On the ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ of Indo-Lanka relations

[This article first appeared in 'The Nation', on November 28, 2010] 

In a thoughtful piece titled ‘For a treaty of peace, friendship and cooperation with India’ in The Island of Saturday, November 27, 2010, former ambassador, K. Godage has laid out the basis on which Indo-Lanka relations should be developed.  He has considered the history, the geopolitical realities, the today-factors and outlined the ‘ought to be’ in cogent terms.

Godage refers to the ‘Gujral Doctrine’ and suggests that India should revert to that progressive and far-thinking document when considering for relations with other South Asian countries.  He has pointed out that there is a complete trust-breakdown at present between India and other South Asian countries and this is true. 

India has not been the good-hearted neighbour at all times and even when it helps out (as some claim it did during the last stages of the war), such largesse has been considerably outweighed by India’s pernicious history of fermenting division and orchestrating destabilization, not to mention the natural and legitimate moves to secure economic benefit in overall engagements with Sri Lanka.  The Gujral Doctrine insists that India gives and accommodates without demanding reciprocity.  That’s a nice wish.  The reality is the opposite and indeed one where there is little ‘giving’ or ‘accommodating’. This is not surprising because one really cannot expect much from a nation that cannot ‘give’ anything to nor ‘accommodate’ the vast majority of people in Kashmir and indeed has limited its giving to maiming and killing. 

Godage says that Sri Lanka should not anger or cause concern in India by appearing to undermine India’s strategic regional interests.  This is sensible advice.  We do not live in a flat world and we must keep in mind that we don’t have the military might to back us in a self-righteous shouting match with India, even though India, after the IPKF fiasco must know that a military adventure in Sri Lanka will cost it dearly (India, we note, is hard pressed to keep her own terrorists at bay and ‘Kashmir’ ought to have taught the regional thug that an irate citizenry will harass an invader to the point of tears and beyond).  We need to keep things in perspective, yes. 

Bilateral relations, however, is a two-way street even between parties of unequal strength.  India’s non-Gujral ways of operation can push Sri Lanka to seek non-intruding help from other sources.  There is no help that comes without strings, of course, but there are strings and there are strings. Some come with the tag ‘reasonable price’ and some with the ugly sticker ‘blackmail’.  Relations with India, sadly, appear to be more of the latter type whereas the China and Iran strings seem more palatable. 

There is a reason why Sri Lankans are wary of India and this is not just because of Indira Gandhi breast-feeding Eelamism and terrorism and her son Rajiv playing J.R.Jayewardene every which way he could.  There is a reason why Pakistan is seen as a friendly country.  There’s a reason why the Minister of External Affairs G.L. Peiris has to say ‘we haven’t taken devolution off the agenda’ when his Indian counterpart, S.M. Krishna says ‘Sri Lanka must not sort out her outstanding issues including finding a political solution for the Tamil people’, even though devolution was not mentioned in the ‘friendly’ observation.  I can’t imagine G.L. Peiris responding in this manner if for example Makhdoom Shah Mahmoon Qureshi, the Pakistani Foreign Minister said ‘it would be nice if Sri Lanka sorts out all outstanding issues pertaining to grievances and aspirations articulated by the Tamil people’.   

It will take statesmanship of a far superior kind and one which necessarily includes a high degree of humility on the part of India to come anywhere close to the Gujral Doctrine.  As of now, India has got the rhetoric right and that’s such an easy and such a tiny part of the deal. 

Godage was a diplomat and this shows in the tone of his writings. He says, ‘Please allow us to sort out our problem and do not seek to impose external solutions to problems we understand best and need to sort out in our national interest.’  Yes, India wants us to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. Even when they kick us in our national gut.  Until a time comes when civility and respect underline all bilateral relations between India and her neighbours, niceties will be surface-made and will not have any depth in political, economic or any other reality. 

I doubt if S.M. Krishna will hear Mr. Godage.  I am not hopeful he will hear me.  That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it Mr. Godage.  We need dialogue and we beg for it.  India wants monologue.

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Some thugs can’t even name themselves…

It has been reported that Rajiv Gandhi, on his way to sign the Indo-Lanka Accord, had told Tamil Nadu politicians that the agreement he was to sign with the then president of Sri Lanka, J.R. Jayewardene, would bring Sri Lanka under the Indian orbit, just like Bhutan.

The before and after of the Indo-Lanka Accord is well known, but considering the recent joint-statement issued by the ministers in charge of external affairs of the two countries, it is worth a recap.  India, under Rajiv Gandhi and before him, under his mother, Indira Gandhi, armed, funded and trained Tamil separatists from Sri Lanka and as such has remained the principal instigator of and contributor to terrorism and all its horrendous and tragic consequences.  

The ‘after’ of the Accord saw the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) engaged in wanton acts of brutality against the very people whose interests the accord was supposed to uphold. The IPKF is guilty of destruction, torture, death, displacement, rape, petty theft and other such ‘peaceful’ operations in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. Having rescued the LTTE from certain defeat via the Accord, India ended up having to deal with the wrath of the terrorists it spawned, breast-fed, spoon-fed and gun-fed.  ‘Tail between legs’ was how the IPKF left Sri Lanka.  By this time, natural antipathy to a regional thug had beefed up the fascist JVP of Rohana Wijeweera to launch its second and infinitely more bloody insurrection, leaving 60,000 dead in just over 2 years. 

