3rd August 1997

Book Review

How fares Sri Lanka with India?

Mission to India - from confrontation to co-operation by Stanley Kalpage Reviewed By Prof. Ralph Buultjens

The diplomats of many countries record their experiences. However, after fifty years of activity, Sri Lankan envoys have published few, if any, accounts of their sojourns abroad. We are thus deprived of the knowledge about the intimate interactions of foreign policy - the encounters of our representatives abroad; the kinds of guidance which our foreign office gives embassies, and how peoples and establishments overseas view Sri Lanka.

As a result, public discussion of foreign policy is only partly informed. We have little sense of whether we are getting value for budgetary outlays or of who our real foreign friends and adversaries are.

Stanley Kalpage's book is a welcome effort to lift the veil of mystery from a vital part of our diplomatic history. Mission to India is his memoir of almost two years as High Commissioner to India from May 1989 to February 1991. This was a critical period. Crisis upon crisis afflicted relations with our only neighbour.

Some of these tensions reflected facts on the ground - the presence of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka since 1987, the dramatic demand for their withdrawal by President Premadasa, the apparent breakthrough in negotiations between the LTTE and the government in Colombo and their tragic collapse, the clandestine support given to the LTTE by the Central Government of India (later suspended) and the state government of Tamil Nadu, the flood of refugees across Palk Strait and other happenings.

Many Sri Lankans then had dire apprehensions that India would take some fearsome punitive actions against this country.

Other tensions sprang from the minds of men - from the perceptions of Lankan and Indian policy-makers. President Premadasa's visceral suspicions of the Indian establishment in general, and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in particular, was only part of this. The implacable, although muted, distrust of the Sri Lankan government by the upper echelons of the Indian Foreign office was another part. Complicating matters was the hidden agenda of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi.

All this was going on while the Premadasa administration was engaged in a kind of brutal survival struggle with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and India had three Prime Ministers and several Foreign Ministers. Many trouble-makers further poisoned this unholy brew hoping for some political advantage. Rohan Gunaratna, in his work Indian intervention in Sri Lanka (1993) suggests that some of them were on the payroll of India's intelligence service, RAW.

Ambassador Kalpage was thrust into this vortex. In some ways he was a natural choice - an individual of wide academic and political background, a high-level bureaucrat much esteemed by Presidents Jayewardene and Premadasa, a member of several delegations to the United Nations and a person entrusted with sensitive assignments by successive UNP governments.

In a rather murky environment he had a reputation for integrity, diligence and candour. With these attributes, representing the Government of Sri Lanka in India seemed a fairly easy task. Neither Kalpage himself nor anyone else anticipated the traumatic tasks ahead.

Kalpage's memoir is a stirring description of the effort he undertook and the challenges he faced. All the major leaders of India march through these pages and we learn much about their views of Sri Lanka - many not favourable. His analysis of three Prime Ministers is particularly enlightening and he is always careful to distinguish between his own evaluations and the facts - an unusual detachment.

Thus, for instance, he finds Rajiv Gandhi congenial, respects V.P. Singh and has some distaste for Chandra Shekhar. But this does not colour his appreciation of their actions and intentions. Unlike some of our other high commissioners and ambassadors, whose principal pre-occupation has been self-aggrandisement for commercial enterprise, Kalpage knew that personal equations with those at the top is the essence of successful diplomacy.

He worked hard at it and enjoyed an access which few others in his position have had. The High Commissioner soon realised a fundamental truth about the Indian system: the bureaucracy is stronger than almost anywhere else and the cultivation of this iron grid is the pathway to influence. Politicians are shooting stars - bureaucrats hold up the sky!

There in no more complete account of Indo-Lanka relations between 1989-91 than that given in this book. It is also replete with many surprising details and little-known developments. From all this several themes emerge - themes especially important for understanding Indian attitudes. One of them is that Indian leaders are not very well informed about Sri Lanka and depend heavily on their officials and the media for their impressions. Another is the essential, often defensive, patriotism of these notables - a discovery Minister Ranjan Wijeratne made when Prime Minister V.P. Singh sharply rebuked him for imputing certain actions to the IPKF.

Among many more truths is Kalpage's recognition of the ways in which Indian regionalism affects foreign policy: for people in the North the Sri Lanka situation is peripheral; for those in the South it is vital. To the extent that South influences North, Sri Lanka rises and falls on the barometer of importance.

