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On Wednesday Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh witnessed the signing of a landmark agreement in Beijing with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, aimed at easing tensions in a long-disputed border area. The Border Defence Cooperation Agreement addressed tensions that developed in April as a result of a three-week standoff during which Chinese troops allegedly made incursions into territory claimed by India in eastern Ladakh, in the Himalayas. In a speech to members of the Communist Party of China Central Committee’s Party School, Indian media reported Singh saying that maintaining peace and tranquility in border areas was “a cornerstone” of the India-China relationship. The sentiment was echoed by China. A Foreign Ministry spokesperson was report by ‘Xinhua’ saying the agreement “reflected the resolve of both sides for a friendly and cooperative relationship.”
Several other agreements were signed between the two Asian giants during the visit, with their discussions touching on sensitive matters such as transborder rivers, trade balance (weighted in favour of China) and Pakistan-based terror groups that India alleges are active in India and in China’s Xinjiang province bordering Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
India’s much smaller neighbour Sri Lanka being an island shares no land border with India, and can therefore have no territorial border disputes with India. Whatever disputes it does have, can anyway never match the gravity of the tensions that India experiences with either of its nuclear-powered neighbours, China and Pakistan. Yet India has managed to create a ‘border dispute’ of sorts with Sri Lanka over its maritime boundary with the island, by giving licence to thousands of Indian fishermen who poach with impunity in Sri Lankan waters.
Sri Lanka can have no ‘transborder river’ disputes with India, again because Sri Lanka is an island.Where trade is concerned, though the volume has been growing, the trade balance remains heavily in favour of India. Any threat to the region emanating from terrorism in Sri Lanka has been neutralised with Sri Lanka’s military defeat of the LTTE. And the prevailing balance of power makes it inconceivable that Sri Lanka would pose a military threat of any kind to India.
Now with barely three weeks to go for CHOGM, a major international conference where India’s participation is considered by the host, Sri Lanka, to be of paramount importance, New Delhi is keeping Colombo guessing as to whether its prime minster will attend.
So what’s India’s beef? What is it that makes it possible for India to reach accommodation with a far more formidable state — a rival in fact — on a whole slew of contentious issues, but so difficult to extend its support to a small but important neighbour on a sensitive issue that could, if mishandled, produce a negative fallout in bilateral relations?
India has no concentration of Chinese people within its borders. It has 70 million Tamils in Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister on Thursday moved a resolution in the state assembly calling for a ‘total boycott’ of CHOGM in November, citing unequal treatment of Tamils in Sri Lanka. The resolution had cross-party support that included the Congress party. India is heading for a general election next year, and it is evident that a weakened UPA government needs to win all the coalition support it can get. Earlier this year Tamil Nadu’s DMK party left the ruling coalition.
After the UN Human Rights Council resolution against Sri Lanka in 2012 the ‘Daily Mirror’ carried an interview with Rashpal Malhotra, known to be a close associate of Prime Minister Singh, who disclosed how the pressures of coalition politics influenced India’s decision making. “If the prime minister did not make the decision that he did, the current ruling government would have collapsed,” Malhotra said. Domestic pressures and ‘coalition compulsions’ led to India’s vote in favour of the resolution. Malhotra also said there had been a communication gap, which meant that the Indian Central Government was ill informed of the ‘giant strides’ made by Sri Lanka in reconstruction, rehabilitation and resettlement. Had that information been conveyed he said the result in Geneva would “most certainly have been an abstention” in 2012.
Following the recent Tamil Nadu assembly resolution Sri Lankan High Commissioner Prasad Kariyawasam told the ‘Hindu’ that the TN Assembly was “uninformed” of the status of Tamils in his country. But this time around it’s hard to see how the Indian Central Government could be unaware of developments in Sri Lanka, seeing that India was instrumental in facilitating them. The changes to the 13th Amendment sought by the Sri Lankan Government have been put into cold storage, and for the first time an election was held to form a Provincial Council in the North where Tamils form a majority. It was resoundingly won by the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which is the biggest group representing Tamils in Parliament. Does this historic development that moves in the direction of political accord with the Tamils, count for nothing in India’s calculations?
Indian diplomats constantly refer to the special status of the India-Sri Lanka relationship with links of culture, religion and history going back to antiquity. As such an Indian boycott would have connotations that are different from that of Canada. At the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group meeting earlier this year it was Indian diplomacy that smoothed the way for Sri Lanka to host the conference without too much controversy. The regional power’s see-saw between a policy of carefully cultivating goodwill through soft power projection on the one hand, and succumbing to increasingly shrill and hypocritical posturing by Tamil Nadu politicians on the other, tends to cast it in the role of a capricious and undependable ‘friend.’ As a country aspiring to a leadership role in its neighbourhood, India, by boycotting CHOGM, could set off ripples in the region that could go beyond the host country it snubs.
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