Editorial

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s impending state visit to India in a few days is anything but a ceremonial one, with implications beyond the purely bilateral.

For the President, it will be an important opening to demonstrate on the external stage how far the JVP has evolved since its anti-India days, short of swinging to the other extreme and capitulating to Indian demands irrespective of studied national interest.

The JVP has come a long way since the indoctrination of youth in readiness for the 1971 putsch were given ’5 lessons’, one of which was on ‘Indian Imperialism’. In their second insurgency from 1987-89 resulting from the signing of the controversial Indo-Lanka Accord in Colombo, it banned the import of all Indian products from dhal and onions to pharmaceuticals. Now, in the seats of power, its leaders have to contend with importing even rice from India to feed the people.

For India, this is, after a long wait, an opportunity to do a deal with a stable government in place in Sri Lanka against the vortex of complex security concerns in the region, and India’s own ambitious plans to propel itself towards a prominent global role in the future.

Part of the blueprint to reach that objective is to bring the ‘neighbourhood’, including Sri Lanka, in line. “Sri Lanka holds a special place in India’s Neighbourhood First Policy and Vision SAGAR,” Prime Minister Modi reminded Sri Lanka’s President in his congratulatory message on X following the election. According to Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, the neighbourhood is a “building block” towards the global footprint which India is putting in place for the next 25 years through other connectivity initiatives radiating north, south, east and west of India geographically.

As a prelude to the impending visit, the President has been given a shopping list by his hosts. What places the President in some difficulty is that pre-elections, his party had been critical of almost all the items on the list given to them.

These would include the highly contested Adani wind power project in Mannar; the Sampur project; the land link between the two countries; the ECTA (the Economic and Technological Cooperation Agreement); a Defence Cooperation Pact; the digitalisation of national identity cards; housing projects and a host of other matters.

The Adani project to develop the West Terminal of the Colombo Port is somewhat up the creek following an indictment in the USA against the Adanis, but that is also likely to be taken up in Delhi.

The question for the moment is how Team Sri Lanka is prepared to meet the challenges, and has studied and properly evaluated these projects and draft agreements in the very short time they have been in office. The JVP/NPP’s inexperience with matters of government and in the conduct of diplomacy in particular is worrisome even though they are more than capable of understanding the national interest. Who are the experts, if any, that are going through these mostly unsolicited projects with a fine toothcomb?

It is the current week preceding the visit that is decisive—what transpires during the visit itself would have already been decided, and the lengthy draft of a Joint Statement handed over to Colombo by the Indian side needs serious scrutiny. How much real negotiation is taking place on these texts? Are Sri Lanka’s own priorities being included?

The Government is being taunted by comments that these projects and agreements are done-deals between his predecessor and the Indian Prime Minister.

However, President Dissanayake’s visit to India takes place at a time of changed domestic circumstances which would give him greater confidence than his predecessor in dealing with his seasoned Indian counterparts. Though still vulnerable, Sri Lanka is in a less fragile position economically. Politically, the President can stand on his own, firmly positioned with an unprecedented mandate from the people including in the Tamil majority electorates in the North and the Central Highlands. If he is well prepared on the relevant issues usually broadly clustered as ‘aspirations of the Tamil people’; or the 13th Amendment and Provincial Councils; or post-conflict reconciliation, this electoral mandate would give the Indian side less leverage on essentially Sri Lankan domestic issues on which India invariably takes the moral upper-hand.

It is assumed that Sri Lanka will take up its own issues like its application for BRICS membership, India’s objections to Sri Lanka’s submission to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UN-CLCS); and the continuing question relating to illegal fishing in Sri Lankan waters by scores of vessels from south India where Delhi is claiming it is a ‘livelihood’ matter for its fishermen.

India will be extra vigilant and seek firm assurances that Sri Lanka will be a reliable security guard on the Southern Indian Ocean front. One of the key assurances that India will seek from Sri Lanka during the visit will relate to security concerns arising from China’s gradual financial, infrastructural and strategic encirclement of South Asia including through the ‘String of Pearls’ strategy of which the Hambantota Port is a nodal point. While President Dissanayake must combine a pragmatic approach in this regard, he must not compromise Sri Lanka’s sovereign decision-making within its territory and oceans, as well as in its choice of trade, economic and external partnerships.

‘Enter the Dragon’ in the South Asian neighbourhood—China, with equivalent or larger bilateral, regional and global ambitions, watching closely and lurking over the Delhi bilateral visit. It is a clash between the world’s second and fifth largest economies. The Chinese side, which had been unusually quiet in the public arena during the election period, ratcheted up the mood-music last week breaking diplomatic niceties in preparation for the upcoming Presidential visit to India.

As a reminder of his presence, the Chinese ambassador went public last week. He slammed the previous administration for unfriendly relations with China seemingly at the behest of an unnamed third country, he criticised slow progress on the FTA and referred to Sri Lanka’s refusal to permit Chinese ‘research’ vessels to move around its territorial waters. In Jaffna, he critiqued the Jaffna University for not accepting Chinese offers under pressure.

He even spoke on local politics congratulating the people of the North for voting for the JVP/NPP, breaking away from the traditional communal parties. He also reminded Sri Lanka not to forget its IOUs to China with regard to the financial and international diplomatic support rendered. All this deftly timed on the eve of the Dissanayake Delhi visit.

Clearly, what is a customary ‘pilgrimage to India’ by every new Sri Lankan leader on assuming office, has more than its share of ramifications and nuanced diplomatic overtones—bilateral, regional and beyond.