India left behind one thing. The 13^th Amendment to the Constitution, whose political worth lies in the legitimacy it gives to the boundaries of the Eelam map, never mind the objections of history, geography and demography.  While some say that India did help Sri Lanka in combatting the LTTE, i.e. after 2005, no one can claim that such ‘help’ did not come with a political price tag.  It was not about a friendly and repentant neighbor doing the right thing. It was the neighbourhood thug engaged in extortion. 

Today, two years after terrorism was vanquished.  We celebrate this moment and must remember that we can do so mainly because of the political leadership, the security forces and the citizenry of this country.  If India helped (even grudgingly) in some manner, we would say ‘thank you’, but we need to point out that it is the least that India could do, considering her considerable and significant contribution to problem-cause. 

The statement referred to above clearly indicates that we should be sober in our celebrations.  It is one thing to defeat the LTTE and quite another to keep separatism at bay.  The one did not follow the other and only the naïve would believe that it should.  The LTTE represented the military option of the separatism, and for a time it did seem that guns could carve an Eelam out of Sri Lanka, whereby a community with no historical claim, amounting to less than 6% of the population (counting out Tamils living outside the so-called ‘traditional homelands’), would get control over one-third the land area and half the coast.  After the military option petered out, Tamil chauvinism had to get back to what I call the Chelvanayakam Option -- a little now, more later – with ‘little’ being the legalizing of the homeland claim (not even supported by myth, by the way) through the 13^th Amendment. 

What’s the source of India’s fascination with the 13^th?  Right now, the Congress Party is deep in some foul smelling matter.  Scandals, mismanagement and the usual dissatisfaction with incumbents have seen a drop in popularity, a decline which has found articulation in electoral debacle.  Tamil Nadu returned not ally but opponent.  It is clear that retaining power at the next General Election could come down to obtaining Jayalalitha’s support or else neutralizing it.  For all the antipathy that her state has toward Tamils from Sri Lanka when they do come there, either as refugees or on visit, the idea of a Tamil Homeland and related sloganeering continues to have a lot of political currency.  Placating Tamil Nadu is not a political choice for the Congress Party. It is an imperative. A ‘must’.

The wording of the ‘Joint Statement’ indicates a lot of arm-twisting on the part of Delhi.  Mentioning ‘investigations into allegations of human rights violations’, shows that Delhi must have cited moves by international thugs to harass Sri Lanka; it’s got ‘we will protect you brother, but at a price,’ the cost being the 13^th Amendment, which too has been mentioned.  Well, mentioned with a ‘plus sign’, meaning land and police powers (included in the 13^th as of now) and other things besides.  In reality, the small print is about editing the concurrent list in favour of Eelamist positions. 

Now it is not only the Congress Party that has problems. India, as a nation, is in crisis.  It has countless separatist struggles to deal with, a grand mismatch between projected image of emerging power and a lived reality of misery and numerous other problems that the IPL, braggadocio, a few nuclear reactors etc together or separately cannot take out from the governability equation.  India wants, nay craves, international recognition. India wants ‘thug-status’ acknowledged, i.e. by obtaining a permanent position in the UN Security Council. And nothing shows that country’s national angst than the fact that it cannot shed the name given by those who invaded and pillaged it.  Indeed that country because what it is courtesy of the invader.  That’s a huge psychological handicap to overcome. We understand. 

The Joint Statement shows that Sri Lanka’s Minister of External Affairs had positioned himself (and thereby the country) as India’s vassal. There’s no mention of India’s endless wars, crimes against humanity, lack of domestic mechanisms to investigate known crimes against humanity (in Kashmir and elsewhere) and Sri Lanka’s concerns about these followed by India’s commitment to addressing them. 

Why should Sri Lanka give guarantees of any kind to India?  Sure, Sri Lanka is not as big as India, has a smaller economy and even though the average standards of living are far superior, Sri Lanka doesn’t have the fire power or the bucks that India can mobilize.  Sri Lanka is a smaller market and therefore cannot use its population statistics as leverage. For example, ‘we are a huge market, remember!’ is not a flag that can be waved to ward off the would-be de-stabilizer.

Sri Lanka has one thing that India does not, a ‘one thing’ that has stood us well over the centuries when dealing with invaders.  A sense of dignity.  Whatever is bartered away by politicians, the people recover, sooner or later. Whatever the costs!  The costs, in this case, will most definitely be a major electoral reversal for those who sell out. 

Sri Lanka did not become another Bhutan.  It will not.  Where Rajiv Gandhi failed, his wife will not succeed. Where J.R. Jayewardene failed, G.L. Peiris will not succeed. 

Twenty seven thousand members of the security forces paid with their lives to defeat the LTTE and keep separatism at bay.  Close to a hundred thousand of our citizens perished in this 30 year long conflict. Sixty thousand were killed in 1988-89 and India helped in that particular ‘evacuation’ by way of the Indo-Lanka Accord.  We have seen enough blood, courtesy of our neighbor.  They can make us bleed, again and again.  But death comes slowly.  This is something that India should realize. G.L. Peiris too. And of course Mahinda Rajapaksa.    

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