Indo-Lanka relations:

A historical perspective

By K. Godage

Indo Lanka relations stretch back over 2500 years.

India, to the Buddhists of Lanka is - ‘Dharmadveepa’ or the land of the Dharma and the land of the Buddha.

President Kumaratunga described the relationship thus “India is our immediate neighbour, with whom we have been inextricably linked by ties the origins of which have long been lost in the mist of time.

We have with India the broadest and deepest interaction that we as a nation could have with another state. India therefore possesses the capacity, given her vastly disparate strength and influence, to help or hinder to a great extent.

In a word the India factor is crucial to the existence of our nation. Forging and sustaining a mutually trusting and supportive friendship with India must therefore be for us, not just a conscious and soundly judged policy, it is a natural and vital ingredient for our national well-being.”

This relationship between our two countries has undergone many phases, from being like two peas in a pod to absolute hostility.

Before independence was achieved, our leaders drew inspiration from Mahathma Gandhi and also from other Indian leaders such as Shri Nehru and Valabhai Patel. Close personal relations existed between the leaders of our countries.

Despite this there would perhaps have been a lurking fear of independent India and it came as no surprise then that though we had received our independence from Britain, we became dependent on the former colonial power for our defence. (Each of our countries chose to fashion its own foreign policy in terms of its perceived national interest and historical experience).

The government of Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake, the first Prime Minister, signed a Defence Agreement with the United Kingdom . The agreement permitted Britain to use the Trincomalee harbour and the Oil tank facility, which the British had constructed during the Second World War.

It was thought at the time that the defence arrangement with Britain was to secure the country from perceived Indian hegemonism.

The Pannikar doctrine named after KM Pannikar emphasized the importance of the Indian Ocean for the defence of India. According to Pannikar this ‘vulnerability’ made it necessary for Lanka or Ceylon to become an integral part of India‘s defence structure.

India it was said considered herself to have become the successor to the British Raj and therefore sought to use the same principles of the British to incorporate other states and to also keep out external forces from the sub-continent. This, at the time was seen as a part of India‘s strategy to establish her hegemony and dominance over the region.

Ceylon / Lanka had been a separate country for over 2500 years. The government at the time of independence decided that she must remain an independent country within the Commonwealth and should not form any part of India ‘s security perimeter.

Despite this Defence agreement with Britain , the leaders of the two countries had the most cordial of relations both personal and official. The only issue that was an irritant to both countries concerned the status of the indentured labour that had been brought to Ceylon by the British to work on the tea plantations.

1956 saw a sea change in our foreign policy, the government of Solomon Bandaranaike abrogated the Defence Pact with Britain and sought to cultivate the closest of relations with India and countries of the Communist Bloc stating that the country was now ‘Non-Aligned’ and “committed to the hilt” and not neutral.

Bandaranaike, the ‘word smith’ was of the view that Non-Alignment and the ‘Pancha-Sila’ principles would provide the necessary security for the country.

The commitment was total and we came to depend on the good-will of our big neighbour for our security. In the years that immediately followed, the two countries cultivated the closest of relations. This was despite the fact that Ceylon maintained a friendship with China , which had gone to war with India in 1962.

The death of Pandit Ji was a loss to Lanka as it was to India . He was respected and loved. Respected as one of the great leaders produced by the sub-continent. He was certainly not just an Indian statesman he belonged to the world and Lanka indeed was proud of him.

He was succeeded by Lal Bahadur Shastri as Prime Minister. It was during his tenure that the principal irritant in Indo-Ceylon/Lanka relations was resolved in talks between Prime Minister Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Prime Minister Shastri.

The early 70s witnessed certain developments of significance which changed the power balance and the structure of the Sub-Continent with the creation of Bangladesh.

India now emerged as the predominant power on the sub-continent after the dismemberment of Pakistan. Small nations such as Lanka found India to be more assertive.

India made it obvious to the smaller neighbours that her security took precedence over theirs. The strengthening of India ‘s security forces in the 1980 and her growing self-confidence began to be perceived as a threat by smaller nations on the subcontinent. In 1974 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi visited Lanka.

The warm personal ties between Mrs. Bandaranaike and Mrs. Gandhi were such that the relations between our two countries could not have been better.

This factor solely contributed to the settling of the thorny problem of Kachchativu, a little islet off the Jaffna peninsula which had a Catholic shrine, and was claimed by both countries.

India conceded that it was Sri Lanka territory and withdrew her claim.

1977 was another watershed in relations between our two countries. Mrs. Bandaranaike was defeated at the polls and a new right wing government elected to office. At the time the 70 year old Jayewardene came into office as Prime Minister the Indian Prime Minister was the 80 year old Moraji Desai.

They soon became firm friends. Their respective political opponents were Mrs. Bandaranaike and Mrs. Gandhi. Whether it was this factor alone that contributed to the special relationship one would not know but the two leaders had as warm friendship as the friendship between the two women Prime Ministers

The new government of JR Jayewardene broke with the past and embarked on a domestic and foreign policy which was ahead of its time by perhaps ten years and gave India cause for concern.

The Indian establishment which was obsessively security conscious in this period, considered the pro-west policies of the JR Jayewardene government, such as opening the economy to the west, the granting a long lease to the US to establish a VOA relay station, offering of the one hundred oil tanks in Trincomalee to a US based company, the Coastal Corporation as serious threats to its security. Relations between our two countries soured to such an extent that India began to interfere in our internal affairs and destabilized the country using the ethnic issue.

