Padma Rao Sundarji | Hobson’s choice: India ‘tilt’ by Anura draws Lanka flak

And yet, few Indian reporters covering Sri Lankan President Anura Dissanayake’s first state visit to New Delhi recently, ventured beyond lazy, umbrella headings like “the fishermen’s issue”, the “Tamil question” and the “China conundrum”, in their analyses last week.

Yes, there is a “fishermen’s issue”; it’s no new phenomenon. Despite having dedicated committees to stop the unfair practice, Indian trawlers still outfish the shallow waters of the Palk Straits, depriving small Sri Lankan fishermen of their daily catch, and the Sri Lankan Navy frequently arrests the intruders.

Expectedly, there was renewed discussion on the subject during Mr Dissanayake’s visit but that's hardly likely to work an overnight miracle.

However, it would have been contextually pertinent to mention that the greatest fish robber in the larger fishing grounds of the Indian Ocean is China, not India. Further, Sri Lanka is not only a member of China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), but also its ally. Mr Dissanayake’s own extreme left-wing party, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), has always been close to Beijing.

China has the largest fishing fleet in the world. China is responsible for one-fifth of global catches. According to a 2022 report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), an unreported 60 per cent of China’s total annual catch, is accrued through “Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated” (IUU) fishing activity in the Indian Ocean, and elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region. It is China that tops the Geneva-based “IUU Index”. And this affects fishermen in both India and Sri Lanka.

Furthermore, China has sensed opportunity in the unresolved fracas between India and Sri Lanka in the relatively small Palk Straits, and has been “cultivating” Sri Lanka’s fishing community. Among other things, it has set up a flourishing fish cannery in Sri Lanka’s Mannar.

All these aspects went unquestioned in the reporting last week. Even the fact that a positive outcome of the India-China talks, which also took place last week, may lead to a recalibration of their hostility over Sri Lanka (where China enjoys strategic advantages, due to its brand of debt-trap diplomacy) stimulated no informed speculation.

Other routine bullet points that reporters tick off whenever the two countries meet, are “the Tamil question” and the related “13th Amendment” issue.

The amendment was co-authored by former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, when Sri Lanka was in the early throes of a devastating civil war during which more than 130,000 people, including Rajiv Gandhi himself, were killed.

But that amendment was written 28 years ago, and the war ended nearly 16 years ago. Other than coming good on returning Army-held private lands to their Tamil owners after he came to power, Mr Dissanayake has made no reference to the amendment — nor to the autonomy it guarantees Sri Lankan Tamils — so far, neither in the run-up to the presidential poll in September, nor in New Delhi last week. Sri Lankan Tamils are enraged about many other issues. But the non-implementation of the dated document is not one of them. If it were, Mr Dissanayake would not have received 25 per cent of the Tamil vote at that poll: an unprecedented feat in the turbulent electoral history of Sri Lanka.

Then there was scarcely a mention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s own achievements in Sri Lanka, especially in the context of “the Tamil question”.

Love him or hate him, it is Mr Modi who first shed India’s earlier obsession with Sri Lanka’s “Tamil question”. Be it to cock a snook at (Rajiv Gandhi’s) Congress Party or not, it is the PM who hardly ever mentions the 13th Amendment. And importantly, it is Mr Modi who began the long overdue task of forging better ties with the country’s Sinhala-Buddhist majority.

Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri’s finely nuanced, extempore responses to the “Tamil question” at a press conference last week, too, were a reflection of India “getting real” about Sri Lanka. Mr Misri chose to emphasise the “numerical weight, significance, and spatial distribution” of the astounding mandate received by Mr Dissanayake, the leader of a Sinhala chauvinist, controversial, extreme left-wing party, in Sri Lanka’s minority Hindu-Tamil-dominated North and East, of all places. As for the “Tamil question”, the foreign secretary left the task not to any India-engineered ideas, but to Mr Dissanayake himself. “There is an expectation now from him (Dissanayake) to respond to (Tamil) expectations,” Mr Misri said. “We hope to see that go forward and wish him success in this endeavour.”

New Delhi’s cautiousness stems from an accurate estimate of the mood on the ground in Sri Lanka. India did come to the southern neighbour’s rescue during its economic crisis of 2022 by extending aid worth nearly $4 billion. India continues to stand as global guarantor for Colombo over the question of restructuring its staggering external debt.

But despite cultural cousinhood and neighbourly generosity, India is far from popular among ordinary Sri Lankans, as is erroneously imagined by many pompous Indians perambulating around the beautiful country on holiday.

Distrust towards the Big Brother was in full evidence in the Sri Lankan media reporting on their President’s visit to India last week. Many Sri Lankans found Mr Dissanayake’s “tone” in New Delhi too “servile” and “conciliatory”.

In a scathing editorial, the right-of-centre Sri Lankan daily The Island pointed out that between 2016 and 2023, Mr Dissanayake had been a fierce critic of signing any trade agreements with India and had alleged several times that India controls Sri Lanka’s economy, manipulates its policies and that any connectivity projects with India “would be detrimental to Sri Lanka’s independence”. And yet, here he was in New Delhi, co-signing documents which, the paper called, a “Hobson’s choice” for Sri Lanka.

Jehan Perera, head of Sri Lanka’s most respected think tank, the National Peace Foundation (NPR), recalls the volatility and suddenness of the civil uprising against a government Sri Lankans had euphorically elected themselves, when the economic crisis erupted two years ago. He sounds a warning bell.

“The Dissanayake-led NPP” (the ruling National People’s Power alliance, which consists of activists and intellectuals), “thinks it is very good on human rights. It will not permit riots between — say — two communities. But it’s not very keen on the rights of any single community — like, say, the minority Tamils — either. The government is simply not consulting the minorities on decisions being taken on their behalf. And that may prove their Achilles Heel.”