Last week, as part of his Indian Ocean tour, Prime Minister Narendra Modi became the first Indian head of government to visit Sri Lanka in 28 years. It isn’t yet clear whether his visit and talks with President Maithripala Sirisena’s government can be branded a strategic victory. That will become apparent only after the country’s parliamentary elections, expected over the next few months. But the visit was first and foremost a correction of Indian foreign policy.
The last Indian prime minister to visit Colombo was Rajiv Gandhi, who landed in the island in 1987, at a particularly low point in relations between the nations. Civil unrest prevailed in Sri Lanka, its Tamil population was being persecuted and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam was running a terror campaign against that would put the likes of Al Qaeda and its affiliates to shame. During Gandhi’s visit, a Sri Lankan sailor, Rohana de Silva, attacked the Indian leader as he took the guard of honour (video) in a display of anger over New Delhi’s support for the LTTE. The previous day, Delhi had agreed to send an Indian Peacekeeping Force to Sri Lanka, aiming to quell the civil war.
Colourful history
India and Sri Lanka have shared a colorful political history. Through much of the 1990s, which included the assassination of Gandhi by LTTE operatives in May 1991, and into the current millennia, New Delhi and Colombo maintained cordial ties despite one political firestorm after another. However, India’s political and diplomatic vision on Sri Lanka has been myopic, and has stemmed from the government’s generalised fears about the Tamil nationalist movement in Sri Lanka and its effects on the local Indian Tamil population.
The previous government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, burdened by the intricacies of running a volatile coalition government, was weak in its involvement with Colombo. It was always anxious that powerful Tamil parties and leaders such as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, would make coalition workings even more difficult. In 2013, Singh cancelled a trip to Colombo to participate in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, a move that put narrow domestic policy gains ahead of the long-term strategic pursuit of India’s foreign policy.
This undermined ties between Colombo and Delhi. India lost vital influence on the island nation, which Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa had little trouble substituting with Chinese influence and money. Rajapaksa blamed his election loss in January on India and its external-intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, while also blaming the CIA and MI6, for good measure.
India’s efforts in rebuilding the war-ravaged Tamil north of the country have been particularly praise-worthy. This programme has been undertaken by the Ministry of External Affair’s newly formed aid agency, the Development Partnership Administration, an entity that is similar to US’s USAID and UK’s DFID. One of its marquee undertakings is rebuilding homes for families who lost their roof during the final assault by the Sri Lankan military against the LTTE in 2008-’09. Many of these homes are in the area that Modi visited during his trip, which was possibly the biggest correction of them all.
Reconstruction efforts
With the DPA, India has already built over 15,000 homes in northern, and as per Modi’s announcements, 27,000 more families will be rehabilitated with Indian finances as part of the Jaffna housing project. The MEA has decided to give finances directly to families to build their homes, removing middlemen. This minimises opportunities for corruption, and also easing pressures on its own, already-stretched human capital.
While Modi’s outreach has been long over-due by India in Sri Lanka, this visit provides the government with a double opportunity, to gain further trust of the Sri Lankan people, and gain significant strides in cementing a long-term policy for the Indian Ocean region, an international theatre where worries are not just over China, but overall rampant militarisation in its extended arms in South China Sea, Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.
The last Indian prime minister to visit Colombo was Rajiv Gandhi, who landed in the island in 1987, at a particularly low point in relations between the nations. Civil unrest prevailed in Sri Lanka, its Tamil population was being persecuted and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam was running a terror campaign against that would put the likes of Al Qaeda and its affiliates to shame. During Gandhi’s visit, a Sri Lankan sailor, Rohana de Silva, attacked the Indian leader as he took the guard of honour (video) in a display of anger over New Delhi’s support for the LTTE. The previous day, Delhi had agreed to send an Indian Peacekeeping Force to Sri Lanka, aiming to quell the civil war.
Colourful history
India and Sri Lanka have shared a colorful political history. Through much of the 1990s, which included the assassination of Gandhi by LTTE operatives in May 1991, and into the current millennia, New Delhi and Colombo maintained cordial ties despite one political firestorm after another. However, India’s political and diplomatic vision on Sri Lanka has been myopic, and has stemmed from the government’s generalised fears about the Tamil nationalist movement in Sri Lanka and its effects on the local Indian Tamil population.
The previous government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, burdened by the intricacies of running a volatile coalition government, was weak in its involvement with Colombo. It was always anxious that powerful Tamil parties and leaders such as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, would make coalition workings even more difficult. In 2013, Singh cancelled a trip to Colombo to participate in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, a move that put narrow domestic policy gains ahead of the long-term strategic pursuit of India’s foreign policy.
This undermined ties between Colombo and Delhi. India lost vital influence on the island nation, which Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa had little trouble substituting with Chinese influence and money. Rajapaksa blamed his election loss in January on India and its external-intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, while also blaming the CIA and MI6, for good measure.
India’s efforts in rebuilding the war-ravaged Tamil north of the country have been particularly praise-worthy. This programme has been undertaken by the Ministry of External Affair’s newly formed aid agency, the Development Partnership Administration, an entity that is similar to US’s USAID and UK’s DFID. One of its marquee undertakings is rebuilding homes for families who lost their roof during the final assault by the Sri Lankan military against the LTTE in 2008-’09. Many of these homes are in the area that Modi visited during his trip, which was possibly the biggest correction of them all.
Reconstruction efforts
With the DPA, India has already built over 15,000 homes in northern, and as per Modi’s announcements, 27,000 more families will be rehabilitated with Indian finances as part of the Jaffna housing project. The MEA has decided to give finances directly to families to build their homes, removing middlemen. This minimises opportunities for corruption, and also easing pressures on its own, already-stretched human capital.
While Modi’s outreach has been long over-due by India in Sri Lanka, this visit provides the government with a double opportunity, to gain further trust of the Sri Lankan people, and gain significant strides in cementing a long-term policy for the Indian Ocean region, an international theatre where worries are not just over China, but overall rampant militarisation in its extended arms in South China Sea, Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.
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