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Learn to keep your friends close

The Hindu ArchivesThe Optics: If India stays away from the summit, the Sri Lankanestablishment may come to believe it is better served by aligning along the Islamabad-

Beijing axis, just as D.S. Senanayake (centre) sided with the West to keep Nehru at

arm’s-length. A file picture of the two leaders in Colombo.

DAYAN JAYATILLEKA-October 21, 2013

 If it boycotts the CHOGM summit, New Delhi will alienate Sri Lanka and erode the progress it has made in nudging Colombo to devolve more powers to the Northern

 Province Were Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to stay away from the Commonwealth Headsof Government Meeting (CHOGM) summit in Colombo next month, it would not only  be perceived as a snub by Sri Lanka but would damage Delhi’s soft-power projection inits own environs and prove deleterious to India’s interests.

India has just scored a singular achievement in reactivating the Northern ProvincialCouncil. That should have been sufficient for New Delhi to face down pressure from

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Tamil Nadu vis-à-vis attendance by its leader at CHOGM.

If it is unable to do so, it will also reduce India’s capacity to nudge Colombo forward onthe delivery of devolution — the preponderant view in Sri Lanka would then be thateven the riskiest move such as the holding of Northern elections and the installation of an administration critical of the State in the strategically sensitive North does not earn

even so much as the attendance of the Indian Prime Minister at CHOGM. Theconclusion would be that there is little to be gained by moving forward on the issue of devolution that is of significance to India. This in turn may prompt the Sri Lankangovernment to believe the re-establishment of the Northern Provincial Council (NPC)is as far as Colombo should go and good as it is going to get.

Image perception

Then again, there is the optics of absenting oneself from an event in one’sneighbourhood which will be attended by other neighbours including one’s critics. This

 would reinforce a negative vision of India as a power that is deficient in goodneighbourly custom and sentiment, insensitive to the hurt pride of small neighbours, but at the same time is weak enough to have its external relations shaped if notdetermined by sub-regional pressure.

It is unrealistic to assume that New Delhi would ignore the feelings in a State of 70million people especially in an election season. Nevertheless, it is perfectly possible to balance those sentiments with those of a neighbouring state and the overwhelmingmajority of its people, by pointing to the holding of the elections in the North and thereconstitution after a quarter of a century, of that important sub-state unit in whichthe Tamil minority constitutes a majority.

If the Prime Minister of India is blackmailed by Tamil Nadu into absenting himself from the summit despite the election of the NPC, it is highly probable that the samefactor would prevent Delhi from being perceived as favouring Colombo or even sit onthe fence at the March 2014 session of the U.N. Human Rights Council if a resolutionto initiate an international inquiry into the conduct of the war by the Sri Lankan state were to come up for a vote. Tamil sentiment in Tamil Nadu is no more legitimate orpolitically significant than Sinhala sentiment in Sri Lanka. Therefore, an Indian semi-snub cannot but reinforce the negative aspect of the ambivalent sentiment towardsIndia prevalent among the vast majority of the neighbouring island’s inhabitants.

Beijing-Islamabad tilt

 While it may not prove a strategically prudent reaction, this public opinion backlashcan only renew an abiding sense in the Sri Lankan establishment, dating back to PrimeMinister Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s tilt during the Bangladesh war, that the island stateis better served by location on a Beijing-Islamabad axis.

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The Bandaranaike tilt of the early 1970s was itself a variant on the policy of the firstPrime Minister of independent Ceylon, D.S. Senanayake, who perceived a threat fromNehruvian India and a nexus between the powerful neighbour and inhabitants of Indian origin in the central highlands of the island nation. His strategy was to retain arelationship with the West and to politically marginalise the domestic Tamilcomponent of perceived Indian influence.

Given the India-U.S. axis, Sri Lanka manifestly has no western card to play, but itcould regard itself as the third corner of a Beijing-Islamabad-Colombo triangle,however unsustainable such a strategic posture could turn out to be. The domesticaspect of such a strategic decision could be to regard the vital border areas of theNorthern Province as a potential sphere of influence if not a beachhead of anunfriendly India. This cannot but impact upon the progress of the process of the fulldevolution of powers in accordance with the Thirteenth Amendment.

It is of course true that India is of sufficient size, strength and significance to ignore the

sentiments of its neighbours. However, the relationship with Vietnam cannot beentirely irrelevant to China nor can that with Mexico be irrelevant to the U.S. Bothrelationships have a history of suspicion on the part of the smaller power. As a smallisland, Sri Lanka lacks the weight of a Vietnam or Mexico, but it can be a prickly porcupine which will then be regarded by India more as the U.S. did Cuba. This wouldentail a complete abdication of soft power in Delhi’s equation with Colombo, itsretrenchment to and residual retention only in the island’s Northern periphery and thereplacement of equidistance or a balancing act between Sri Lanka’s Sinhala majority and Tamil minority in favour of an irrevocable Indian tilt to the latter.

 Vital cards

 After the friction of a few years ago with its neighbours, China is more aware of theimportance of how it is perceived to behave in its own immediate environs. The loss toIndia’s soft power in South Asia by the alienation of Sri Lanka will neither be negligiblenor ephemeral. This is an outcome and scenario that need to be rethought in aneighbourhood that is not devoid of competition.

The presence or absence of the Indian Prime Minister at CHOGM and India’s vote onan international inquiry mechanism at the UNHRC in March 2014 are cards that mustnot be thrown away. As Ronald Reagan cautioned, once you’ve played your last card,

 you no longer have it. India must not gain the Tamil minority of the island only to loseSri Lanka. India’s Sri Lanka policy must not seem as if it has been formulated at theMadras Cafe.

(Dayan Jayatilleka was Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the U.N. in Geneva from 2007-09, and until recently, Ambassador to France. He is the author of Long War, Cold Peace: Conflict and Crisis in Sri Lanka, 2013.)

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