Sri Lanka: Where from here India

relations?

N Sathiya Moorthy-11 September 2015

Analysis

In spite of the change-over to an 'India-friendly' Government

in Sri Lanka, a sense of dejavu hangs in the air as Prime Minister Ranil
Wickremesinghe makes New Delhi his first overseas destination since assuming office
in January - and legitimised through a popular mandate last month. India has no real
role now and possibly later, too, on the crucial ethnic issue while on CEPA, the least
focussed one just now, local constituencies have been assured that PM Ranil "will not
decide upon or discuss" it with counterpart Narendra Modi. In between hangs the
fishing issue and the China factor, which too seems to be moving along the indecisive

non-course.
India's Sri Lanka relations has been fizzy/fuzzy at the best of times, with assumptions
replacing actualities on both sides, with the result, the end game in every round has
been disastrous for bilateral relations in general and India's acceptance level
otherwise, particular in the larger regional context. India shed some of its political
baggage with the change of elected leadership in 2014. It has to ensure that
institutional baggage too is not replaced by ideological preoccupations and
presumptions, as much in the neighbourhood as on the domestic front. Sri Lanka has
a greater opportunity - and India thus the occasion - to rework bilateral relations, what
with the former now having a 'national government' led by the 'Big Two' and the latter,
by the first-ever 'majority Government' in full 25 years, when much of their bilateral
problems had erupted or continued.
India has no meaningful role to play in what essentially is being reduced to a Sri
Lankan national discourse on power-devolution. It can become a part of the expected
debate for and on a new Constitution, where the main focus could be something else.
The Sri Lankan State, Government and the ruling combine will have to be seen as
accommodating 'legitimate Tamil aspirations' within a 'united Sri Lanka', to which the
TNA is agreeable. If the 'Big Two' in the Sinhala polity, led and represented by
President Maithripala Sirisena (SLFP) and PM Ranil (UNP) agree on core issues of
their shared 'national' concerns, they would not require the likes of TNA to add up
numbers for a two-thirds majority in Parliament, or a national referendum, otherwise.
While moderates in the TNA have yet again registered a convincing victory over
traditional hard-liners both within and outside in the 17 August parliamentary polls,
their federalism demand does not have many takers in the majority Sinhala community
and the Sri Lankan State apparatus. Neither has the Sinhala national polity the
stomach for power-sharing with the Provinces, nor their regional leaders the appetite
for the same, despite the India-facilitated 13-A being on the statute for eventful 25-plus
years.
The TNA has also been demanding 13-plus for long. It can be expected to use - or, will
be forced to use, as in the past - its new-found status as the 'Leader of the Opposition'
to argue its case even more forcefully, both inside and outside Parliament. Despite the
overall Sinhala mood favouring accommodation of post-war Tamil political aspirations,
they may still fall short on what the Tamils' demand. The 'Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist
polity', represented in this Government, as in the previous one, would allow only '13minus', whatever such terms means and stand for.
The Tamils, represented by the TNA, has since re-introduced 're-merger' of the North
and the East into their list of demands, after keeping it out in the early rounds of
forgotten political negotiations with the predecessor Rajapaksa regime. The Muslims
and Sinhalas in the East do not yet have faith in the North-dominated Tamil polity. The
Sri Lankan Establishment is even more unlikely to feel comfortable about the re-

