Caught in the Domestic Crossfire

“The fact for now remains that Sri Lanka is keener on a CEPA with India than is the other way round. It's also a continuing process, the CEPA having taken off from where the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) had left bilateral economic and trade cooperation. That was at an advantageous position for Sri Lanka, as India consciously and conscientiously decided to confer advantage on all small neighbours with their inherent limitations in trade and economic matters, to help them grow alongside.”
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by N. Sathiyamoorthy

(July 21, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) Call it a coincidence or otherwise, every time there are visible signs of greater dynamism in the bilateral relations between India and Sri Lanka, domestic forces at work see Satan Inc in all their dealings. Worse still, some of them keep working overtime, either directly or through proxies, to stall such progress on the track as if their own future depended on such efforts than any positive approach to domestic politics.

There can be no denying the overall and overwhelming Sri Lankan enthusiasm in the upcoming visit of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the island-nation to participate in the SAARC summit. Earlier this year, Colombo wanted to honour him at the Platinum Jubilee celebrations of Sri Lanka's Independence – and this time round, there now seems to be an official component to Singh's visit that would go beyond his presence and participation in the SAARC summit. Yet, on the ground there are disconcerting voices that would want to find fault with India on a whole range of issues. You thus have JHU Minister Champika Ranawake claiming that India had trained 29,000 LTTE militants in the past. It would be interesting to find out how the Minister divined such a figure when at no time during the ethnic war had anyone claimed that the LTTE had such a strong military force, to begin with – leave alone India training all of them. Then comes the criticism by JNP leader Wimal Weerawansa against the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between the two countries that otherwise seemed to be ready for signing during Prime Minister Singh's visit. In its bid to out-shout the JVP, the JNP seems to have been caught in the vortex of traditional India-baiting agenda of the parent party. The earlier round of India-bashing by JVP strongman Somawansa Amarasinghe did not help matters, either.

The fact for now remains that Sri Lanka is keener on a CEPA with India than is the other way round. It's also a continuing process, the CEPA having taken off from where the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) had left bilateral economic and trade cooperation. That was at an advantageous position for Sri Lanka, as India consciously and conscientiously decided to confer advantage on all small neighbours with their inherent limitations in trade and economic matters, to help them grow alongside.

Weerawansa's charge that the opening up of the services sector in Sri Lanka under CEPA, for instance, would flood the island-nation with immigrant Indian personnel is not only unfounded but is also unrealistic. As is true of fellow Sri Lankans under the circumstances, qualified services sector personnel in India too dream of a future in the West, not in a war-torn nation where ethnicity and the Indian identity have made them suspect for a long, long time.

For their part, trade and business organisations in Sri Lanka have welcomed CEPA with open hand – though there again you may have individuals and groups that might stand to lose if easier imports from closer quarters could make food and medicines cheaper for the common man in Sri Lanka, and thus impact on their profit-margins of generations.

It is another matter how the purported contents of a classified document as CEPA could have been known to individuals well outside the Government when members of Sri Lanka's Cabinet of Ministers had not discussed it at the time – and continued to debate the same even now.

It is not as if Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans are alone to blame. On the Indian side, you now have peripheral political parties whipping up anti-Sri Lanka sentiments by reviving the fishermen's issue. It is saying a lot in an election year, and by pressuring the more knowledgeable Tamil Nadu Government into taking tougher positions in the recent past, they are not helping bilateral relations.

The fishermen's issue has its origins not in the ethnic strife in Sri Lanka, but has been accentuated by the same, owing mainly to the security concerns of the island-nation. There is thus pressure now on the Government of Tamil Nadu and the Government of India for Prime Minister Singh to take up the issue with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse when they meet on the sidelines of the SAARC summit.

Otherwise, as a sovereign State, Sri Lanka has the rights responsibility and duty to choose its friends and allies just as India does. Given however their geographical positioning and proximity, they cannot choose their respective neighbours. There are already apprehensions in a section of the Indian strategic community that in its overzealousness to overcome the continuing military threat from the LTTE, the Sri Lankan Government may have played out its international card as indiscriminately as it has been effective.

The India-bashing parties in Sri Lanka need to understand that New Delhi's concerns in the bilateral context do not flow from the FTA or CEPA, but do not stop with the ethnic issue, where there is already an unanimity of view within Sri Lanka, too. Sovereignty apart, Colombo's taunting of New Delhi on the strategic front using its island-locale as the bait had stirred concerns and emotions in India. There is no clarity yet on this score, though on other fronts there is a great unanimity of views.

True, Sri Lanka has every sovereign right in the matter. But India-bashers in the country need to acknowledge India's sovereign duty to protect its own sovereignty and territorial security, likewise. A harmonious and homogenous way out would be for them both to work together towards securing their shared Indian Ocean neighbourhood from involvement/intervention by third nation. India has the military capabilities to do so, and Sri Lanka should display the required political will – which often seemed to succumb at the doors of domestic expediency of one kind or the other.

It may be time, India and Sri Lanka looked closer at their own backyard, if only to remove the irritants that have continued from the past, through a commonality of purpose and continuity in the processes. Democracies that they are, neither country can/should wish away the concerns of their respective populations. Instead, they should try and bring around disconcerted domestic voices to accept the common good – at the same time ensuring that they do not play third parties and third nations against each other, that too in a moment of intellectual bankruptcy and institutional weakness.

(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), the Indian policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi.)
- Sri Lanka Guardian