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Wednesday, Dec 28, 2005

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India and Sri Lanka: so near, yet so far

Nirupama Subramanian

While New Delhi seems clear about what it cannot do in relation to Sri Lanka's search for peace, there is no clarity on what it should do.

FOR A quick take on how much India matters to Sri Lanka, look no further than the planner of every new government that takes office in Colombo. Undeterred by editorial writers in the Sri Lankan press railing against "paying pooja to the Delhi maligawa [temple]," the first foreign visits of newly elected Sri Lankan leaders are inevitably to New Delhi. In 2001, Ranil Wickremesinghe was on a plane to India within days of taking office as Prime Minister. After the assassination of Lakshman Kadirgamar in August 2005, the first stop for Anura Bandaranaike, who succeeded him as Foreign Minister, was New Delhi. Following the recent election in which Mahinda Rajapakse was elected President, his Foreign Minister, Mangala Samaraweera, made a quick trip to the Indian capital. Now, President Rajapakse is in New Delhi, also on his first official visit abroad.

In a recent interaction with journalists in Colombo, President Rajapakse explained it thus: "We are neighbours and we have to work very closely. In my first policy statement, I mentioned India. Somebody from the West also asked me this question, `why India?' It is because they are a very important country."

It is that obvious. Yet since at least 1991, neither Sri Lanka nor India, both brooding over the past, has dared or wanted to acknowledge this so openly or directly. The main issue in the bilateral relationship is the island's Tamil question. The Indian intervention in the conflict in the 1980s had ended in two stages, both messy: the departure of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in 1990 from North-East Sri Lanka, at the explicit request of the Sri Lankan government, and to the relief of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and; the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 by a suicide bomber of the LTTE. More than the first, it was the second that defined New Delhi's "hands off" Sri Lanka policy all through the 1990s.

Yet, it has also been clear over these 15 years that despite the official disengagement, India retains more than detached interest in the goings-on across the Palk Straits. More than that, in Sri Lanka, all sides to the conflict and all shades of political opinion believe India holds the key to how the story will unfold.

The reasons are well known: one side to the conflict is the LTTE, which India banned as a terror group from 1992; its leader, Velupillai Prabakaran, is wanted by India as the prime accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. Mr. Prabakaran wants to establish and rule over an independent state of Tamil Eelam in north-eastern Sri Lanka, a short boat ride from Tamil Nadu; many politicians in Tamil Nadu were supportive of the LTTE in the past, and some continue to be even today.

Additionally, there is the perception — true or not — that India will consider as a threat to its own unity any political solution in Sri Lanka that goes beyond the Indian model of federalism.

In line with its "hands off" policy, India demurred from articulating its interest or concerns outright, or from getting involved in Sri Lanka directly. But there was much backroom diplomacy. In the mid-1990s, from behind the scenes, New Delhi gave full backing to President Chandrika Kumaratunga's plan to marginalise the LTTE politically through a new Constitution that promised to be federal and inclusive of Tamils. India also gave ancillary support — in the form of intelligence inputs — to concurrent military action by the Kumaratunga Government against the LTTE.

But the plan depended too much on the good sense of the Sri Lankan political establishment to see the Constitution through Parliament. It also underestimated the misery the war would cause to the Tamil people in the North-East, and miscalculated the military staying power of the LTTE. The plan finally failed on both political and military fronts. Sri Lanka — Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims — ended up sidelining President Kumaratunga instead of the LTTE. The people voted in a government that wanted to end the war and make peace with the LTTE. Such was the extent of war-weariness that it seemed people did not care even if it meant the state virtually signing off responsibility for the North-East and for the Tamils there to the LTTE, as long as the Tigers left the south alone.

It was this stage that the limitations of New Delhi's official "hands off" policy in relation to securing its interests became obvious. The Wickremesinghe Government wanted Indian assurance that it supported a peace process that empowered the LTTE in unprecedented fashion. Given the popular backing for Mr. Wickremesinghe then, India could have opposed or criticised his moves only at the risk of sounding like an advocate for a return to war. Thus it was that New Delhi found itself nodding agreement with the Norway-facilitated peace process as it was conducted then, despite its inherent and obvious drawbacks.

