Editorial

Since those halcyon days when Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru arrived in Sri Lanka to a tumultuous welcome with locals of all communities lining the state drive from Ratmalana airport to ‘Queen’s House’, Indo-Sri Lanka relations have seen many ups and downs and twists and turns.

On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in a country no longer sharing that kind of deep and genuine affinity with India. The support India gave for a terrorist group to wreak havoc in Sri Lanka is not that far in the distant past to be easily forgotten. Its current geopolitical strategy is not helping it win friends either, despite all the optics of assistance given—from rebuilding homes in the North and East and providing hospitals and schools in the Central Highlands to bailing Sri Lanka out in 2020 when the country went into bankruptcy.

The crux of the visiting Indian premier’s mission was clearly to hurriedly ink some MoUs that will expand India’s existing footprint—and its influence on its southern neighbourhood. Energy connectivity and a Defence or Security MoU—the first of its kind for Sri Lanka after the defence agreement with Britain soon after Independence (rescinded in 1956)—followed up on earlier discussions, including the December Modi-Dissanayake summit, which was what the visitors were after.

The Indian shopping list stamped its presence strikingly in the Eastern Province, a marked shift from its one-time focus on the Northern Province, where they already have a presence. Of the seven agreements signed yesterday, a substantive part relates to the East—from the Grid Connectivity to the Oil Pipeline, the Sampur solar project and the Development of Trincomalee as an Energy Hub. The Framework Agreement, which partly partners with the United Arab Emirates, involves a petroleum and gas pipeline, the refurbishment of the WW2 oil storage tanks, the supply of bunker fuel and a refinery. The multi-sector grant assistance to the Eastern Province engages 33 projects.

Both the Energy Connectivity and the Defence Cooperation Agreement cap the purpose of the Modi visit. They were the icing on the cake brought by the visitors. Given Sri Lanka’s negotiating skills, or the lack of them, there is reasonable ground to believe the drafts were given by New Delhi and Sri Lanka simply capitulated under the weight of the diplomatic pressure. There was no talk on ECTA, the bilateral free trade agreement. The victory for the home team seemed limited to asking the visiting team not to visit Trincomalee as requested lest it be seen as a total capitulation.

The Defence Cooperation Agreement in particular must be seen in the larger context of India’s geopolitical drive to arrest China’s expansion in the Indian Ocean. Earlier in the week, PM Modi was expected to tell the Nepali PM in Bangkok, on the sidelines of the BIMSTEC summit, for India’s smaller neighbours not to be oversmart playing India against China. India has increased its high-level visits to island nations in the region, viz., Maldives, Mauritius and now Sri Lanka—all connected to maritime and security cooperation vis-à-vis the backdrop of counterbalancing China’s growing influence.

Furthermore, the ‘Bharat’ External Affairs Ministry, no less, keeps beating the old ‘Kachchativu drum’, arguing that the ongoing spate of poaching in Sri Lankan territorial waters by its fishermen is due to a historical wrong committed by the 1974 Indo-Lanka Agreement of ‘ceding’ (sic) the islet to Sri Lanka. Naturally, all the tears shed on behalf of the northern people of Sri Lanka once upon a time get washed away when India plays the victim rather than the perpetrator in the outstanding fishing dispute between the two states.

The new government in Colombo will need to brace itself for a fresh round of Indian domestic politics once again pulling out the ‘Sri Lanka card’—in this case, the ‘Kachchativu card’—in’ the playground of Tamil Nadu as state elections negotiate the bend. The state’s ruling DMK is also playing the same card by moving a resolution in the assembly calling for a revision of the 1974 agreement.

At the December summit in New Delhi between the two leaders, India upstaged the Sri Lankan delegation by including in the Joint Statement that a solution must be found in a humanitarian manner, the burden seemingly being on Sri Lanka. Yesterday, they merely reiterated their position, irrespective of international maritime boundaries and the environmental violations caused by their fishermen. Sri Lanka displayed its lack of political and diplomatic muscle to challenge that narrative.

The IUU (Illegal, Unreported, Unregulated) fishing dispute impacts largely the livelihoods of the Sri Lankan fisherfolk and the country’s economy. An even bigger question in the making is Sri Lanka’s claim, now pending at the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UNCLCS), to extend its ocean boundary. This application is being blocked by India, and it seems the Government in Colombo is out of its depth in pursuing this application at the UN, given the lack of legal, geological and diplomatic expertise advising them. India is simply refusing to give a date even to discuss their objections. Only the Sri Lankan President raised the continental shelf issue yesterday, with India remaining silent.

Despite the ‘special place Sri Lanka occupies in India’s foreign policy framework’, and the ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy proclaimed by India, these twin ocean-related issues that are critical for Sri Lanka went by the board yesterday.

While the Land Bridge project across the Palk Strait now seems abandoned, India seems to have also left open the controversial Adani project in Mannar, as it seems more interested in bulldozing the other agreements in the face of a novice government that, by these new agreements, ensures an extended Indian ascendancy over Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka did not raise the BRICS application for some reason, but India’s support for the debt-restructuring efforts, a digital transformation agreement which includes the controversial national identity card project and the purchase of Indian pharmaceuticals were on the table on yesterday’s high-level visit.

All of that contained quite a bagful—for India, which, somehow, Colombo seemed eager to downplay—keeping the national press out of yesterday’s proceedings apart from covering the guard of honour. As if they had something to hide.