India-Sri Lanka ties: It has to be give-and-take, not tit-for-tat

N Sathiya Moorthy

An eye for an eye can make all persons blind - and achieve nothing. In the saga of India-Sri Lanka relations, increasing incidents of violence against ordinary Sri Lankans on the streets of Tamil Nadu has already impacted on the public perception in the island-nation. It has potential for damaging bilateral relations to levels that is seldom understood in Tamil Nadu, and appreciated as much by the Government system in New Delhi, too. Or, that again seems to be the perception in Colombo.

Attacks on visiting Government Ministers and other political dignitaries from Sri Lanka in Tamil Nadu seem to have had a mischievous content to it. Among those targeted more than one is Tirukumaran Nadesan, a relative by marriage of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa. A Sri Lankan Tamil, Nadesan has been on near-annual pilgrimage to Hindu temples in southern Tamil Nadu long before his kin became President of that country. Attributing ethnicity-linked political motives to the pujas and havans/yagnams that he has been organising from time-to-time in places of pilgrimage in the south Indian State, pan-Tamil elements had resorted to assault on his person, until on every occasion, the Tamil Nadu police intervened.

Another victim of the pan-Tamil groups in Tamil Nadu was former Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wicrkemesinghe, during the war years in the country. Much as it should be forgotten, the fact remained the affected Sri Lankan Tamil community seems to look at him and his United National Party (UNP) with greater hope and confidence of intent to resolve the ethnic issue through political negotiations and power-devolution. At his instance and initiative, on a later day in the post-war era, the Sri Lankan Tamils voted for Sarath Fonseka, the commander of the Sri Lankan armed forces during 'Eelam War-IV', against President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the presidential polls of January 2010.

More recent attacks, while being unplanned and unorganised, have focussed on visiting a Sinhala-Buddhist monk and ageing Buddhist pilgrims using the Tamil Nadu transit-route to offer worship at places of religious worship in northern India, and a batch of school children on a cultural exchange tour, precisely with the idea of exposing them to multi-cultural and multi-racial aspects of the Indian societal system, which has also stood post-Independence constitutional politics in good stead, for them to understand and appreciate in their immediate context back home.

There was justification in Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa urging the Centre to have the Sri Lanka Government alerting the State administration about VVIP movements from that country in advance. There is no justification whatsoever for the attacks, either on the visiting VIPs or ordinary Sri Lankans on the streets of Tamil Nadu.

So possibly is there none under the Indian scheme for political parties in Tamil Nadu vying with one another, demanding the Centre not to train Sri Lankan army officials in Indian Defence Ministry establishments in Tamil Nadu first, and elsewhere in the country, for some time now. More recently, DMK supremo and former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi has cautioned the Centre on the recent Sri Lankan visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Liang Guanglie, and linking it to New Delhi's legitimate strategic concerns and implying an ethnic angle, as well.

Under the Indian scheme, both defence and foreign policy are the exclusive preserve of the Centre. There are limits to which concerned regional polities and State Governments can seek to influence the Centre on such issues, both in terms of the constitutional mandate and politico-administrative understanding of the complexities involved. It is one thing for the Government, polity and people of India expressing their concerns about the safety and security of the Tamil-speaking people in Sri Lanka, and the inadequacy of political powers for them in what otherwise is a republican democracy, promising equality, going beyond race, gender, etc. It is so about West Bengal having concern about water-sharing with Bangladesh, and Assam feeling threatened by the influx of Bangladeshi nationals in every which way.

In comparison, Tamil Nadu and Tamils in the State have been more accommodative and understanding about the concerns reflected by the continued presence of over 100,000 Tamil-speaking refugees from Sri Lanka for close to 25 years now. Yet, it is another thing for the State Governments or regional parties in a State to dictate terms to the Centre on constitutional mandates resting with the latter, federal structure and coalition compulsions notwithstanding. Leave alone the avoidable pressures on the Government at the Centre, such efforts could have constitutional consequences and hence judicial pronouncements, too.