The destabilization of Sri Lanka was made easier by the attitude of the government and the Sinhala people who were not inclined to concede to the Tamil minority, rights which they claimed for themselves.

The level of the insurgency was upped. India not only gave refuge to Tamil militants but also helped them with arms, training and money.

The magazine ‘India Today’ in an article titled ‘Ominous presence’ filed by correspondent Shekar Gupta, now Editor of the Delhi based Indian Express newspaper, identified the training camps and gave a detailed account of what the Indian authorities were doing to destabilize Lanka.

To state that the militants wrecked havoc on this country would be an under-statement. This phase ended with the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord in 1987 and the letters exchanged between Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and President Jayewardene which circumscribed our sovereignty and achieved for India what Professor Sankaran Krishnan stated was the principal reason for India’s intervention in our ethnic conflict.

To quote Professor Sankaran Krishnan “Indian interest in Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict lay more in securing her own geo-political concerns and less in either any concern for either the Sri Lanka Tamils or in the likely fall-out of the ethnic conflict in Tamil Nadu”.

It has been alleged that certain constituencies in India found utility in the continuance of the conflict than in its resolution but I wish to state that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was genuinely interested in the resolution of the conflict than in its continuance.

Many in Sri Lanka including the late President Premadasa were of the view that the objective of the Indian government was the ‘Bhutanisation’ of Lanka.

Most unfortunately this fear does still exist in the minds of many in this country, as is evidenced by the recent statements of the JVP and the PNM.

In the period that followed President Jayewardene, relations hit a new low with President Premadasa demanding that the IPKF be withdrawn from the country.

Proactive role

Relations between our two countries significantly improved after Mrs. Kumaratunga assumed office as President.

Unfortunately many factors have inhibited India from playing a more positive proactive role in her relationship with Lanka.

Among these factors are her past experience in Lanka, coalition politics in India, (the invariable dependence on Tamil Nadu parties for the forming of governments at the centre) has affected the political will for India to play this more positive role which her position as the regional power demands.

The expectations in Sri Lanka were immense but nothing changed though the relationship was restored to an acceptable level. It was during Mrs. Kumaratunge’s Presidency that Lal Jayawardena’s proposal to enter in to Free Trade Agreement became a reality. This was when Manmohan Singh was Finance Minister.

New dimension

1992 saw a new dimension emerge, the new UNP leadership which won the Parliamentary election in that year reached out to the BJP government in Delhi.

The BJP leadership and the Sri Lankan leaders had forged close personal relations but the BJP government has only served up words of support, agreed to training the armed forces of Lanka and placed on record its commitment to apprehend Prabhakaran for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.

Yashwant Sinha the Foreign Minister visited Lanka, the first by an Indian leader in over a decade. The visit was essentially a goodwill exercise which did not seem to have any tangible purpose.

The relationship between our two countries warmed up during the period that the UNP was in office and the Indian government is said to have covertly assisted Sri Lanka in many ways and was even on the verge of concluding a Defence Cooperation Agreement formalizing Indian assistance to Sri Lanka.

The administration of Mr. Ranil Wickremesinghe was determined to root the relationship in deep economic cooperation. Towards this end he took many bold initiatives.

Nuclear power

Let me now flag an important fact that the new Nuclear power which is India with a 400 million middle class has today a strategic relationship with the US, they describe the relationship as a strategic partnership and this certainly has implications for the small countries in the Indian Ocean region. Let us also try to identify what may be India ‘s concerns nay, objectives vis-à-vis Sri Lanka:

1. India would seek to ensure that Sri Lanka does not cultivate close relationships with China and Pakistan which India would perceive to be detrimental to its security interests;

2. India would seek to ensure that Sri Lanka did not offer any ‘facilities’ in any form to either Pakistan or China .

3. India would seek to ensure that India’s preponderance in the region is not challenged due to our forging close links with China, Japan or Pakistan .

4. India would consciously seek to expand and extend her influence and interests in every sphere, political, economic, social and cultural.

To my mind India should not seek to impose her towering presence in any way, she should, as I have advocated over the years adopt the Gujral Doctrine which is well worth stating and restating in India’s interest and in the interest of her relationships with all the countries of the region.

The ‘Gujral Doctrine’ in the words of Mr. Gujral himself was as follows: “ India does not seek reciprocity but gives all that it can in good faith and trust. Second, no South Asian country should allow the use of its territory against the interest of a fellow country in the region.

Third, that all of us in South Asia must respect each others territorial integrity and sovereignty. And finally, we should settle all disputes through peaceful bilateral negotiations.” These were the five principles of the Gujral Doctrine.

As he himself stated “these five principles, if scrupulously adhered to, is bound to achieve a fundamental recasting of the regional relationships including I venture to state, a radical change in the tormented relationship between India and Pakistan , in a friendly and cooperative mould”. Most unfortunately for the countries of South Asia , this doctrine was abandoned after Mr. Gujral left office.

I venture to state that had the Gujral principles been followed by India she would have been accepted as the regional power but not considered a threat in any form by the other countries in the region.

Taking into account the incontrovertible fact enunciated by CBK in my ‘preamble’, namely that we need to cultivate the closest of relations with India in our own interest, what should be our strategy to preserve our independence and sovereignty?

This is perhaps the biggest challenge facing this country today. We should also ensure that we will NOT be isolated internationally; this is an absolute imperative.