002 in which India played a key but covert role. This is when the LTTE blundered by indirectly propping up in the presidential battle, the man who became its nemesis—Mahinda Rajapaksa. He and his brother Gotabaya razed the LTTE, dramatically rewriting Sri Lanka’s political script.
Once the LTTE was gone, a quiet transformation took place in the India-Sri Lanka relationship. Sri Lanka knew that India’s long shadow was over, at least as far as the ethnic issue was concerned. A confident Sri Lanka showed its back to the West and Tamil Nadu and, enjoying the status of a nation which had put down a ruthless terrorist group, began building relations anew with the world. China, which, along with Pakistan, had provided immense military support against the LTTE, was one of the immediate beneficiaries. India, after ceasing to be the player it used to be in Sri Lanka, watched the changes. The Rajapaksas knew that India had played a key covert role in crushing the LTTE and so a semblance of diplomatic normality prevailed.
Once the Rajapaksas became convinced that India was behind the blooming of Maithripala Sirisena, who became the President with the traditionally pro-India Ranil Wickremesinghe as the Prime Minister, they lost whatever chemistry they may have had with Prime Minister Modi. It became a rapid downslide once the Rajapaksas returned to power with a vengeance, determined to get out of the Indian shadow forever and forge new ties with other countries, notably China. In today’s world, all South Asian countries, not just Pakistan, are aware that it is in their interest to court China, at least to keep India at bay or—putting it differently—pit the world’s two most populous countries against one another. It is an unequal challenge since China, unlike India, has deep pockets to play its strategic games. China’s killing of Indian troops and repeated incursion on the border is to show the world (South Asia included) who is the big boss.
Sri Lanka is also convinced, perhaps for the first time, that the present India has no moral right to say how Colombo should overcome its still persisting ethnic tensions. For long, India was seen across South Asia as a successful democracy and a society which provided, despite many shortcomings, a sense of belonging to its various minorities. This is no more the understanding in the region, Sri Lanka included. The more New Delhi pursues a strong line vis-à-vis its Muslim population, the more it loses the right to speak up for persecuted minorities beyond its borders. Indian commentators who urge New Delhi to take a strong line on the Tamil issue or/and Colombo’s human rights record, are barking up the wrong tree. Most Tamils in Sri Lanka are equally disappointed with India for what they feel is New Delhi’s desire to build ties with Colombo at the cost of everything else. As for Sri Lanka’s Muslim minority, the dominant feeling is that Modi’s India can never be a friend.
From the late 1980s when (the now late) India’s High Commissioner J.N. Dixit conducted himself (in the eyes of most Sri Lankans) as a de facto viceroy, most Sinhalese have a poor view of Indian diplomacy although some diplomats have fared well in Colombo. When President Chandrika Kumaratunga was to pick a prime minister, her choice was Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, a Tamil with no mass base. It was India which pushed Mahinda Rajapaksa’s case and ensured his elevation. When the tsunami ravaged Sri Lanka, Kumaratunga was abroad and it fell on the shoulders of Mahinda Rajapaksa, as Prime Minister, to take charge of the massive rescue and relief efforts. One of the persons he turned to for advice was an Indian diplomat he counted as a friend. Yet, when he became the President, a senior Indian diplomat rubbed him the wrong way by telling him that he must make India his first port of call. The President was highly displeased. As he told an aide, he himself wanted to do that but he did not like being told, that too so bluntly. “How many more years is this person (Indian diplomat) going to be in Colombo?” Mahindra Rajapaska asked.
Just as Indians (or at least sections of them) have vowed never to forget what happened during Mughal rule, what China did in 1962 and what all Pakistan has done since 1947, Sri Lankans are unlikely to forget—or forgive—what India did in the 1980s vis-à-vis Tamil militancy. India’s later decision to crack down hard on the LTTE is seen widely as a consequence of the Rajiv Gandhi killing and not due to any love for Sri Lanka. By allowing China to have a major say in its economy, Sri Lanka has effectively put India (and many other countries) on notice. New Delhi cannot ditch or antagonize Colombo nor can it pretend that things are normal. The Rajapaksas too cannot be wished away. In the long run, China is bound to put pressure on Sri Lanka (which will find it difficult to resist) to build deeper intelligence links between the two countries even as it sets up a goal post not far from India’s southern shores.
India is unlikely to see a new dawn in Sri Lanka in the immediate future.
(The author is a senior journalist with long experience of Sri Lanka. Views expressed in this article are personal.)
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