Across the Palk Strait, the street situation of visiting Sri Lankans on the streets of Tamil Nadu has already triggered avoidable animosity against Tamil Nadu and consequent suspicions against India. The 'China factor' that the DMK chief mentioned recently, if any, should flow also from the 'Tamil Nadu factor' in India's Sri Lanka policy, as perceived by the strategic community and political parties in Colombo. It is time that political parties and peripheral pan-Tamil groups in Tamil Nadu learnt their lessons from the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the more organised, credible and hence popular of all political parties of the Sri Lankan Tamil people, both inside and outside the country.

The Sri Lankan Tamil polity in the country, particularly the TNA, had sort of sent out a message to their brethren in Tamil Nadu recently, when they stayed away from the TESO conference organised by the DMK in Chennai. Competitive 'Dravidian politics' in Tamil Nadu may have been another reason why they did not want to get caught in the political cross-fire in the south Indian State. As may be recalled, TESO itself was a product of a not-so-successful DMK initiative when bête noire AIADMK was in power in the State in the Eighties and the LTTE in particular had identified with then Chief Minister and charismatic star-politician, the late M G Ramachandran, MGR, born in Sri Lanka of the pre-Independence days. In the process, the LTTE declined to accept the purse that the TESO conference offered in Madurai, and settled instead for the larger financial aid offered by MGR.

The TNA has also since desisted from approaching the UN on the immediate situation and long-term sufferings and inequities of their people, another of the current moves of the DMK. After internal consultations, the TNA resisted the temptation of sending a delegation to Geneva to pressure voter-nations ahead of the UNHRC vote in March. In all these, the TNA was guided by the principles of not wanting to send out wrong signals to the Sri Lankan State, majority and majoritarian sections of the 'Sinhala-Buddhist' national/nationalist polity in the country. They were also influenced by the ground reality that in the post-war Sri Lanka, they would have to engage with the Government and the Sinhala polity of their country, to be able to deliver on the legitimate aspirations of their people, and their own expectations and commitments on this score.

The TNA positions on this score are guided by political pragmatism. There have also been no reports of any attacks on the Tamils in Sri Lanka by the so-called Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists. Nor are there reports of the reverse occurring in the Tamil-speaking areas of the island-nation. While the polity in that country may still be divided on the ethnic issue, they are also making earnest or not-so-earnest efforts at bridging the inherent and inherited gaps in the political perceptions over power-devolution, among other attendant issues and concerns. If now Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has called for a Sri Lankan soccer team to be sent back home, in the months not long after the war, the Dravidian parties from Tamil Nadu protested the visit of Sri Lankan MPs at the behest of the national Parliament, to New Delhi. Little did the protesting MPs from the State seem to realise that five of the 12 members of the Sri Lankan team were Tamil-speaking. That included Selvam Adaikalanathan, one of the top five or six leaders of the TNA.

Through the years of 'Eelam War-IV', successive Governments in Sri Lanka had kept doors of communication with the LTTE. The LTTE too took a similar approach to dealing with the Government in power. Then, as now, the TNA has full-brigade political representation in the Sri Lankan Parliament. When they had to make a choice between staying away for good and taking a Sixth Amendment oath, swearing allegiance to the Sri Lankan Constitution, the Tamil polity since August 1983 (less than a month after the anti-Tamil pogrom) has returned to Parliament, if only after a break. More recently, TNA leader R Sampanthan sent out a clear and strong message to his people, the Sinhala polity, the Sri Lankan State and the international community supporting legitimate 'Tamil cause' when he held a Sri Lankan national flag in his hand and waved it in public view, on May Day in Jaffna.

The Tamil Nadu polity in general, and the civil society, including media in particular, has to study the consequences of their peripheral group-action on the psyche of the larger population in that country, and its consequential influence on the polity and Government in that country. If the 'Tamil Nadu factor' in India's Sri Lanka policy is a reality, though not to the levels perceived in Sri Lanka, the reverse is even truer. Little have they understood the deep trade ties between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, and which has flourished even more, both through the formal and informal routes, since both nations became independent and questions of bilateral trade came to be governed by laws impinging on sovereignty and/or smuggling. Even the vexatious 'fishermen's issue' involving Tamil Nadu fishers flows from those perceptions and obligations under the international law, governing sovereign States.

