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India realises its follies in Sri Lanka 

28 Aug 2021

By M.R. Narayan Swamy  India has woken up to the reality that the use of coercion and pressure vis-à-vis a weak and smaller neighbour can be counterproductive to its own interests, says a prominent Indian expert on Sri Lanka. “As a rising India engages Sri Lanka to advance its great Asian power goal, New Delhi is realistic in the sense that it has lowered its expectations from Colombo,” said P. Sahadevan in his article in the just published “Eastward Ho?” – a scholarly book on India’s relations with the Indo-Pacific (Orient BlackSwan). A professor in New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, Sahadevan takes a broad sweep of India-Sri Lanka relations, particularly from the tumultuous 1980-90s to the present.  Like most Indian scholars, Sahadevan laments Sri Lanka’s deepening ties with China.  “The expansive Chinese role in post-civil war Sri Lanka, however, caused concerns in India, for this tended to erode the latter’s influence in the island and strategic primacy in the region,” he said.  “In a short span of time, China has firmly established a great deal of influence in Sri Lanka through a variety of economic development activities,” he said, adding that for Beijing, economic diplomacy is an instrument to promote its strategic interests.  At the same time, Sri Lanka, under the Rajapaksa brothers, was interested in shrinking India’s traditional strategic space and influence in South Asia.  The conflict Sahadevan notes that India provided limited military support to Sri Lanka during the conflict with a desire to see that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was defeated or destroyed, and Tiger threats to Indian security and stability in the region were neutralised or eliminated. “India was convinced that peace in Sri Lanka was unattainable so long as the Tigers were allowed to hold sway and singularly dominated Sri Lankan Tamil society…Its (India’s) constant expressions of concern over civilian death, pleas for a ceasefire, and exertions of diplomatic pressure on Sri Lanka to eschew its military approach to peace became meaningless exercises. They were considered to be rhetorical demands at best.” However, India’s limited support was incommensurate with Sri Lanka’s huge demands for weapons and military hardware which were provided by China and, to some extent, by Pakistan in the last phase of the war against the LTTE. Equally important was China’s diplomatic support in early 2009, the year the Sri Lankan military crushed the LTTE and wiped out its leadership.  Sahadevan notes that Delhi’s strong foreign policy community has developed a different understanding and perspective on Sri Lanka by emphasising the primacy of India’s strategic interests on the island rather than normative principles such as equality, human rights, peace, and justice for the ethnic minorities.  “While defending India’s interventionist policy in the 1980s in the name of its national interest, they have now become increasingly critical of some of the decisions that cause a sense of alienation in Colombo. The pragmatists advocate engagement between the two countries, and not belligerent posturing or political grandstanding to appease their respective internal political constituencies.  “Unlike in the 1980s, when Sri Lanka’s allegations about violations of its sovereignty were constantly rejected or brushed aside by Delhi, there is now a strong constituency of pragmatists who often remind policymakers that Sri Lanka is a sovereign state and that India should respect it.”  India’s mixed image India enjoys a mixed image – positive and negative – in the Sinhalese society, Sahadevan said. “It is the Sinhalese political elite who have built and projected India’s image more in negative than positive terms in Sri Lanka, based on their perception or misperception and experience of the regime in power.”  India is the third largest investor in Sri Lanka, but their economic relations are not rosy. Colombo has shelved the once talked about Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). “India’s economic stakes in Sri Lanka have become strong over the years but they have also become sources of its vulnerability and unpopularity in the island nation.”  Being a smaller country, Sri Lanka expects India to show greater sensitivity towards its national aspirations and to eschew hegemonic tendencies and domination, the book says. “The fact that a small state like Sri Lanka enjoys a greater room for manoeuvre is a strategic reality in the 21st Century.”  (The writer is a historian and journalist who reported from Sri Lanka for many years)


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