One of the primary functions of a high commissioner is to assess this internal balance and try to influence it. Kalpage explains these and other realities with lucidity and many illustrative anecdotes.

The most revealing part of this book relates to Sri Lanka itself. Kalpage's biggest problems and most trying burdens were not with Indians but with his Sri Lankan bosses and backup structure. President Premadasa was a forceful presence incessantly telephoning Delhi at ungodly hours of night or morning. This testifies to his deep interest and overall good intentions, but many of these directives were impulsive, unwise and lodged in unshakeable preconceptions.

While the President had much confidence in his envoy, he occasionally indulged in direct diplomacy - trying to contact Indian leaders personally with rather negative results. Ranjan Wijeratne, both foreign and de facto Defence Minister, was also singularly ill-equipped for any diplomatic demarche. It seems that Kalpage's skills were often more needed in dealing with his own principals than in interlocution with India's chiefs!

However the most irritating and petty obstacles came from the foreign office in Colombo. Kalpage demonstrates with many specific examples how this ministry hindered, obfuscated and consistently undercut his efforts. Whether this is due to institutional culture, a sheer lack of professional competence or a consequence of the personality of the then Foreign Secretary is not clear.

But the ministry, as it behaved in 1989-91, appears to have been more involved in back-biting and jealous in-fighting than with supporting Lankan missions abroad.

Stanley Kalpage believes that diplomacy is more than attending cocktail parties and hobnobbing with elites. He reached out to many constituencies, travelling widely to both discuss Sri Lanka and learn about India. This approach made him one of our most energetic and valuable representatives and he was able to keep in touch with key opinion-makers in the regions and provinces.

Some of the more engaging sections of this book highlight cultural diplomacy and recounts visits to various areas of India. This is presented with a rare lucidity that is the hallmark of Mission to India. As memoirs go, it is unusually well-written and cohesive.

Although this is an honest work it does not tell everything. Perhaps diplomatic prudence requires discretion. At least two happenings which reportedly occurred during Kalpage's stewardship get no mention. One concerns possible plans for some kind of Indian armed landing or attack on Sri Lanka around 1989.

Apparently a highly placed Indian politician got wind of this and tipped off Kalpage. The High Commissioner was then able to alert Colombo and by a series of adroit actions prevent it. If this is so, both India and Lanka owe him much for defusing a situation that would have been a disaster for both.

Kalpage also does not say anything about a widely spoken topic in Delhi at that time - the very careful and penetrating watch maintained on the Sri Lanka High Commission by Indian security. Only exemplary High Commissioners can escape the consequences of surveillance. Kalpage passed this test, but how many did?

And what were the implications for Indo-Lankan relations? There are, no doubt more unmentionable things which will emerge some day. At an appropriate moment, Kalpage should expand this book into an account of the unwritten history of Indo-Lanka diplomacy.

Mission to India is a personal story but it has larger dimensions, too. It is a valuable study of three seminal issues that are central to international relations today: cross-border intervention, big state-small state interaction, and the proliferation of ethnic nationalisms. All observers of international relations will do well to read it. They will find a lot that is instructive and informative. So much so that it is to be hoped Kalpage will quickly publish the record of his mission to the United Nations.

These reminiscences are of course, focused on events of six or seven years ago. Nonetheless, they send signals with contemporary messages. Some of them are alarming. M.K. Karunanidhi as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in those days did everything he could to assist separatism in Sri Lanka - and he blatantly lied to Kalpage and others about it.

Now, he is back in office and it is difficult to believe that his designs have changed. With weak governments in Delhi unable to exert much control over the states, what does this portend for Sri Lanka?

Indeed, Kalpage's book further reminds us that the last of a passing generation now holds power in India, Lanka's links with their successors are not at all close. Can we expect them to be more benign than their forbears? We desperately need to build bridges and engender fresh bases of friendship within the Indian polity. Unless we do so, there could be a heavy price to pay in terms of this country's integrity and unity.

Stanley Kalpage moved on to become Sri Lanka's outstanding representative to the United Nations and thereafter to be a leading analyst of world politics. But the problems and issues with which he grappled remain. It is much to his credit that they were contained and that confrontation moved towards co-operation between 1989-91.

But the pendulum can easily swing back and there won't always be a Kalpage to counsel restraint and handle matters so well. That is why all those concerned with regional and more distant foreign policy should read this book.

For better or worse, we are geopolitically married to India, and the insights it provides is one of the few innoculations we have against repeating the uneasy passages of the past.

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