It is unfortunate that successive Chief Ministers in Tamil Nadu have seldom granted audience to the diplomatic representatives of the Sri Lankan State in Chennai. This has had consequences for their mutual understanding of each other perceptions on bilateral issues of consequence. Not excluding the sensitivities and seriousness attaching to the ethnic issue and the fishermen's concerns, trade relations between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka have often faced problems of 'double-taxation' of sorts at the Indian-end, both by the Centre and the respective State Governments. This has rendered the bilateral FTA ineffective in the case of Sri Lanka, contributing thus to their belated re-look on the CEPA just before it was to be signed in 2008.

The more recent Sri Lankan decision to expand and extend trade-related diplomatic presence to other sourcing States in the country has a story to tell on its own, but the pan-Tamil politics in Tamil Nadu cannot be excluded as a factor. In December 2005, when President Rajapaksa was on his maiden presidential visit to India, as then Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, declined his request for a meeting. She had met predecessor Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on earlier occasions. When Karunannidhi was the DMK Chief Minister, it is on record, President Rajapaksa invited him officially to visit Sri Lanka and see things for himself.

The political perceptions of the Tamil Nadu leadership and the consequences nearer home can well be appreciated. As is not known often, there has been little or no exchange between the political leaders in Sri Lankan and Tamil Nadu, despite the inter-twining of respective political concerns and the consequential influence on the respective Governments on their policies towards each other. It is as true of the Sri Lankan polity as it is of their Tamil Nadu counterparts. The Tamil Nadu polity has to understand and appreciate the ground reality that political parties of the Sri Lankan Tamils seems not wanting to have anything to do with the internal dimensions of competitive pan-Tamil polity, which after the attainment and retention of political power in Tamil Nadu, has mostly centred on the ethnic issue, violence and war in the southern neighbourhood.

All this, not to forget memories of anti-India feelings in Sri Lanka translating into 'direct action' against Indians and Indian businesses on the streets of that country since ethnic news began embracing the Indian shores in the Eighties. Today, even the environmental concerns in Sri Lanka over the Koodamulam nuclear plant in southern India has a gone of bilateral politics in the local media. The media too is not helpful as sections call for renewed efforts at improving bilateral ties with the northern neighbours and at the same time refuse to do the minimum research or ask the basic questions about the safety of the Koodamkulam plant. After all, safety concerns in Sri Lanka would have been addressed automatically as India would not be allowing its own citizenry in the immediate vicinity, starting with its nuclear scientists and support staff, to be affected in any which way.

Likewise on a recent Indian High Commission interest in the purchase of land for the Indian Culture Centre in Colombo, which the private owner reportedly sold ultimately to a Chinese firm, a section of the local media saw a conspiracy of sorts and went to town over it. Reports said that the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had 'summoned' the Sri Lankan High Commissioner in New Delhi to register its protest. Little did the writers seem to realise that the term 'summoning' is too strong in context, and has diplomatic consequences not otherwise intended and envisaged. By 'confirming' such actions after a gap, the Sri Lankan media is only exposing its ignorance even more, lest it should have slipped by even a discerning reader, otherwise. Worse still, such uninformed reportage feeds other media analyses, strategic and scholarly discourses and street-opinion, which in the past became hard to reverse after a time.

What is needed instead is a bridge between the two peoples, both within Sri Lanka and with the Indian neighbour, through Tamil Nadu. Political parties that have relied mostly on media reports and interpretations in either case need to develop contacts at all levels for them to be able to seek and obtain clarifications before taking positions on particular issues and developments. The media in either country should play a constructive and meaningful role -- if they are really serious about improving the lot of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, or bilateral relations, which have beneficial consequences as much for Sri Lanka and for Tamil Nadu and the Indian State. In physical terms, it can take the shape of a 'land bridge' as propounded by UNP's Wickremesinghe as Sri Lanka's Prime Minister, which when put in place could link up the island-nation, not just with 'south India' or with India alone, but to the entirety of the Eurasian landmass, instead.

(The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation)