NEW DELHI: Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner to India Milinda Moragoda spoke on Sri Lanka-India Relations: The Way Forward at the Rashtriya Raksha University’s Confab on National Security. He gave a broad overview of ties with India before answering questions from scholars and experts. Here is an edited excerpt based on the material supplied by the Rashtriya Raksha University.
At the outset he acknowledged a “trust deficit for obvious reasons, trust is a two-way process”. The obvious reason was China but as Moragoda underscored, “there was a time when the U.S. was the elephant in the room during president Jayawardene’s time, so elephants may keep changing but relations go on.”
He said Colombo and Delhi were working on a “strategic document, preparation of which was on just before I took over. We are fine tuning it and when I move on hopefully my successor will take it to the next level.”
The first stage of this ongoing process was transactional, where some transactions were on the table and both sides hoped to build confidence through that process. The second stage would be defined by strategic direction. He hinted this would not be easy given that “democracy is untidy; we are both South Asian democracies, so we have to work through this untidiness and build trust.”
“For me, the most important aspect is people to people, if we can get that done the rest will follow. Cultural ties are crucial since we come from the same fold. So how to build ties through Buddhism, Hinduism with its different faces including the Ramayana, and Islamic links?”
Aviation connections were strong although these would need to be rebuilt once Covid was over. Before the pandemic tourists from India made up 25 per cent of total tourists heading to Sri Lanka. Looking ahead, Moragoda said pilgrims from his country could resume visiting Buddhist sites in India although they should focus more on unexplored places in Odisha and Gujarat rather than just Bihar.
He called for more educational exchanges, pointing out that southern Sri Lanka has a lot in common with Kerala. “We can have schoolchildren from either side coming and going. We are working on having an honorary consul in Thiruvananthapuram. India has also approved a consulate in Kolkata.”
Cooperation in sustainable energy offered good possibilities. In north west Sri Lanka, there was an estimated potential of 5000 megawatts of electricity that could be generated. Plans for a solar plant were also in the discussion stage.
In the area of defence, there were 700 Sri Lankan military students attending courses in India at any given moment. “We are the single largest recipient of scholarships that will cement the strategic bonds between us.”
India-Sri Lanka Counter-Terrorism Cooperation
I think the cooperation at an intelligence level, technical level is very good, it’s excellent. At the strategic level, the NSA regional dialogue is something which Sri Lanka supports and we are very happy and privileged to have the secretariat located here. India has been supportive and in my view, we have to be prepared for a new era. The bombings in Sri Lanka have redirected our intelligence operators. India’s NSA wants to try to expand participation in that particular group which is something I think that should be done. I think India’s leadership is important in that context and India is providing that leadership.
Tamil Nadu Fishermen In Sri Lankan Waters
The challenge has been around for a long time. As I see it, one is the legal aspect and the reality of the law. There is an ecological aspect because bottom trawling is completely destroying the ecology of that area. The third aspect is the political dimension and the livelihoods dimension. We have to see how we can work together at the political level. India has been trying different initiatives to support its fishermen to do more deep sea fishing. I think a permanent settlement is going to be the challenge. At the moment we have to manage it in a way where the ecology is preserved and lives are not lost. In the longer term, we have to have a strategic goal of training fishermen, providing them with multi-day trawlers and so on so they fish further away. We have to keep discussing this at the fishermen’s association level and at the government level. We can’t walk away from it. We are neighbours, fish know no boundaries and fishermen also probably don’t understand boundaries. Both sides have to do this with a certain level of understanding because there is much emotion on both sides. In Jaffna, in northern Sri Lanka, as you know, there are protests.
Sri Lankan Tamil Refugees In India
When our finance minister Basil Rajapaksa visited Delhi this time, he discussed this issue and indicated that anybody who wanted to return would be welcome. He plans to work with the UNHCR and probably in the coming months there will be more focus on this.
Bilateral Relations In The Context Of SAARC
SAARC is complex. It is a noble objective but there are many challenges and there is an alternative in BIMSTEC. Sri Lanka as you know is now chairing BIMSTEC, unfortunately because of the pandemic we were not able to do as much as we would have liked. I think the BIMSTEC summit is due at the end of March and the new chair would be Thailand. I don’t have a solution for SAARC. The secretary general of SAARC is one of our most eminent diplomats and I think I’ll leave that challenge to him. For me I look at what works and the bilateral side (with India) is what we have to work on.
Extra Regional Powers In The Indian Ocean
If you look at our history, our opportunities came from the sea and so did the challenges. The fact that we are located south of India, possibly one day the fastest growing economy in the world, how do we work with India. And then how do we link to the rest of the world, whether it’s China or the United States or Europe. We are a small nation and always our relationships with everybody including India are asymmetrical. We can’t call the shots at the table but we have to maintain our dignity, so that is the challenge: how we manage challenges and get opportunities.
The Tamil Nadu Factor
On the Tamil Nadu relationship, we are working on it. I was one of the negotiators for the peace process and have dealt with the LTTE and even during the late president Premadasa’s time. Reconciliation is complex when you have different ideas, identities and competing tensions but that is what the president (Gotabaya Rajapaksa) is trying to do and there is an ongoing discussion. Unfortunately, the pandemic got in the way of this whole process but I think the internal discussion has to first be concluded. As Sri Lankans, how are we going to live together, and then we can look at the external dimension. About the 13th amendment, I have said maybe look at other paradigms that could include devolving power further down, and restructuring the upper levels. Every government that has been elected since 1977 has been trying to find a solution to this problem, so patience is required on all sides and sincerity of engagement.
Current Challenges
The main challenge for us is economic. That is what this government as well as any future government in this country will have to face for the next four five years. We will have to go through economic restructuring as the pandemic brought to the surface issues that were already there including underlying weaknesses and the fact that since independence we have been spending more than we have been earning, and the economy was inefficient. India has a crucial role to play. We have identified four pillars of involvement with the most immediate aspect of food and medicine, then petroleum including collaboration on the tank farm (in Trincomalee), help to bolster our reserves and the fourth area, increasing investment from India to Sri Lanka. That and tourism will take our economy forward.
Opportunities In Education Sector
We have a large number of students studying in India on the technology side and interestingly even in fine arts. But an interesting model to follow would be what HCL is doing in Sri Lanka. It has started software development work, not outsourcing but actual software development work. They have just taken I think 20,000 square feet in one of our main buildings and are planning to employ 2000 to 3000 young people. They are actually taking people students from high school and paying for their education, giving them scholarships. There have been several other high-end top software development companies in India expressing interest in Sri Lanka. I think that (investment) should happen in the next month or two. I visited the ICCR and we have discussed the idea of increasing the number of scholarships for Sri-Lankan students to come to India.
Easter Bombings, Radicalization, China’s Presence
On the Easter bombings, the security agencies of the two countries are cooperating very closely. Radicalization is a threat but through the years we have dealt with different types of radicalization. On the Chinese footprint issue, there is no security presence of the Chinese here. The Chinese do run ports all over the place including in Australia and elsewhere. They also manage a terminal in Colombo, the CICT. If a company like Adani had existed in 2006, they would have probably been able to get the CICT port because it’s a natural fit. Our dialogue with India is important to build trust and understand each other and ensure no red lines are crossed. Nobody has told us that India does not accept Chinese investment because China is one of the biggest investors in the world. As long as the investment does not create any strategic issue for India we should be able to entertain that investment.
Buddhism And India
The relationship between Sri Lanka and India, one of the defining parameters is Buddhism, because that was the greatest gift to us and the respect we have for India comes from that. For Sri Lankan Buddhists, a visit the holy sites in India is considered a real blessing.
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