For sure, India was not totally helpless. New Delhi was apparently one reason the idea of an interim self-government for North-East Sri Lanka, along the lines proposed by the LTTE, a major plan of the Wickremesinghe-steered portion of the peace process did not go further. India also built bridges with the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna — a party opposed to most elements of the process — in the run-up to the last parliamentary election. The JVP has a major presence in the Sri Lankan parliament and supports Mr. Rajapakse's Government.

For the rest, New Delhi has been a bystander to a process that has often looked like drifting away from the oft-repeated Indian position that the Sri Lankan Government and the LTTE must arrive at a "negotiated settlement acceptable to all communities, and reflecting the pluralistic nature of Sri Lankan society, within the framework of a united and democratic Sri Lanka". India watched as the LTTE grew politically powerful, liquidated rival Tamil politicians, and absorbed the once moderate Tamil United Liberation Front in its fold. Despite its obvious influence over them, India also watched leaders of southern Sri Lanka — the country's "national leadership" — contribute to the LTTE's ascendance through manifold short-sighted moves to the point where the group is now confident it stands at the threshold of an independent Eelam.

Is it time then that New Delhi shed its "hands off" policy and asked itself if it needs to play a more activist role in the search for a solution to Sri Lanka's conflict, if only to ensure that the conflict does not drag India into its vortex at some later stage in ways more complex and dark than we can imagine now?

Sea Tigers's issue

At least one academic has already made a veiled hint for military action by India to protect its interests. In his recent book, Conflict Over Fisheries in the Palk Bay, V. Suryanarayan, formerly of the Centre for South and South East Asian Studies, University of Madras, has said New Delhi must "develop the political will ... to neutralise the Sea Tigers at the earliest opportunity."

In the last two years, the LTTE has been winding up the demand that the Sea Tigers be recognised as equivalent to a navy controlling the waters around North-East Sri Lanka. It almost convinced the Norwegian ceasefire monitoring committee that this was the only way to avoid incidents between the Sea Tigers and the Sri Lankan Navy. While the Sea Tigers do pose a threat to the maritime boundaries of both Sri Lanka and India, direct action against them is too far out a plan unless New Delhi is also ready to take on the military consequences that could follow for Sri Lanka. A mediatory role for India in brokering peace is also ruled out because it would mean re-establishing links with the LTTE. But while the Indian Government seems to be clear about what it cannot do in Sri Lanka, there is no such clarity on what it should.

President Rajapakse wants India to "at least" become a co-chair in the peace process along with Norway, the United States, Japan, and the European Union. This, he says, will enable a role for India in the development of the North-East. Indications are that India is willing to finance health, housing, and educational projects in the North-East, routing money through the Sri Lankan Government and keeping clear of the LTTE.

This may have its uses. But perhaps more importantly, India needs to more forthright in articulating its concerns so that it is communicated to and understood clearly by all sides to the conflict in Sri Lanka. These concerns of course relate to the LTTE, and the present dispensation in Colombo fully shares them. But New Delhi must make clear to President Rajapakse that the LTTE cannot vanish with India becoming a co-chair in the peace process. Or funding projects in the North-East. Nor even with the signing of the long-pending India-Sri Lanka defence cooperation agreement, initiated by the Wickremesinghe Government in 2003. In any case, the draft of the agreement suggests only the formalising of existing cooperation between the two defence establishments. It is certainly not an Indian commitment for on the ground assistance to Sri Lanka in case of a war with the LTTE.

India needs to convey in no uncertain terms to President Rajapakse that his government, its allies — the JVP and the Buddhist monks — and other southern politicians have no option other than to make major concessions in the form of political devolution to the Tamils; that these concessions are difficult within the existing unitary framework of the Constitution, and; the Sri Lankan political establishment must think seriously of a federal solution, because that is the only answer to the LTTE 's separatism. This should be India's most important message to the visiting President of Sri Lanka.

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