A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Friday, May 12, 2017
AS SRI LANKA LEANS TOWARDS CHINA, MODI’S TRIP HAS HIGH STAKES
Image courtesy of Narendramodi.in.---PM Modi visited Sri Lanka in March 2015.
This week, Sri Lanka is “Dhammadvipa”, the island of Buddhist
philosophy, as it celebrates United Nations Vesak Day to mark the birth,
enlightenment and death of Lord Buddha on Friday. There have been
fourteen international celebrations, but this is Sri Lanka’s first time
as host, even though it was instrumental in the UN’s declaration of an
international day for it. India had backed the resolution in 1999 by Sri
Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar (later assassinated by an
LTTE sniper at his Colombo residence). So it is only fitting that Indian
Prime Minister Narendra Modi speak as chief guest at a massive,
international conference on Buddhism, organised for the occasion in the
Sri Lankan capital. For a small country with a bloody contemporary
history, the significance of celebrating UN Vesak Day that recognises
Buddhism’s contribution to spirituality, humanity, universal peace and
compassion worldwide is not lost on anyone. The Sri Lankan government
continues to face an international challenge over charges of human
rights violations against civilians when it crushed the LTTE to end a
brutal three-decade-long civil war in 2009.
For India too, the visit is significant. Against the backdrop of growing
incidents of communal violence at home and uncharitable global
commentary around cow vigilantes and anti-Romeo squads targeting Muslims
and mixed religion couples, the Prime Minister will use this chance to
project India’s own constitutionally-protected core values of secularism
and tolerance at a global forum. According to reports, 72 out of 85
countries invited have confirmed their attendance.
This is Prime Minister Modi’s second visit to Sri Lanka since he assumed
office. In March 2015, he made history as the first Indian PM to go
there on an official, bilateral visit in 28 years, and the first one to
visit Jaffna, ever. Along with three visits by Sri Lanka’s Prime
Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and two by President Maithripala Sirisena
to India since the 2015 elections, these trips reflect Delhi’s
aggressive diplomacy to rebuild the relationship with Colombo that hit
rock bottom in the years immediately after the war. Delhi pushed then
president Mahinda Rajapaksa to focus on relief and rehabilitation for
Tamil civilians who had been caught in the crossfire. Currently, Delhi’s
portfolio of financial assistance to Sri Lanka is at 2.6 billion
dollars, out of which nearly 450 million dollars is in the form of
grants.
But even as Delhi provided funds and resources for de-mining, hospitals
(the PM opens a new one in Dickoya on this visit), rail and road
construction and housing in Jaffna and adjoining areas, Rajapaksa made
clear his preference for Beijing as a regional, global partner over
Delhi. Rajapaksa’s singular motive: to ensure he had the backing of a
global power who would take on the West at the UN and support his
aggressive military solution to the civil war, even if it meant turning a
blind eye to questionable violations against Tamil civilians in the
bargain. So Rajapaksa, riding a wave of victory and popular support,
baited India by awarding the crucial Hambantota port and other
infrastructure projects to the Chinese – moves that also ultimately
raised the suspicion of his own countrymen. The hero who won them the
war has since become a political pariah charged with corruption and
accused of leading Sri Lanka into a nasty debt-trap with the Chinese for
projects that have not yielded economic returns even today.
As Delhi now uses these opportunities to seize primacy once again,
Rajapaksa is also trying to win back lost ground. He has backed voices
like the Thera Buddhist MP Wimal Weerawansa, calling for black flag
protests against India during the Prime Minister’s visit, accusing the
current United National Party (UNP) government of allowing India to
“colonise” Sri Lanka. These voices are especially significant in the
context of recent protests by unions of the state-run Ceylon Petroleum
Corporation’s oil workers against an agreement giving India the rights
to develop and use a World War 2 era oil tank farm with 99 storage tanks
in Trincomalee on the island’s north-eastern coast. Ironic, given that
it is a revival of an old deal struck by India and Sri Lanka nearly two
decades ago, while the war was still on. The agreement is now part of a
mega Memorandum of Understanding on Economic Cooperation that covers
energy, power, roads, infrastructure, agriculture and the fisheries
sectors that was signed when PM Wickremesinghe was in Delhi last month,
many of them aimed at making the Trincomalee area a hydrocarbon hub of
critical geo-strategic importance for the region.
But domestic sensitivities in Colombo that stalled the original
agreement on the tank farm for years are now the reason for the current
government keeping it low key. The MoU has been tabled in the Sri Lankan
parliament, and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe has defended it
vigourously, but in order to prove he is not “selling out” to India, his
government is quick to point out two things. One, that development at
Trincomalee will take place under a Japan-India-Sri Lanka Joint Working
group to be set up; and two, that no bilateral agreements will be signed
during Prime Minister Modi’s visit this week. (Curious, given the
detailed MoU also provided timelines by when individual project
agreements will be signed and become operable). In fact, Ranil
Wickremesinghe leaves Colombo for Beijing on the 13th, to attend China’s
Belt and Road Initiative summit- the very project that threatens
India’s geo-strategic importance, as it incorporates the seas of the
Indian Ocean to the south and east, and the lands of South and Central
Asia to the north and west, to expand China’s sphere of influence. With
Beijing’s advances, time is clearly of the essence, and the need to
regain ground lost to China is of paramount strategic importance for
India.
But India must know that in spite of having assiduously worked to revive
its flailing relationship with Colombo since Rajapaksa’s ouster, the
overall improvement in bilateral ties comes at the cost of diverting
some attention from progress on the Tamil question. The
Sirisena/Wickremesinghe government is yet to address concerns over
missing persons, yet to fulfil promises for a new constitution that
devolves more powers to the Tamil North and East, and yet to return
lands overtaken by the Sri Lankan army during the last phases of the
war. A delegation of the Tamil National Alliance, led by its leader R
Sambandan, will meet Prime Minister Modi during his 24-hour visit to in
an attempt to ensure India is still paying attention to their issues.
As India becomes a factor in domestic politics and Mahinda Rajapaksa
plots his Sri Lanka Freedom Party’s (SLFP) political return by taking on
Delhi, the diplomatic tightrope has gotten trickier. Colombo’s
continued engagement with China is a concern, but India cannot tell Sri
Lanka who to deal with. Under the circumstances, the Prime Minister’s
visit to commemorate Vesak is a chance not only to project India’s
constitutional values, but also reassure the people of Sri Lanka – both
Sinhala and Tamil – that India’s commitment to development in Sri Lanka
is in both countries’ mutual interest.
This commentary originally appeared in NDTV.