By M D Nalapat
Whether
it be Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or other countries within South
Asia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has shown a sensitivity towards their
concerns.
The
most cursory of glances at a world atlas would showcase the importance
of Sri Lanka in any strategy involving the Indian Ocean. The island
nation is located at a point that is core to India’s interests in the
eastern half of the Indo-Pacific, that vast body of water which has
become the most important geopolitical zone of the 21st century. As
significant is the fact that Sri Lanka has protected Buddhist heritage
with a devotion that has remained constant across centuries, so much so
that the island is home to a powerful strand of a faith that has a
rising number of adherents across the globe. Within the neighbourhood of
India, another important nation, Myanmar, shares with Sri Lanka the
quality of being majority Buddhist, while to the north, in China, the
faith is spreading faster than any other in a country hungry for
spiritual riches after having won so much of the material variety. Add
to this the northeast of India, to the ancient kingdom of Thailand,
where too Buddhism is the dominant faith, and farther north in the same
direction, to Japan, where local versions of the faith have a huge
number of adherents, and it is a surprise why more attention has not
been paid by previous Prime Ministers towards ensuring adequate
geopolitical leverage accruing from the fact that the home of Siddhartha
Gautama, Lord Buddha, is India. In the case of Sri Lanka, the policy of
previous governments (with the exception of Rajiv Gandhi) was centred
around the north of the country, on issues dealing with the Tamil
minority, which overall did not always enjoy the warmest of relations
with the Sinhala Buddhist majority in Sri Lanka. The US made the mistake
in Iraq of basing its policy towards that country mainly on protecting
the interests of the Sunni minority, and in particular sought to win
back for the Sunnis much of the disproportionate claims that they had on
the country’s resources during the time when Saddam Hussein was the
dictator of Iraq. In like fashion, successive governments in India paid
much more attention to the actual or perceived grievances of the Tamil
minority in Sri Lanka than on other matters, so much so that overall the
relationship between Delhi and Colombo was often marked by an acrimony
that led to other powers securing a bridgehead within the strategic
space of that country.
Ultimately, the road to harmony in South Asia will need to
include the setting up of a visa-free South Asia federation, where each
country would retain its full sovereignty but work in sync with other
members within such a zone. Such an alliance would have a common
currency chosen from within its members, and the group would include
Afghanistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and
eventually Pakistan, once that country rids itself of the obsession that
it is a fusion which is part-Arab and part-Turkoman rather than what it
actually is, which is South Asian through and through. As a first step
towards such a collaborative objective, India will need to work towards
visa free entry and an effective common currency with other South Asian
countries in the same way as it has with Nepal. Should the Indian
economy break past the double digit growth barrier, such a breakthrough
would be easier, as it would then be obvious that the flow of people
into India as a consequence of the doing away with visas would be more
than that from India to the other country. Indeed, such is already the
case with Nepal, with many more from that country relocating to India
than the other way about. Whether it be Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or
other countries within South Asia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has
shown a sensitivity towards their concerns and a refusal to act the Big
Brother role that has coloured some initiatives in the past. Hopefully,
now that he has once again visited Sri Lanka, the Prime Minister will
soon go to Myanmar, a Buddhist country that has received far less
attention from South Block in the past than it has merited.
It is not the business of any country to take sides in a
political slugfest in another, unless there be extraordinary
circumstances, and it is both noteworthy and welcome that Modi
immediately made time in his schedule to meet Mahinda Rajapaksa, the
former President of Sri Lanka, who was defeated at the polls largely
because of the perception that too many of his family members were
getting placed into key slots in government. Despite this, Rajapaksa
retains a formidable support base within Sri Lanka, and is very familiar
with India. While some such as his brother Basil may have closer with
countries other than India, especially with China, both Mahinda as well
as his brother Gotabaya (who were together responsible for the
elimination of the LTTE almost a decade ago from Sri Lanka) have several
friends in India and may be expected to prioritise ties with Delhi in
the event they are returned to power, which is not impossible in the
dust and swirl of democratic politics. Modi’s going to Kandy for one of
the most important Buddhist festivals on the planet was timely, and
needs to be supplemented not only by a more vigorous approach towards
Sri Lanka but by focussing on the two other Buddhist nations in our
vicinity, Thailand and Myanmar. Prime Minister Modi has placed equal if
not greater emphasis on cultural as on traditional matters of statecraft
while dealing with other countries, and this has been in evidence in
the manner in which the Prime Minister’s reverence for the traditions of
the Buddha and the way these have been preserved in Sri Lanka were
clear from his interactions. Reconnecting with Colombo on the basis of
the civilisational roots shared by both countries has been a welcome
step, which hopefully will get followed by several more that would
ensure a more harmonious relationship between India and Sri Lanka than
has been the case far too often in the past.
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