India’s 16th National Elections And Its ‘Behaviour’ Towards Sri Lanka

By Rajan Philips -April 27, 2014 

Rajan Philips

In last Saturday’s (19 April 2014) Island, Gunadasa Amarasekara, the venerable veteran of ‘patriotic nationalism’, alerted the readers to ‘India’s behaviour’ as a critical factor in asking the question: “Has a new approach been developed to divide the country following the Geneva session.” The article is all about the Geneva resolution and India’s non-voting on it, and has nothing at all about what seems to have happened after the resolution to raise alarm in Sri Lanka. In fact, nothing much has happened after the Geneva resolution except of course the plethora of speculations and analyses. Even the “new approach” that seems to be causing concern is nothing other than the much maligned 13^th Amendmentand the unfortunate misunderstanding that its implementation will ultimately divide the country. The strategic patriotic thinking is that by abstaining on the vote in the resolution, India (with US connivance) has positioned itself to quietly coax, rather than overtly confront, the electorally invincibleMahinda Rajapaksa to implement the 13^th Amendment in full. Otherwise, it is asked, what business has 13A in a human rights resolution? As if the patriots would have accepted a pure human rights resolution if it was not sullied by 13A at India’s behest. The supreme patriotic task now is to make sure that the President is not deceived by this ‘new approach’. In other words, make sure that 13A is rejected before India or anyone else tries to revive it. What is new here?

What is new – can lead to a different discussion three weeks from now when the results of India’s 16^thnational elections would be known, and a different government would likely take office in Delhi. India’s elections did not figure at all in Dr. Amarasekara’s article probing into ‘India’s behaviour’. He may have thought it was premature to comment on the elections that were not even half way through when he wrote his piece. There was no such hesitation in the weekly political commentary that appeared the next day (The Sunday Island, 20 April) – the familiar mishmash of hurriedly read and ill digested information – this time on Indian federalism, paranoia about the dangers to Sri Lanka lurking in the outcome of India’s elections, and a wrap-up call for a defence agreement between Sri Lanka and China. The only reason why we should not laugh this off as lunatic journalism is that it might really be a scoop into the thinking of someone substantial in the government. That does not make such thinking less absurd, but it should warn us to the danger of insanity in politics and in policy.

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