grouping of the Northern and Eastern Tamils on the one hand, and with the Muslims,
on the other. India as the facilitator of the North-East merger along with 13-A under
Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, 1987, would be caught between multiple sticks if the 'remerger' discourse were to erupt at the national-level.
In the immediate context, too, the Ranil leadership has expectedly held direct
negotiations with the US, on re-directing UNHRC-led 'war crimes probe' to the
'domestic' route. The Rajapaksa presidency had refused to negotiate with the US and
wanted only the 'Indian vote', not mediation ahead of the 2012 UNHRC vote. The US
that needed the Indian vote for more than one reason first in 2012 and later in 2013,
did not bother India, or bother about India when it had the numbers in 2014, and India
decided to abstain over larger 'sovereignty' issues.
Replay on fishing issue
The more direct fishers' issue concerning India too is playing out the past - of Sri
Lankan arrest of 'poachers' from Tamil Nadu, but freed ahead of every exchange-visit
or at the behest of the Government of India, and pressure from the State Government.
There are acknowledged limitations in expecting positive results from the two-nation
fishers' talks, dictated by the TN Government since commencement, and interceded
by the hard-line sections of the TNA Government in Sri Lanka's Northern Province.
Greater the deadlock, greater would be the pressure from the respective
State/provincial governments on their national leaderships.
It is no different on the China front, either. Leadership changes do not automatically
mean massive foreign policy-shifts. From a particular Sri Lankan perspective, they are
balancing between India and China. From an overall Indian perspective, Sri Lanka
was playing China against India, and vis versa. Independent of domestic politicoelectoral proclivities, Governments serve 'national interests', deriving from a
combination of historic narrative and perspectives about the future.
Based on domestic political constituency interests and rivalling each other, both in
terms of ideology and electoral exigencies, the Sri Lankan 'Big Two' play on either side
of a 'national spectrum', without crossing the consensus-imposed outer-limit(s).
Whatever is true of Sri Lanka's India-China policy is also true of India-Pakistan and
US-China policies. For India to have expected too much from a change of Government
in Sri Lanka, particularly when between them two, China alone has the no-tags big
money for development and also the UNSC veto for similar reasons, it may instead
have to recalibrate its Sri Lanka vision and mission in the coming months and years, to
arrive at a balance.
Yet, India can expect relative Sri Lankan neutrality viz China and Pakistan on
immediate security concerns. Another Chinese submarine many not park in a Sri
Lankan port, and another Pakistan Air Force fighter would refuel in the country (as had
happened in the 'Bangladesh War', if at all the two nuclear neighbours in South Asia

were to go to battle. India can at the same time hope for adding depth and width to the
tri-nation maritime security cooperation agreement, also involving Maldives, which was
anyway at work all along.
What India can do?
Yet, India can serve its self-interests, particularly on the China-centric security front
only if it is able to play a more direct role in persuading the West and the rest to keep
away from what is still "India's traditional sphere of influence". Independent of whoever
is in power in the two countries, India should ask itself if the China submarine episode
- and thus Sri Lanka's greater dependence on China, too - could have been avoided
had it taken a different decision, first on UNHRC-2012, and later on PM Manmohan
Singh cancelling his Commonwealth Summit visit in November 2013?
On the ethnic issue, India's political and administrative leadership(s) need(s) to do
more and consistent work at home, to 'encourage' and 'persuade' the southern Tamil
Nadu polity and Government from 'interfering in the internal affairs of a friendly
neighbour', that too against the popular Tamil mandate obtained by the TNA repeatedly, both. During the current, long run-up to the TN Assembly polls, the Modi
leadership, both of the party and the Government, has to engage with counterparts in
Tamil Nadu (starting with his own State unit), and see that there is some uniformity in
the collective Indian approach that does not sacrifice larger national interests and
perspectives.
On the fishing issue, the Centre needs to encourage TN Government's fiscal initiative
on 'deep-sea fishing' front, and at the same time re-assure Sri Lanka that it would not
buckle under TN pressure on the UNCLOS-notified IMBL and Katchchativu islet, as it
has always been seen as doing on the ethnic issue - 'accountability' and UNHRC
probe included. The non-starter of CEPA already having found passing mention on
limited Sri Lankan discourse on PM Ranil's Delhi visit, his UNP chairman and
International Trade Minister, Malik Samaraweera's assertion that it would not be
discussed or decided upon at the Delhi talks should be carrying the day.
What India as a larger and immediate neighbour may have to do is to re-engage Sri
Lanka from the scratch, utilising the new domestic political realities existing in that
country, and re-visit some of its own past initiatives, decisions and perspectives.
Keeping truly bilateral issues of the fishers kind aside for independent handling,
uninfluenced by the SLT Diaspora-managed TN political/public opinion, India should
revisit its Sri Lanka policy, as it did with 'post-Cold War' geo-strategic policy, but not
necessarily in subsuming it in the other.
It is only then can India hope to be accepted as one, and as leader, in the 'traditional
sphere of influence' -- and respected as the same by the rest of the world, the US and
China included. PM Ranil has a global perspective and better understanding of
regional equations, though tilting more towards the US and the rest of the West than

India and China, together and separately. Yet, India may have had the last of Sri
Lankan interlocutors at the highest level, for the two nations to find the middle and
mutually-supportive path for all times to come, bereft of avoidable outsider
interference, over the medium and the long terms.
(The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, Chennai
Chapter)
Posted by Thavam